In this transcription of a Rail Group On Air Podcast, Norfolk Southern Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer John Orr discussed passenger rail. Like all Class I railroads, Norfolk Southern hosts numerous passenger trains including intercity services and regional commuter. We’re talking about Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express, for example. John and the team at Norfolk Southern have been working hard to improve relationships with passenger railroads.
Vantuono
John, welcome to Rail Group on Air. You’ve been a frequent guest here. We’ve talked about a lot of things, but now we’re going to talk about something completely different or, well, related, I guess. Passenger rail. Norfolk Southern, as you know, hosts a significant number of passenger trains, both Amtrak and regional commuter rail like Virginia Railway Express and other services. And from what I understand here, the performance has been improving in the past couple of years. Let’s talk about that.
Orr
Bill, first it’s always great to be with you and no matter the topic, we always have some really interesting conversations and always in the interest of our industry sector and so proud to be here. But let me just say that NS has had a really strong safety trajectory from 2024 to 2025 with continuous technological, cultural and operational enhancements. We’re leading to ongoing improvements in train reliability, schedule iterations, and improved network standards and efficiencies. Customers are more satisfied, our employees are absolutely engaged. We’ve improved safety and service and our financial performance. Amtrak is a great example of how all of those come together in our PSR 2.0 transformation, and they extract value from our overall network capability. And while it’s true, we’ve put a lot of focus on our improvements on their schedule and on time performance, there is truly an example of all ships rising with the tide, with a bit of fine tuning on our prioritization and engagement and teaching people the skills and capabilities required to run a really, really strong network.
Vantuono
As I’ve often said, this is one industry; there’s been too much of this us versus them mentality—well, we’re a freight railroad and you’re lucky to be on our tracks. Well, that doesn’t work. Bearing in mind, of course, that the passenger rail operators have to understand that this isn’t their railroad, it needs to be a partnership, needs to be a collaboration. You’ve said that there’s a direct line between operational improvements and improvements in passenger rail hosting performance. Describe some of those.
Orr
We’ve talked about this, Bill. In PSR 2.0, we really simplify things, simplify schedules. We’ve tightened standards, and as we optimize our locomotive and freight car utilization, we’re using the network in a more holistic view. Amtrak is as important as anybody else using the network. And when you really commit to having that holistic view and ecosystem view of your network, I take the approach that we drive performance across it. At NS, we’ve focused on simplification and reducing interference on freight on our cars, and that’s taken the form of a couple of things. Our mechanical war rooms, for example, really look at how we remove the unreliability of mechanical failures and keep getting to the root cause of things. And so, as we introduce portals and mechanical inspections across the railroad, we’re able then to take it back to our originating terminals and either teach new skills or invest differently in how the equipment gets inspected.
And as a result, we’ve seen about a 30% reduction in recrews, and when you have that amount of fluidity created, it allows a lot more movements within a corridor. That investment for our core business translates well into the stability and reliability of the Amtrak schedules. Now there’s still work to do obviously as we work through that, but that’s a part of it. And then you layer on the next level of thought and our need for speed war rooms that looks at how do we get them the maximum speeds out of our corridors and start to deal with realities of day-to-day operations like train stalls or interference with grade as it slows trains down, and how do we optimize the locomotive utilization through those corridors, increase the speed wherever possible, engineer it out, and then build the schedules around the more realistic train schedules. Amtrak really benefits from that because now we’ve got the freight trains that are moving more fluidly. They’re not stopping where they’re not supposed to, and the train schedules really drive the meets. And our RTCs, our dispatchers, are really responding to that.
Vantuono
A couple of years ago, Amtrak’s former head, Steven Gardner, said, PSR can be better for passenger service because if the freight service is more reliable, more consistent, then that means that we (Amtrak) can keep our schedules more consistently.
Orr
I don’t disagree with that, and I think where we have an integrated safety and service plan in our PSR 2.0, where we develop the environment that people can be successful in, we understand the skills and capabilities they need to be successful and provide the right level of equipment and create the willingness to give that discretionary effort, then that integration really sets us up for best-in-class service, whether it’s a freight car or as a host railroad, for Amtrak’s performance. I’m really proud of what we’ve done as far as our Amtrak performance over the past 16, 17 months.
Vantuono:
How has that improved percentage wise? I know Amtrak keeps a scorecard. Some people will look at that and say, well, it’s not that accurate. But maybe if you could share some numbers with us, how that performance has improved in terms of on-time performance.
Orr
You know me, Bill. I’m never going to be satisfied with how the current state of operations is because I’m really trying to drive cultural and operational change across the board, and that means continuous improvement, accountability, where we have visibility and concrete obligations and that led itself into operational excellence. And operational excellence starts and stops with safety and service regardless of what the scorecard and Amtrak says. I want to be as good as I can possibly be and allow, as a host railroad, the schedules of Amtrak to be as reliable as I want my freight to be reliable. I want the passengers on that Amtrak experience to be satisfied with what they’ve been delivered on the NS properties. If we boil it down to the Amtrak scorecard, we’re right up there on the top of the heap with a couple of other railroads.
Vantuono
You’ve also had some very effective partnerships with local and state passenger agencies, in three states, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina.
Orr
Bill, I’ll tell you that under Mark George and our leadership team, we have a really clear strategic vision. We want to encourage entrepreneurial spirit. We have a collaborative culture and we really want to scale Norfolk Southern across the board and partnering. It makes sense. That’s what we talk about with an ecosystem approach. And truly, those three examples are where deeds matter and we show up. Sometimes you just have exploratory talks, other times they manifest into something more concrete. But we are open to collaboration. We’ve got a really strong strategic roadmap. We’ve got a host of initiatives that we’re working through. These are a couple of examples that you’ve just cited.
Vantuono
Getting back to operations, you have employed rather effectively those centers that you call war rooms, really strategic planning places. How do you utilize those? I know for not only for freight, but really for the passenger operations.
Orr
Under PSR 2.0, we’ve kind of extended the traditional Precision Schedule Railroading by integrating digital tools, operating analytics, ecosystem level coordination that really helps us simplify operations. It’s a very non-linear complex set of inputs, and the simpler they are in their application, the tighter the controls, the tighter the standards and the better the optimization of the network. If I have a problem, I’ll pull together subject matter experts. It could be top level executives all the way down to the field level craft employees and bring them into a room and start solving the problem as fast as possible. So we have a triage where we deal with day-to-day, hour- to-hour, minute-to-minute realities of those issues. But then taking a step out of the heat of the moment to reflect on the implications of the issues and the longer term solutions, we’re able to have a better view of what our operational concerns are and get to solutions faster.
So originally it was a wayside war room where we were really trying to address the frequency of unplanned train stops, and that led to concrete improvements in our terminals, preparations for trains, the mechanical inspections, even the mechanical repairs of the cars. We trained our people differently. We invested in some different infrastructure like our air plants. Lately it’s taken on a new level. We’ve decided we’re going to use war rooms to do next-level thinking and what are the next-level problems that we could have so anticipatory and let us get ahead of the issues. So, as we invested in more [inspection] portals, for example, across our network, we have a better view of all of the cars going across the corridors and we want to make sure that we’re doing something with the information we’re finding. So the war rooms are helping us understand what are the types of information that we need to have to prevent accidents, prevent safety shortcomings, and then create greater reliability and start to solve problems before they happen. And that’s the iteration and the evolution of our war room. So we are always going to be in the now, but as we mature, we can get into future-state course corrections.
Vantuono
Amtrak and the commuter railroads are often the cause of their own delays. Mechanical failures, for example, over the road, locomotive failures. What can you share with them as a freight railroad in terms of your mechanical practices? What best practices can you share with your tenants so to speak, as far as their own reliability?
Orr
Let me just start with how we work. Right now at NS, we have a culture of “speak up” where we have something I call “NS candor” where we’re going to talk about tough issues, we’re going to talk to them in a way that solves the problem, brings people to bear on the issues and is respectful for the efforts and the outputs. That’s the kind of conversation I have with the leadership over at Amtrak. We have a very respectful dialogue. We have really learned to trust one another and speak up to issues and advocate for the things that we both need. And so I think we do more of that for sure, is that speak up and that engagement, because that sets the tone for everything, whether it’s a locomotive failure or a car issue. Those things, they’ve got experts over there and they’re very, very good at what they do. In fact, I was with the COO at Amtrak. We were in Washington for a meeting, and we had breakfast, and we were talking about work block planning, and it really opened my eyes to how they have to de-energize their [catenary] infrastructure in order to safely work and do work blocks. And it helped me understand why it’s taking longer than I do when I don’t have that same consideration.
In the same respect, he’s learning a lot about what we’re doing with portals and how we engage together. Ultimately, we’re creating an environment where I have great respect for his schedules and what he does, and he’s got even greater respect now for what I need, especially where we intersect in the Northeast Corridor and we transit our freight cars on his territory. I think it’s more important for me to make sure that he’s confident that I’m going to have a safe train, a reliable train and locomotives that are going to move it from A to B in the time I ask him to take my trains so I can get more access to those routes and he can do the same with me. I think that’s the fair statement and I think that’s the balance I’d like to strike with Amtrak as a host. I know I have contractual and regulatory obligations, but I like to think we’re railroaders who are making railroad decisions because it’s in our DNA to do what’s right for either the product or the people because ultimately that’s how we get satisfaction as railroaders.
Vantuono
And there’s certainly a lot of data that can be shared. Those train inspection portals, Norfolk Southern collects the data from your freight trains at speed. I’ve been through one of those portals on your executive train, this giant flash of ligh—wow, what was that? The passenger trains pass through those as well. And if there’s a way to share that data and get it in real time to the Amtrak trouble desk, for example, and so they know what’s going on and they can address a potential failure.
Orr
We have an adage that our network improvements power a better future for passenger rail. And we have these portals that we’ve developed with Georgia Tech and they are best in class and I’ve worked in a lot of Class I’s. They’re so responsive and our algorithm deployment is very quick and very concentrated on issues that railways really need to concentrate on. And I’m open to sharing that with not only Amtrak but with short lines and other users of our network, and even using that as a standard by which all railways used to inspect equipment. Really it’s the back office that makes the difference in how you react to that data. We’ve got some of the best back-office leaders and skilled workers in any Class I. The work they do to take the information, distill it into manageable actionable items and then act on them is really what’s differentiating. Data for data’s sake is a waste of time. Data for action is the vehicle for continuous improvement, whether that’s us sharing it with Amtrak or them sharing it with us. There’s no pride of ownership here. Whatever makes the railway industry safer and especially makes the passengers safer is a good news story for me.
