In our prior report, we highlighted Ancora’s fraught and incurious NS vs. CSX operational benchmarking, specifically terminal dwell and trains holding for power. We took particular issue with the extraordinarily…

On April 18, Ancora hosted a townhall in New York City for Norfolk Southern stockholders, and during that meeting [potential new NS board member] Gil Lamphere implored the audience to…

Winter is always a challenge for the railroads, but the one we’ve just had was at least milder than normal. Apart from being the warmest on record, it included just…

We’ve of course been watching the back and forth between the Ancora group and Norfolk Southern ahead of the May 9 proxy contest. We don’t feel a need to comment…

This report often—and necessarily—focuses on the individual railroads that are struggling the most, for one reason or another, and trying to right the ship. Norfolk Southern has spent the most…

The Smokehouse Creek wildfire in Texas, which severed BNSF’s Transcon route on February 27, was the latest in a series of problems that have significantly slowed BNSF’s network and impacted…

While it’s still technically winter, that hasn’t stopped the largest wildfire in Texas history raging in the panhandle, northeast of Amarillo. There aren’t many people living in this part of…

I’ll start with the good news, which concerns volume trends in the three reported weeks following the Arctic Blast, which struck the railroads in the third week of January. The…

Arctic Blast recovery, week 2: We’ll be able to shift focus shortly, because most of the damage from the Arctic Blast in the third week of January has now been…

Before we talk about the recovery, let’s compare the recent Arctic Blast with comparable cold snaps over the past four winters. There were two Arctic Blasts last winter, falling in…

The Arctic Blast has been our singular focus over the past few weeks, starting with foreboding anticipation, then some historical context, and we’ve now reached the quantifying the damage stage.…

In recent weeks we’ve focused on the big tailwind from Thanksgiving and its subsequent slingshot effects, which accelerated the overall system and propelled some key metrics at Union Pacific, BNSF,…

Over the past few weeks we’ve been observing and discussing the unanticipated strength in BNSF domestic intermodal volumes, which began in October, and how the operating team has handled it.…

On Dec. 4, we highlighted the strong operational recovery that has taken hold at Union Pacific, and we’re now in a position where most of the industry is running well.…

Since the early 2022 Service Crisis, we’ve seen the U.S. railroads, one-by-one, reach a point where service is arguably fully restored, at least to where it was prior. CSX was…

On Oct. 18, CN announced its operations succession plan as COO Ed Harris heads back into retirement, which occurred Nov. 15. Harris is arguably the best operator in the business…

Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s Sanchez Yard, near the U.S. border, continues to be on a roll. Yard dwell time fell for the fourth consecutive week, this time from 19.4 to…

Last week we highlighted a big drop in terminal dwell in Mexico as evidence that CPKC’s broader Mexican operation is finally turning around, after a year in the doldrums. Our…

We’ve been following terminal dwell time at Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s three primary Mexican yards for months as we wait for CPKC’s Mexican operation—which has been hamstringing financial results—to turn…

One by one, the U.S. railroads are getting their operating houses in order following the difficulties of 2022, and as that evolves we’re engaging with senior operations leaders to understand…