GUIDE TO EQUIPMENT LEASING, RAILWAY AGE JUNE 2024 ISSUE: The battle for the soul of Norfolk Southern concluded with more whimpering than expected. Together, Ancora’s three-board-seat-limited victory and its highly scripted vow to “fight on” suggest that the wind has been let out of the pricing model for expected stock gains that were anticipated by the promised return to a…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE MAY 2024 ISSUE: Roughly one year ago, in May 2023, a “60 Minutes” report was issued about cost overruns in the defense contracting business. The story  details billions of dollars in price gouging by contractors (Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing) on Patriot missiles, Stinger missiles and the legendary mother of all cost overruns—the F35 fighter jet.…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE APRIL 2024 ISSUE: At the Rail Equipment Finance Conference (REF) in March 2024, a tight rental market combined with lower new car build levels and listlessness in merchandise, grain and coal loadings to create a mixed temperament. Here’s a rundown of the key presentation takeaways.    Day 1 keynote Jeffrey Korzenik (Chief Economist from Fifth Third…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE, MARCH 2024 ISSUE: Most rail professionals don’t devote time to ocean freight rates or shipping industry consolidation.

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE: Only those people who are capable of being a soulless rake (a rake is a person prone to excess) leading a careless and superfluous life can avoid concerning themselves with mundane issues of the working world such as measuring productivity. For the rest of the population, including the parties involved in the rising (and…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2024 ISSUE: The marketing genius that was P.T. Barnum coined the oft repeated phrase “There is no such thing as bad publicity.” One only needs to search the origins of fame of some “stars” such as Kim Kardashian and Rob Lowe to see Barnum’s timeless genius.  September’s “Financial Edge” highlighted increasing safety related scrutiny facing…

The railroad industry mourns the passing of Thomas F. Power, Jr., who passed away Dec. 2, 2023. He was 83. Tom Power started his career in railroading in 1966 at the New York Central and Penn Central Railroads. He moved from the New York area to Illinois and joined the railroad that eventually became known as the Milwaukee Road. He…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE DECEMBER 2023 ISSUE: Everyone’s Holidays are costing more in 2023. Heck, everything costs more in 2023. After three years of rising prices, it is taxing. “Financial Edge” has spilled plenty of ink regarding rising railcar costs. If some is good, perhaps more is, well, maybe not better but necessary.

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE, NOVEMBER 2023 ISSUE: This month’s “Financial Edge” almost did not make it into the November issue of Railway Age. Why? Overindulgence was the reason for the delay. Halloween? Harvest Celebration? The reason was more urbane, and the scene was at Newark Penn Station.

RAILROAD FINANCIAL DESK BOOK, RAILWAY AGE OCTOBER 2023 ISSUE: Welcome to Railway Age’s 2024 Railroad Financial Desk Book. Fall is upon North American rail. It is a time for the grain harvest and a time to begin reflection on what the year has delivered and an opportunity to look forward to the future. It is a time for closing the…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE SEPTEMBER 2023 ISSUE: It has been a tough summer for North American rail. There’s the ongoing scrutiny of potentially intimidating practices of the railroads against whistle blowers. Then there’s the continued languishing pace of freight levels, which halfway through the year continued to be weighed down by intermodal contraction. There’s the additional intermodal loadings pressure potentially…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE AUGUST 2023 ISSUE: The new locomotive market has languished since 2016 the year prior to implementation of Tier IV emissions standards. In 2015 and 2016, according to David Humphrey, Senior Data Scientist at Railinc and perennial Rail Equipment Finance speaker, roughly 1,600 new locomotives were manufactured. In the following six years (ending in 2022), 900 new…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE JULY 2022 ISSUE: At the 2023 iteration of the Rail Insights conference, hosted by Railway Age, broad scoping coverage of current and future rail industry related topics were addressed by an engaging roster of senior executive speakers. Here is a summary of the topics and conclusions from the presentations. Alan Shaw, President and CEO of Norfolk…

GUIDE TO EQUIPMENT LEASING, RAILWAY AGE JUNE 2023 ISSUE: Summertime is fast approaching. With the COVID-19 pandemic “officially” over, it is time to turn attention to different matters, such as the immanent defaulting of the U.S. debt or the threat of a moderate to severe El Niño to develop in the summer and fall of 2023 with a significant probability…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE MAY 2023 ISSUE: Chat bots and AI are all the rage these days. Whether it is BingAI, BardAI or openai.com, fantasies of Terminatoresque or chatbot romance abound. (See this article on an AI being asked to destroy humanity, or this one where a chatbot professes love for the author.) AI struggles with the veracity of its…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE APRIL 2023 ISSUE: In its 37th iteration, Tony Kruglinski’s Rail Equipment Finance Conference (REF) once again took place at the oasis in the desert: The LaQuinta Resort and Club in LaQuinta, Calif. Held in the shadow of the East Palestine derailment but before the calamity associated with the Silicon Valley Bank disaster, REF 2023 was in…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE, MARCH 2023 ISSUE: Oftentimes, “Financial Edge” gets an earful from readers—sometimes congratulatory like a Home Depotesque slogan: “You nailed it.” Other times there’s criticism, like being too much in the railroads’ pockets in supporting the industry’s safety record.

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE FEBRUARY 2023 ISSUE: January is always an unusual month. Holiday coziness is quickly exchanged for the realities of credit card bills, a “don’t talk to me about what you did in 2022; what are you going to do for me in 2023?” attitude from employers (apologies to JFK) and a new set of 52 weeks over…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2023 ISSUE: There is a reason why John Lennon wrote songs and Financial Edge is a column. Perhaps a restatement of what Rolling Stone noted about the Maroon 5 version of “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” is in order: Quickie quiz: Are you John Lennon? No! Are you Yoko Ono? Also no! The next question…

FINANCIAL EDGE, RAILWAY AGE DECEMBER 2022 ISSUE: The editorial staff at Railway Age follows the “old school” code of the postman emblazoned on New York’s City General Post Office. “Neither snow nor rain …” (you know the rest) keeps the RA team delivering the goods month in and month out.