Norfolk Southern on Feb. 26 filed preliminary proxy materials (Schedule 14A) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection with its upcoming 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, to be held in April. NS stated that it continues its “board refreshment” with nominations of two new directors, reiterated its “focus on safety and service while working to drive significant margin…

Editor’s Note: As expected, things are getting ugly. The latest press release from Ancora Holdings Group, LLC is taking the personal attacks on Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw to a new level. The activist investor is “expressing concern about NS’s lobbying efforts, which appear to be about using misinformation and inappropriate influence to protect Mr. Shaw’s status as…

Chicago’s Metra has awarded a contract to Stadler U.S. for zero-emission, battery-electric (BE) single-level trainsets and as such “will be one of the first in the nation to operate this innovative technology.” The contract includes a $154 million base order for eight two-car BE trainsets, including engineering, training, and spare parts, with options costing up to an additional $181.4 million…

At its 4Q/Full-Year 2023 earnings presentation, Union Pacific said it would invest $3.4 billion in capital this year. On Feb. 21, UP confirmed its plan to “support safe operations, renew assets and grow with customers … to make the railroad safer and generate economic and supply chain activity across our 23-state footprint, boosting local, regional and national economy.” An estimated…

On Feb. 21, three days after Ancora Holdings announced its intention to replace a majority of the Norfolk Southern Board of Directors and the railroad’s chief executive and chief operating officers, Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose wrote a rather interestingly worded letter to Alan Shaw, with copies to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and outgoing STB Chair Marty Oberman. Here…

Ohio-based Ancora Holdings Group LLC, with affiliates and other participants—collectively called the “Investor Group”—on Feb. 20 launched a formal takeover attempt of Norfolk Southern, announcing eight prospective board members, a new CEO and a new COO. Claiming that it will be able to drive NS’s share price up by about 65% to $420 (as of 2:00 PM EST on 2/20/2024…

Pipelines can flow freely. They can have blockages. And they can leak. For railroads, those three conditions usually mean, respectively, a network with good velocity, or one experiencing service disruptions and losing market share. For Norfolk Southern, it’s a pipeline “full of strong growth opportunities with both new and existing customers.” At the railroad’s 4Q and Full-Year 2023 earnings call,…

PT Kereta Indonesia (PT KAI) has awarded a contract to Progress Rail, a Caterpillar Company, for 54 EMD® GT38AC freight locomotives for service in South Sumatra, Indonesia, expanding the national railway’s existing fleet. Progress Rail anticipates delivery beginning in 2025. The new locomotives will join PT KAI’s fleet of 91 GT38ACs delivered since 2011. “The high tractive effort capability of…

Palmetto Railways (PR), a division of the South Carolina Department of Commerce and Railway Age’s 2015 Short Line Railroad of the Year, is partnering with Innovative Rail Technologies (IRT) to convert two diesel-electric switcher locomotives to lithium-ion battery-electric (BE) power. The locomotives are expected to be delivered and begin service within two years. In September 2023, PR received a $4.17 million CRSI…

CSX has extended its AC4400 modernization program with Wabtec to give the remaining 200-plus locomotives in its 460-plus unit fleet improved fuel efficiency, reliability, utilization and tractive effort. Wabtec will perform the modernizations at its U.S. locomotive plants from 2024 to 2028. The contract adds to the 260 modernizations that CSX previously ordered, the majority of which have been delivered.…

Duos Technologies Group, Inc., through its operating subsidiary Duos Technologies, Inc., has been awarded a U.S. patent, Use of Artificial Intelligence to Detect Defects in Trains and Method to Use. The company describes the patent covering “supervised machine learning that proactively detects defects and identifies derailment risks, setting a new benchmark for rail industry safety enhancement.” Duos said the patent…

RAILWAY AGE, FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE: Nearly 140 years after the first patent was issued, draft gears and cushioning devices remain as fundamental to railroading as steel wheels rolling on steel rails. Few other freight railcar components need to withstand as much in-train force as draft gears and cushioning devices. Safety and ride quality rely on these components performing seamlessly with…

Amtrak has awarded a Kiewit/J.F. Shea Joint Venture to build the new, $6 billion Frederick Douglass Tunnel, which will serve electrified Amtrak and MARC commuter trains. Construction scheduled to begin in 2026; other activities are under way. The Frederick Douglass Tunnel Program is the centerpiece of an Amtrak initiative to modernize and transform an approximately 10-mile section of the Northeast Corridor (NEC)…

Norfolk Southern—like much of the industry, battling a misinformation campaign by rail union leadership aided and abetted by the U.S. Transportation Secretary and Federal Railroad Administrator, and reportedly in the gunsights of a hedge fund—completed $1 billion in infrastructure improvement projects in 2023. The NS Engineering team, led by Vice President Engineering Ed Boyle, made “comprehensive improvements to safety infrastructure,…

Diplomacy isn’t easy. Successful practitioners are good listeners with open minds, articulate, tactful, knowledgeable and credible. For the railroad industry, an understanding of how things get done on Capitol Hill is essential for dealing with regulators and legislators. While there may be a lot of political “noise” generated for appearance’s sake, generally the outcome is something everyone can live with—not…

In the February issue, Contributing Editors Frank N. Wilner and Donald M. Itzkoff separately address all the policy and legislative challenges freight railroads face this year. All these challenges are a 30,000-gallon hazmat tank car’s worth of spillover from 2023. They’re mixed with a few bottles’ worth of malodorous thioacetone (bad feelings) from the labor dispute of 2022, and infused…

In 2023, BNSF’s Los Angeles Hobart Intermodal Facility set an on-time departure record of 94%, surpassing its previous record of 86%, set in 2012. These results, BNSF said, “were achieved all while completing the safest year on record for accidents and injuries.” BNSF has expanded capacity at Hobart, “which handles the world’s largest quantity of domestic intermodal freight,” by 500…

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) had been phasing in its first two open-gangway R211T trainsets from Kawasaki Rail Car along New York City Transit’s (NYCT) B Division (lettered lines) express A and local C lines, but there’s a problem: The R211T cannot operate in express service because its design conflicts with certain NYCT operating rules. Local service on…

It was reported first by Railway Age when Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern finalized their merger to create CPKC, North America’s first and only single-line transnational railroad: Steam locomotive 2816, a Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 Hudson type nicknamed The Empress, will haul a special excursion train through Canada, Mexico and the United States. On April 24, CPKC’s historic Final Spike…

The Railway Supply Institute (RSI) American Railway Car Institute Committee (ARCI) has released 4Q2023 data indicating a freight car market that has performed well since the pandemic, with a healthy backlog closing out 2023. ARCI figures show a generally stable backlog of an average 57,231 railcars throughout the past five quarters. Though orders dropped in 4Q23 to 4,164 from 11,525…