“It
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Jimmy Carter and Jim Florio, Perfect Together
The prosperity and growth from which our industry has bene tted for the past 45 years is largely due to two people, both Democrats: New Jersey Congressman and Governor James J. Florio (1937-2022), and Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States. As a U.S. Representative, Florio was the principal architect of the 1980 Staggers Rail Act, which partially deregulated the railroads.
Jimmy Carter, who died Dec. 29, 2024 at 100, signed Staggers into law on Oct. 14, 1980, in one of his nal acts as President.
Staggers, Railway Age Capitol Hill
Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner recalls, “is named after a long-deceased and now hazily, if at all, remembered West Virginia Democratic lawmaker, Harley O. Staggers, but he didn’t even write the bill that carries his name, nor did he manage its successful passage. Much of the bill writing, as well as its majority-vote getting, was accomplished by Jim Florio. In a last-ditch effort to inch over the finish line what was then the Rail Act of 1980—it in danger of being relegated
Oct. 14, 1980: Jimmy Carter signs the Staggers Rail Act into law as Jim Florio (second from right) and Harley Staggers (third from right) look on.
to the dust bin of history—Florio, in a flash of political savvy, renamed it to honor Staggers, about to retire and still the popular chairman of the House Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee (now Transportation & Infrastructure Committee). The name change to the Harley O. Staggers Rail Act similarly earned for the bill bipartisan support in the Senate.”
Jimmy Carter’s one-term Presidency (January 1977 to January 1981) has been remembered mostly for turbulent economic times and the Iranian hostage crisis. But, as The New York Times said in a lengthy obituary, Carter “became one of his generation’s great peacemakers with his Camp David accords, bringing together Israel and Egypt. While his presidency was remembered more for its failures than its successes, his post-presidency was seen by many as a model for future chief executives. Rather than vanish from view or focus on moneymaking, he established the Carter Center to promote peace, combat disease and tackle social inequality, earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Stuart E. Eizenstat, Carter’s domestic policy adviser, insisted in President Carter: The White House Years, that Carter was a thoroughly decent, honorable man who had been underrated. Carter’s accomplishments, measured against those of other Presidents, made him ‘one of the most consequential in modern history,’ Eizenstat wrote.”
The Times obit left out one very important, very consequential detail: Jimmy Carter’s role in the Staggers Rail Act. Let us not forget what he did for our industry. Requiescat in pace.
WILLIAM C. VANTUONO Editor-in-Chief
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Industry Indicators
‘HOLIDAY CHEER FUELS RAIL MOMENTUM, BUT 2025 BRINGS NEW CHALLENGES’
“As the year winds down, the U.S. economy is holding steady, driven mainly by robust consumer spending driving intermodal rail volumes to new highs,” the AAR reported last month. “The Freight Rail Index was the highest it has been since May 2021 and up 2.8% over October 2024. This suggests that, while the economy has its challenges, it remains generally on solid ground. Consumer-driven demand and strong port activity pushed November 2024 to recordbreaking rail container volumes, with three of the top five weeks in U.S. history. Adjusted for inflation, year-over-year consumer spending on goods—which is more relevant to railroads than spending on services—rose 3.1% in October 2024 over October 2023. This robust growth in spending on goods has been a key driver of the sustained surge in rail intermodal volume throughout the year. Strong November job gains boosted consumer confidence, supporting continued spending growth. Flat rail carloads of industrial products in November reflect weak factory activity, with volumes down 1.0% yearto-date. Coal carloads are down sharply this year, continuing a multi-year slide; chemical carloads are at record highs and grain has recovered from a dismal 2023. Together, these categories account for half of total U.S. rail carloads.”
Industry Outlook
Amtrak OIG: LDFR Program ‘High Risk’
AMTRAK’S INTERNAL YET INDEPENDENT OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL (OIG) LAST MONTH RELEASED A REPORT ON PHASE 1 (OF FOUR) OF THE RAILROAD’S LONG DISTANCE FLEET REPLACEMENT (LDFR) PROGRAM, defining the $7 billion initiative as “high risk” and identifying “shortcomings” that could create additional delays and cost increases.
In Major Programs: Company Established a Management Framework for Long-Distance Fleet Replacement Program but Can Improve Risk Management and Clarify Lines of Authority (OIG-A-2025-001), the OIG noted that Amtrak’s LDFR program “will be the single largest equipment acquisition by cost and volume in the company’s history and will define the nature of its long-distance service for decades to come … This acquisition is complex; the equipment the company intends to procure includes several different car types—each of which would have new designs that have never been manufactured before. The LDFR program is in its early stages, and due to its size and high risk, the company has designated it a ‘megacomplexity program.’”
The LDFR program has four phases:
Phase 1: Procuring bilevel equipment— close to 600 bilevel cars with multiple car types, including sleepers—for the company’s western routes that use Superliner I cars.
Phase 2, LDFR contract option: Procuring bilevel equipment for the Auto Train and potentially converting some bilevel routes to single-level routes.
Phase 3, LDFR contract option: Procuring
equipment to increase fleet capacity to expand service and increase ridership.
Phase 4, not included in a December 2023 Request for Proposals (RFP): Procuring single-level long-distance equipment.
OIG’s audit focuses on Phase 1, which Amtrak plans to complete in 2035 at an estimated cost of $7 billion. The company’s initial RFP, released in December 2023, solicits carbuilder pricing for LDFR’s Phase 1 (base order) and includes contract options for Phases 2 and 3. To fund Phase 1, OIG noted, Amtrak “plans to use part of the $22 billion in direct funding provided by IIJA. The remaining three phases do not yet have specified funding sources.”
Amtrak “is in the process of identifying carbuilders for the first phase of the LDFR program—intended to replace equipment on nine routes—and has established a management framework to execute the program once it selects a carbuilder,” OIG said. “Early challenges in developing design requirements for the trainsets, however, have delayed the schedule. Moreover, the complexity of the program itself, which the company acknowledges, poses an innate risk of cost increases and additional delays. Given the LDFR program’s significant size, any material cost or schedule increases could have cascading impacts on the company’s ability to accomplish other major capital projects and maintain its existing longdistance service. Specifically, we identified the following shortcomings:
“Complex requirements caused delays and pose additional risks. The LDFR program is inherently complex, and the company’s initial
requirements, including premium designs and amenities, contributed to this complexity. Carbuilders provided feedback, however, about their ability to meet some of these requirements, causing the company to amend its requests, which delayed the procurement by seven months. As the company moves to select a carbuilder, the more complexity it opts for in the acquisition, the greater its potential cost and schedule risk.
“Capital Delivery established an LDFR program framework but could strengthen two areas. Capital Delivery’s management framework for the LDFR program improved on those of the company’s previous major programs, but it could strengthen two components. First, although the department established a risk management plan, Capital Delivery has not developed contingency plans for the highest risks, as company standards require. Second, the lines of authority on the program have been unclear from the outset, resulting in slow decision making that may be exacerbated by recent departures in program leadership. Addressing these components could help mitigate the risk of schedule delays and cost increases.
“Because the company is in the process of amending its requirements for the trainsets, we are not making a recommendation in this area, but we note that any future decisions that add complexity to this program warrant thoughtful consideration and caution. Regarding the management framework, we recommend that the company review and clarify the roles, responsibilities, and lines of authority for each stage of the program; fill program vacancies; and identify contingencies for its major risks.
“In commenting on a draft of this report, [Amtrak] agreed with our recommendations and detailed the actions it plans to take, or has taken, to address them.”
“Recent program leadership departures could exacerbate decision making challenges,” OIG noted. “Two years into the program, the company executives tasked with overseeing the program have changed, and senior managers and executives from the primary departments involved in the program—including Commercial, Capital Delivery, and Procurement—have left the company or been reassigned. These changes are significant.”
NYMTA Exercising 435-car R211 Option
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is exercising Option 2 with Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. for 435 additional R211 rapid transit railcars—355 R211A/S (traditional closed-end) cars and 80 R211T open-gangway cars. The option, valued at $1.27 billion, brings the total number of R211s ordered to 1,610. There are currently 345 R211 cars in service throughout the New York City Transit (NYCT) system, on the B Division (letter-designated) A and C lines, and on the Staten Island Railway. Delivery is expected to begin in 2027. Beginning in early 2025, NYCT plans to operate a minimum of two R211T trainsets on the G line, making it the second line with opengangway rolling stock. R211Ts first operated on the C line earlier this year. The R211S cars will eventually replace all R44s on the Staten Island Railway and the current fleet of R46 subway cars, which have been in service on the A and C lines, as well as the N-R-Q-W line for decades. This option will also allow NYCT to begin replacement of R68s, which entered service in the mid-1980s and primarily operate on the B-D-N and W. The R211 is rated at average MDBF (mean distance between failure) of approximately 220,000 miles, compared to the R46’s 46,000 miles. The R211 is CBTC (communications-based train control)-equipped, and features security cameras in every car, more accessible seating, brighter lights, clearer signage and 58-inch-wide door openings, which are eight inches wider than standard door openings on existing cars. In January 2018, the MTA awarded a contract to Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. to design, build, and deliver 535 cars, comprised of 440 R211As and 20 R211Ts for NYCT, and 75 R211S cars for Staten Island Railway. The contract included two options: Option 1 for 640 cars, and Option 2, for 333-437 cars. In October 2022, the agency exercised Option 1 for 640 R211 cars for $1.78 billion.
The METROPOLITAN ATLANTA RAPID TRANSIT AUTHORITY (MARTA) last month awarded STADLER SIGNALING NORTH AMERICA a $500 million contract to equip its rapid transit network with Stadler’s NOVA Pro CBTC (communications-based train control) technology. The contract, the largest to date for Stadler’s signaling sector, marks the first time that a U.S. rail transit agency has used a Stadler train control system with Stadler rolling stock. Under the terms of the contract, Stadler will replace the current system within eight years of receiving a notice to proceed. “The resulting synergies between the on-board and trackside signaling components will allow for a smooth introduction of the system and increase operational performance while minimizing downtime,” Stadler said. The vehicles will be equipped at the Stadler plant in Salt Lake City, where the 56 new MARTA trainsets ordered in 2019 are being built. The trackside equipment will be installed, tested and commissioned directly on the MARTA network. As the on-board and trackside components come from Stadler the project “can be completed seamlessly,” the company noted. “During a transition phase, trains will be able to run with both the legacy and the new system. As
soon as the trackside components have been installed across the board, the transition process to the new system will be smooth and without any interruption to operations.” NOVA Pro as deployed on MARTA will be engineer-assisted ATO (automatic train operation). “Stadler’s CBTC technology is recognized worldwide as a proven and widely used solution for metro systems,” the company noted. “It is used in many cities and countries and meets international standards and requirements. Stadler’s solution is characterized by a sleek, modular design that is compatible with any wireless communication network, including 5G and WiFi. The system can be flexibly adapted to various GoA (grades of automation). As a result, it offers the flexibility needed to meet the growing demands of public transit providers.”
RELAM, a portfolio company of Paceline Equity Partners, has acquired FALCON EQUIPMENT, LTD. (Falcon), an equipment solutions and specialty truck company headquartered in Surrey, British Columbia. The acquisition, the lessor of railroad maintenance-of-way equipment said, “furthers RELAM’s leading position in the hi-rail sector, represents its expansion in the Canadian market, and adds attractive
new end markets, including Building Supply, Utility, Snow and Ice, and Municipality.” Falcon will continue to be led by its current management team, with Dan Kielan remaining as President. Founded in 1998, Falcon provides equipment for lifting, rail, snow and ice removal, and municipal and utility end markets across six fullservice locations in Western Canada. The company sells upfitted vehicles and has an established lease fleet of customized trucks. In recent years, Falcon expanded its operations in Edmonton, Alberta, in Regina, Saskatchewan, and in Winnipeg, Manitoba increasing its capacity to build more trucks annually. Falcon offers a full suite of services, including in-house design, engineering, fabrication, installation capabilities, maintenance, repairs, parts support, equipment rentals, and leasing. The transaction follows RELAM’s acquisition of WISKERCHEN TRUCK & EQUIPMENT, LLC and WISKERCHEN RENTAL & LEASING, LLC in January 2023, which strategically expanded RELAM’s position in the hi-rail truck market. Like the Wiskerchen transaction, RELAM will introduce flexible rental and lease programs to Falcon’s customers and end markets designed to improve their cash flow and return on investment.
Amtrak’s Gardner: His Legacy on the Line
He’s a 50-year-old railroad CEO without a private aircraft or opulent corner suite. Although he superintends the only transcontinental railroad, his compensation package is a fraction of that of his peers. Darting suit-jacketless about the office, dress shirt loosely tucked, he is easily mistaken for Stan from accounting. Don’t be fooled. Amtrak CEO Stephen J. Gardner, facing an ultimate test, is better prepared than any Amtrak CEO before him—and it’s not a B-List.
Before Gardner, there were Paul H. Reistrup, a doyen of the freight side who directed a storied Amtrak car and locomotive acquisition effort; W. Graham Claytor Jr., a revered Southern Railway CEO who paused retirement out of devotion to preserving Amtrak’s national network; David L. Gunn, a gilt-edge freight and transit guy who restored Amtrak maintenance programs; and Charles (Wick) Moorman, a Norfolk Southern CEO who delayed retirement to mentor Amtrak managers on linking technology with productivity.
For Gardner to join the A-List requires protecting against an anticipated budget assault by the new President, such as renewal of first-term attempts to foist on ill-equipped states the financial burden of long-distance trains. “Even with the strong political constituency of the Empire Builder, it will be nearly impossible to achieve an eight-state agreement on funding,” says Sean Jeans-Gail, Vice President for Government Affairs and Policy at the Rail Passengers Association.
More threatening are reenergized deficit hawks intent on clawing back unspent prior congressional appropriations and snuffing out future ones. Scaled back would be maintenance and modernization and mid-construction sandbagging of Northeast Corridor projects— the New York-New Jersey Gateway Program, the Frederick Douglass
tunnel modernization in Baltimore, and Virginia’s Long Bridge expansion ahead of extending the NEC to Richmond.
Although the 1974 Impoundment Control Act prohibits a President from confiscating funds already appropriated by Congress, some advisers to the new President argue the law unconstitutional, anticipating agreement by a conservative-majority Supreme Court or repeal by a Republican-majority Congress.
While Amtrak is no stranger to circling the drain, Gardner looks the best choice for carrying the leadership baton in this latest fight for survival. Decisive could be his meticulous mastery of Capitol Hill’s lingua franca and the mysterious intricacies of the legislative and budget process. Crucial partners are Amtrak-adoring mayors, state legislators and opinion leaders.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) may prove Gardner’s most sturdy ally. Amtrak critic Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and the Republican-controlled House, which in 2023 proposed a 64% Amtrak budget cut, are problematic.
Gardner’s born-for-the-job resume begins as a curious tag-along kid of a Northern Virginia county manager whose portfolio included inspecting the region’s heavy-rail Metro system and a now-gone Potomac Yard freight rail classification facility. A high school Amtrak internship provided Gardner further exposure to rail operations.
Summer college gigs on short line track gangs and employment as a regional railroad brakeman, conductor and dispatcher added understanding of the choreography of crafts producing revenue ton-miles and the puzzle of squeezing out utility and value.
Came next an internship on the House Rail Subcommittee—hired by economist and future Surface Transportation Board member Frank Mulvey. It became full-time ahead
of recruitment by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), a former Amtrak board member seeking rail expertise on the Homeland Security Committee post-9/11.
Capping Gardner’s Capitol Hill schooling was a senior staff post on the Senate Commerce Committee, concentrating on economic regulation, high-speed rail, Amtrak reauthorization and drafting the 2008 Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) authorizing $10 billion for Amtrak.
Gardner joined Amtrak in 2009, advancing from top posts in policy development, infrastructure investment, technology planning, marketing and operations to Amtrak President in 2020 and CEO in 2022. This year will prove his mettle.
To suggest yesterday’s congressional friends will shield Amtrak from budget devastation tomorrow is naïve. A Capitol Hill credo goes, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” The new President, who considers spending on Amtrak “wasteful,” demands Republican lawmaker loyalty.
To rephrase comedian David Letterman: “I wouldn’t give Amtrak’s troubles to a monkey on a rock.” Yet fate chose Gardner. His legacy is about to be written.
Wilner’s books, “Amtrak: Past, Present, Future” and “Railroads & Economic Regulation: An Insider’s Account,” are available from SimmonsBoardman Books at https://www. railwayeducationalbureau.com, 800-228-9670.
FRANK N. WILNER
Capitol Hill
Contributing Editor
More Fun Times and Unintended Consequences Ahead?
Politicians and political writers have it easy. Su ering from a post-election malaise? Have no fear! Matt Gaetz to the rescue!
ousands of hours of news coverage, hundreds of thousands of words, tons of printer and pen ink spilled over one sycophant’s sel sh, immature, illegal and disrespectful behavior.
In the real world, on the rail lines in North America, where things get done, the rail industry is blessed with more mundane and real-world challenges.
On Jan. 5, 2025, New York City’s congestion pricing was set to begin, albeit at a lower per-vehicle amount of $9, which will escalate to the original $15 by 2031 (a er hitting $12 in 2028). Prior to Governor Kathy Hochul’s politically motivated temporary pause of the program, the anticipated revenue of $15 billion was set to contribute the largest percentage of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) $51.5 billion capital plan.
If you have a record player, this is where you make the scratching noise meant to simulate an abrupt stop.
As reported the day a er Christmas 2024 in Railway Age, the MTA Capital Plan has grown as if the MTA is celebrating anksgiving every day, from $51.5 billion to the more substantial $65.4 billion. Meh, what’s another $14 billion? (To be fair, this is down from a top number of $68 billion.)
e MTA Capital Plan was rejected by the New York State Legislature due to lack of funding for half the planned projects.
An additional gap in the MTA’s funding plans was created when congestion pricing was put on hold. Some portion of that gap remains as the full-year congestion pricing revenue of $1 billion was just about cut in half when the toll was reduced to the new $9 amount. However, congestion pricing seems tertiary when the MTA’s twenty-year budget plan is able to increase substantially, and the MTA funding gap is so large.
ere is a fascination in the congestion pricing model and the MTA’s reliance on its revenue. ere is no doubt that the MTA’s rail systems (New York City Transit subways and LIRR and Metro-North
regional networks) are in need of upgrade, on top of state-of-good-repair maintenance.
As extensive and substantial a system as it is, unlike the freight rail system, the MTA is a global laggard. But the City and State of New York have ample other revenue trees to shake if they wish to reduce the MTA’s funding gaps. In September 2024, hotel rates in New York City averaged $417 per night, a new record. What’s another $20 per night between friends? According to the Wall Street Journal, “It has never been more expensive to visit New York City,” so a few more dollars added to the holiday tabs of the privileged few would most likely go unnoticed. In for a penny, in for a pound. Or perhaps there could be a dining tax added to the bills of the plethora of the city’s dining community (a er all, no one in the City cooks in their own kitchen).
2023 New York City tourism generated an estimated $74 billion in economic impact. Tolling revenue from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which manages the bridge and tunnel crossings between the two states, brought in $2 billion. Clearly, the spotlight for the MTA’s problems is facing in the wrong direction.
A congestion charge is, by any other name, a type of tari . Cities place tari s on everything they can get their hands on. You want to put a hot dog cart on the street corner? Get a license (tari )! Want to dress up and harass tourists to take a photo with you in your grimy, smelly Disney Stitch costume? Get a permit (tari )! Make the world’s greatest mystery meat street taco but can only a ord a food truck/mobile rodent home/roach coach? Get a parking permit and a license (tari 2x)!!
The new President’s plan to hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs seems like a moreoutsized attempt to create value with unintended consequences—a treatment of a symptom rather than a cause. Take for example the fact that one-third of all automobiles costing $30,000 or less are made in Mexico, or that nearly all freight railcars are made in Mexico or Canada. e U.S. economy has similarities to the MTA: aging infrastructure vs. an aging populace whose repairs are outsized by increasing medical costs and longevity.
The new President’s plan to hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs seems like a more-outsized attempt to create value with unintended consequences—a treatment of a symptom rather than a cause.”
Tari s are not going to be the method to solving the projected problems.
Expecting that the proposed DOGE (Department of Government E ciency), an “advisory group” (not a federal agency, which requires Congressional approval) led by Elon Musk (world’s wealthiest person) and Vivek Ramaswamy (biotech billionaire) will reduce government spending, and that tari s will add incremental value to U.S. citizens’ bottom lines, seems pretty fantastic. More likely is a series of unintended consequences requiring adjustments and tweaking and creating loopholes. Broadly sweeping, impactful and illogically applied tari standards will continue to be in the news cycle and in uence North American rail for the foreseeable future.
Fun times ahead.
Got questions? Set them free at dnahass@ rail n.com.
DAVID NAHASS President
LRay
Director of Project Management, Field Career Training; Adam Hartwell, Conductor; Joe Hinrichs, President and CEO; Chantel Goutcher, General Manager of Service Design; Tony Ferrera, Superintendent, Florida Zone; Josh Hiers, Manager of Train Operations; Tammy Butler, Vice President, General Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary; Derek Dukes, Engineer.
Joe Hinrichs with members of the ONE CSX team. Left to right: Laurenzo LaFavor, Conductor;
Strickland,
2025 RAILROADER OF
CSX’S JOE HINRICHS “IT ALL GOES BACK TO OUR PEOPLE.”
BY WILLIAM C. VANTUONO, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Railway Age’s 2025 Railroader of the Year is CSX President and Chief Executive O cer
Joe Hinrichs, who joined the railroad industry in September 2022 and in a little more than two years has made immediate and long-term positive impacts. His collaborative approach to labor relations—for example, CSX being the rst Class I to o er paid sick leave and forge preliminary agreements with its unions prior to the start of national bargaining— has gone a long way toward transforming the dynamic between management and rail labor from adversarial distrust to engaged problem-solving.
Hinrichs rmly believes that for CSX to fully realize its growth potential, labor and management must function as one team, with mutual respect and trust. He knows that change is di cult, but he also knows it’s necessary. And as a long-time railroad customer in his prior role as President of Ford Motor Company, he knows the importance of providing good service. CSX’s overall excellent performance is a testament to that.
Joe Hinrichs—only the third CSX executive to be named Railroader of the Year (he was preceded by Michael Ward in 2009 and Hays Watkins in 1984)—will be presented with the award at the traditional dinner hosted by the Western Railway Club at the Union League Club of Chicago on March 11, 2025. He sat down with Vantuono at CSX’s Jacksonville, Fla., headquarters for this interview.
RAILWAY AGE: I’d like to be the rst to congratulate you on being named our 2025 Railroader of the Year. You are the rst from CSX since Michael Ward back in 2009 and Hays Watkins in the early days of CSX,
so congratulations. Well deserved.
JOE HINRICHS: It’s nice to be recognized along with names like Michael and Hays Watkins who are famous CEOs of CSX, but really, it’s about our 23,000 railroaders. I’m here to represent them. It’s kind of like a coach who gets to watch the players win on the eld and sometimes the coach gets some accolades, but this is really about CSX and what we’re doing to try and change the perception of railroads and what our company stands for with all 23,000 of our railroaders.
RA: CSX, as you know, if you go back in history, dates to 1827. We have the 200th anniversary of the railroad industry coming up in two years. e Baltimore & Ohio and CSX are a big part of that celebration. CSX is made up of so many di erent railroads, all the predecessor companies. I won’t even start naming them, there’s too many of them, but it has always been, at least to my knowledge, to my experience, starting in 1992 with Railway Age, a di cult company to form one corporate culture. Since the Conrail acquisition back in 1999, you’re covering the whole Eastern seaboard, but we see real evidence of what you call ONE CSX, establishing that single corporate culture. As you said, it’s all about people.
HINRICHS: Our history goes back to Feb. 28, 1827, with the B&O, a famous railroad on the Monopoly board that we played when we were kids, but you’re right. Even our union contracts still will be referenced as B&O or L&N or CSRA or the southern part of the railroad. What we’re trying to do is get everybody on the same page, to be on one team and celebrate being a part of that team, and to be aligned in our goals and what we’re trying
to accomplish, and for every employee to feel valued, appreciated, respected, included in what we do, and listened to. That’s why we do so many surveys. That’s why we’re out in the field every week. That’s why we do all the family days.
All those things are about bringing a team together. I’ve always said, the magic happens when people work together in teams to do great things. We’re trying to form this great team called ONE CSX to serve our customers better, improve safety, improve e ciency, bring about value for our shareholders, but it starts with the employees. Without them, we don’t achieve what we want to accomplish.
RA: ere are several rsts that, really, you started, and the rest of the industry picked up, like the preliminary labor agreements. Well before that, there was the paid sick leave, which was something the cra people had really been wanting. Now, with these early agreements, and we’re not quite sure how that’s going to play out with national bargaining, changes are afoot.
HINRICHS: ey are. It’s fascinating because when I came into this industry, most of the stakeholder groups were really disgruntled and unhappy, whether it was unions or government o cials or regulators or customers, because of everything that happened post-COVID. ere was also in many cases a resistance to change, but if you don’t change, you don’t make improvements. You don’t change, you don’t change the outcome. We stepped back and said, let’s listen to our employees and see what’s important to them. We listened to obviously our customers too, and we’ll talk about that later. Basically, it was a big deal. It became a cause célèbre issue at theend of
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
the negotiations’ last round. Our view is, if it’s important to our people, if it’s important, let’s go solve this, nd a solution. We worked very closely with many unions to make that happen.
Same thing with the national negotiations. What I and our team heard loud and clear coming out of the last round, which took three years, was very contentious. You know the story. ey didn’t want a repeat of that. ey don’t want three years of no raises. Even though they got it retroactively, that didn’t make them feel appreciated and valued. We went to the union presidents and said, if that’s how you feel also, which is what we’re hearing from our employees, then why don’t we go to work? Why don’t
we nd a solution? Why don’t we work on that to show our employees we are listening to them, that we do care about them. ey are valuable, they are an important part of what we’re trying to do. ankfully, most of our unions, 10 of 13, have already reached agreements with us for the national contract [as of early November 2024, when this interview was held]. Most of our employees are represented by that. ere’s more work to be done to be sure. It’s a change and people are uncomfortable with change, but it’s the right thing to do to give certainty to our employees about what their raises are going to be next year and beyond and also get the animosity and all of that angst out of the system, so we can focus on serving our
customers, improving safety, improving the e ciency of our network.
RA: It all works together. Coming from your background in the automotive industry, dealing with really one union, the UAW, you moved from one to 13 unions. Tell me about that transition because what you’re trying to accomplish is di cult.
HINRICHS: It’s very complex. Frankly, you have the interplay between the unions and then you have the 13. In some cases, it’s more than that because the way the structure works in the railroad industry is di erent than the auto industry. In the auto industry, you dealt with the UAW in the U.S. and UNIFOR in Canada. You dealt
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2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
with the president and the vice presidents, and you reached an agreement and it kind of cascaded. e plants had their own local agreements, but they were done locally.
In the railroad industry, you have a lot of these situations where the general chairs— there are four general chairs, for example in our network for BLET or SMART-TD—have their own veto power when you’re not in national negotiations. ey have their own deals, so it’s far more complex than anything we had in the auto industry. However, you can get to more meaningful local issues if you work together. Part of the goal here is to get the higher-level issues out of the way—wages, bene ts, vacation, those kinds of things—so we can work on the things that mean something to our employees on their work-life balance, scheduling, safety, e ciency. We can work on those things for the next ve years because we have the other stu out of the way. at’s our objective, and I think we have an aligned objective with all the unions. But it is complex, and you have to deal with the interplay, and you try
to treat everybody fairly because you don’t want to be able to say, well, you did this for
makes it harder, but certainly still worth the objective we’re trying to accomplish.
“If it’s important to our employees, it’s important to us. They understand the business must be successful for them.”
somebody, not for somebody else, because all employees are valuable equally. at
RA: Within that context of working together and the interplay among the unions and the di erent cra s, not everybody is going to get everything they want, but there must be at some level some sort of compromise. Kind of like a marriage. You may not always agree, but if you can sit down and communicate and say, okay …
HINRICHS: It’s called collective bargaining for a reason. You’re together collectively. I’ve found that for good or bad, I’ve had probably more labor experience than most. I’ve found that if you can develop relationships to the point where you listen to what the real issues are, you can nd solutions if you work together hard enough to nd them. at’s what we’re trying to do. If it’s important to our employees, it’s important to us. Now, you’re right: We can’t do everything, and the company needs to be more e cient. e company needs to be safer. e company needs to serve customers. But
I don’t nd that there’s a resistance to that. When you talk to people, they understand the business must be successful for them to be successful. What we’ve accomplished with the last round of bargaining and this round of bargaining, from 2020 to 2029, is our average railroad worker has a 50% compounded increase in wages for the same job. Where do you nd that? at’s great. ey earned it and we’re happy for them, but that’s the kind of bene ts we can get if we work together. e important thing is about working together, listening to each other, not just speaking over each other. Finding solutions, like we did on paid sick leave. We came together, we compromised, and people were able to make that successful. at’s the objective: to develop those relationships to a point where we trust each other and can listen to each other. We truly believe that we can nd a solution inside of that relationship.
RA: You know, Joe, literally at the end of the day, a er you’ve put in a solid day’s
“Joe’s
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2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
work, railroading is hard work. I spend most of my time looking at a computer screen, but I’ve been out in the eld, and I’ve seen, numerous times, people working on locomotives, putting spikes in, whatever. I think if they can go home at the end of the day, safely, to their families, they would feel, “I did something great here. My maintenance-of-way crew, we installed hundreds of ties or we put in so many miles of welded rail, or we completed an overhaul of a locomotive and got this beast up and running.” at’s satisfying.
HINRICHS: It is. First, it’s an outdoor sport and you’re in all weather conditions. It’s 24 hours, seven days a week, as you know, holidays, weekends, everything, so we have to give a lot of respect to our employees who are willing to do that work, and we need more and more of those people to come into our organizations. Railroaders are proud of what they do, rightfully so. ey always have been, and they helped build this country. ey’re fundamental to the economy. ey’re the backbone of the
economy. We want to make them not only proud of what they do, but how we do it and the team they’re on and the company they work for. at’s what we’re trying to do with ONE CSX, to bring people together and take that pride of what they do and expand
“The value of our organization is created where the work gets done.”
it to how we do it as a team, supporting each other, helping each other, listening to each other, to serve our customers better, to grow the business. If we grow the business, a lot of good things can happen for our employees,
especially if we do that pro tably. It’s all about that focus. Celebrate those workers.
I tell people all the time in this company, every time I’m in a town hall, the value of our organization is created where the work gets done. We get paid for moving something from point A to point B. That’s the only thing we get paid for. We don’t build a product; we don’t sell consulting services. At one level, it’s hard. The people that move those goods from point A to point B should be celebrated, respected, appreciated. That’s where the value is in the company. Now, all the rest of us are here to help that to be successful, to be safe, to have customers, to have capital, to have accounting, finances that we can raise money, all those things, but we never lose sight.
That’s why I go out in the field every week. Never lose sight of where the value of the company is. It’s those employees in the field who move the goods for our customers every day, every hour, in all weather conditions.
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2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
RA: On that note, what you’ve done with the Heritage Locomotives, very popular. e fans love it. It’s interesting. Your approach is di erent. You retain, on the nose of the unit, the CSX logo, but then it transitions to a heritage scheme. at’s proven to be very popular.
HINRICHS: We did that on purpose because we want to celebrate where we were and where we’re coming from, but we want people to know that where we’re going is CSX and when they see us coming, it’s CSX. We always want to appreciate and recognize our past and who we were and how we got here. Our employees love the heritage units. Our team at Waycross that does them is so proud of them and importantly, as you said, the railfans like it too, but it’s all about, again, getting back to celebrate who we are, what we do, how we got here and where we’re going. We want our engineers and conductors in that cab to know they’re part of taking CSX forward into the future, while we build on the legacy of the past.
Joe Hinrichs Railway Age 2025 Railroader of the Year
Congratulations, Joe!
Watco joins the rest of the railroad industry in saluting you on your remarkable achievements and this well-deserved honor.
CONGRATULATIONS
CSX PRESIDENT AND CEO
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
RA: Let’s talk a little bit about your background. Now everybody knows, me especially, I think, because I’m a “car guy,” you came out of the automotive industry, and were a railroad customer for a while. Tell me about your background.
HINRICHS: I was born in Columbus, Ohio, but I grew up in Fosters, Ohio, which is a nice little railroad town in northwest Ohio. It has the iron triangle where Norfolk Southern and CSX meet. I remember, when I was young there was only one way out of town—it was only a 12,000-person town— where you didn’t go over railroad tracks. When I was in sixth grade, we did a newscast, and I was the anchor person. We found this on YouTube the other day. I did a story about model trains, believe it or not. Sometimes you just go back and think, wow, was this meant to be?
When I graduated as an engineer from college, I went to work for General Motors and spent 10 years in engineering and manufacturing. I got my MBA. I le GM to go be a partner in a private equity group
for a couple of years and that was a great experience. I learned a lot, but I missed the auto industry, so I went back. I ran a supplier to the auto industry. en I went to Ford. I spent 19 years at Ford, retiring as President of the company in 2020. During that time, one of the things I did early in my career was run material planning logistics worldwide, managing all the supply chains, logistics, transportation, schedules, etc. I got to know the railroads because we spent a lot of money with them. I got to know the railroad CEOs, like Jim Young (Union Paci c), David Goode (Norfolk Southern), Matt Rose (BNSF). I was asked to speak to the Norfolk Southern Board of Directors in 2002 or 2003, to talk about the auto industry in rail. Maybe it was destiny? I’m not sure.
Once I retired from Ford and during COVID, I took a couple years o . en I was recruited by our Board for CSX. When I was contemplating [the o er], I thought about the railroads and my relationships and knowledge, and what transpired at Ford
over the past 20 years—getting out of the rail business for almost all the parts, components, etc. It was all about our perception of the experience, the service and the reliability and dependability and ease of doing business with railroads. When I was able to take on this opportunity, I came in saying, listen, here’s what it’s like to be a customer. I told our people, honestly, I said, many of our customers do business with us because they have to, not because they want to.
Our goal with ONE CSX is to create customer advocacy for rail and speci cally for CSX. You do that by making the customers feel important, treating them with respect and with the kind of service they deserve and pay for. at goes back to ONE CSX because you can’t make that happen without the employees being engaged to want to make that happen. at’s where it’s all circular. My experience is very relevant because I had a lot of union experience, too, negotiating UAW contracts, and a lot of government experience because we were heavily impacted with the government as
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Moving CSX Forward
HINRICHS
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
well. But just being a customer, I was able to look at things, I think, through a di erent lens and say, let’s look at this from the outside in. If we want to grow, which the rail industry has been talking about for 10-plus years, we’re going to have to serve our customers better and establish a better relationship with them.
RA: Getting back to the automotive industry, movement of motor vehicles and parts, that is a huge piece of business for the railroads. Logistically, it’s very complicated, with plants, suppliers and dealers spread all over.
HINRICHS: It’s a shared eet of autoracks. It’s complicated. Getting the empties back is just as important as delivering the nished vehicles. Sometimes it’s more important to the customers, so it is complex. We’re fortunate. I think we’ve now moved more autos by rail than anybody else at CSX, which we’re proud of, and I think it’s because of the service we’re providing.
RA: I would say, and you probably
would agree, that a nished automobile is probably, even though it’s a big heavy vehicle, one of the most fragile things you can move. e specialized cars, the specialized equipment, the dra gears, the cushioning devices, the suspension.
HINRICHS: Even a scratch can really impact the value of a vehicle or upset a customer. e delicacy we have to treat those vehicles with is unlike anything else, other than military shipments maybe, we move. at’s why you see so much at these loading facilities, so many cameras and so many ways of keeping the vehicles protected. Once you’re inside that autorack, there’s not a lot of room. I mean, it’s tight in there, literally inches. e people that do that work hard and they must get in there and latch everything up and make it safe and secure. You can’t hump them. You don’t want the cars jamming. ere are all kinds of things you have to think about, but again, very important to our economy, very important to our business, a very important customer base.
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
“There’s a higher-order purpose here. The U.S. economy runs better when railroads run better. The taxpayers benefit when the railroads run better. Congestion gets better. It’s safer to get things off the road and onto rail.”
RA: You have quite a personal collection of cars, some rare automobiles. If you don’t mind, just give us a few details on that.
HINRICHS: Well, I can’t collect big trains. ey’re too big, although I am getting some trainsets. ey’re fun, including the CSX ones. I was fortunate. Obviously, you get the bug when you work 30-plus years in the auto industry, and you get to a level where you can maybe have some discretionary purchases. e rst vehicle I bought that was not my daily driver was a 2005 Ford GT. I was part of that program, running manufacturing when we launched the vehicles and built them in Wixom, Mich. I have VIN number 5. It’s a beautiful car, blue with a
white stripe. Since then, I’ve bought a few more—hopefully with the support of my wife and staying married for 34 years— but the crown jewel of my collection is the 2017 Ford GT, which is the carbon ber one where we went back and won Le Mans a er 50 years. e rst three we did in the Le Mans race livery of the car that won in 2016. I have VIN number 3. It’s red, white and blue. It’s beautiful. at’s probably the rarest car. I have been able to purchase a few other non-Ford vehicles since I retired from Ford, mostly European makes. Sports cars are a little fun, but I’ve been blessed. I have a couple of Shelby Cobra GTs. I have the rst Shelby Cobra Mustang. I have the rst F-150 Raptor of the second generation produced,
which is kind of fun. I have a Bronco Raptor. I was a big part of bringing back the Bronco to the portfolio, so I have several. Cars are fun. I still love them. I’m trying to bring some more to Florida so I can drive them a little bit more, but I’m a railroader now.
RA : A lot of railroaders are interested in automobiles, and they’re also interested in model trains. I’m unabashedly vocal about that. Something about big things that move.
HINRICHS: ey’re electrical, mechanical. ere’s beauty in the design. ey’re works of art, and the tie to the railroad industry goes back to whether it was oil or steel or metal or any kind of metals. We’re interconnected and we always will be.
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RA: Raymond Loewy, who designed locomotives for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and designed automobiles for Studebaker, and so there’s a connection.
HINRICHS: Rockefeller had a railroad. Henry Ford had a railroad. ere are always connections at the end of the day. Having spent time at General Motors, Ford, now CSX, and I’m on the Board of Goodyear— these companies are more than 100 years old, in our case almost 200 years old—it has been really fun for me, just being a part of the history and the stewardship of these industrial companies that mean so much to this economy and are foundational to the way of life we to get to enjoy in America.
RA: Which brings us to growth. at’s something that the industry and the people who observe the industry have talked about for a long, long time. We need to grow the top line. You can grow the bottom line through cost e ciencies, technology, various ways, as you well know. But growing the top line, competing with truckers, who
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
are our partners in many respects. Taking tra c o the highways and putting it either in containers or boxcars. Where do you see the growth coming from, longer term?
HINRICHS: is is one of the most important topics for the rail industry today. ere’s been such a focus on the e ciency of operations over the past 10, 20 years, which has been great to bring the pro tability of the railroads up to a point where we’re healthy enough to reinvest in the business. We can keep our infrastructure up, which we pay for as you know, but there’s a higherorder purpose here. e U.S. economy runs better when railroads run better. e taxpayers bene t when the railroads run better. Congestion gets better. It’s safer to get things o the road and onto rail and pro tably grow the business.
e biggest area of growth opportunity for the railroads is intermodal and it’s more than just, well, okay, that’s where the volume is. A lot of our customers have moved their logistics, their whole transportation strategy, away from what used to be
boxcars or the like. Now they have truck docks, so they’re loading truck containers. Intermodal allows that infrastructure to still be used and not transferred over, because a lot of the rail docks no longer exist at a lot of our customers. In the auto industry, we took most of them out, for engines and transmissions and frames and sheet metal. We must get better at intermodal, and celebrate that intermodal is a big part of our growth. We need to do it in a way that doesn’t degrade the margins of our traditional merchandise business. at’s where the disconnect comes in sometimes for our investors, where they get confused. If you’re going to grow intermodal, will your merchandise business somehow decline in pro tability? It doesn’t have to be that way, but intermodal is highly service-sensitive. Speed matters, time matters, and relationships and communication matters. e customers need to know when the container gets to the intermodal yard and when it’s ready to be picked up. e time they’re in the terminal to get that container matters a lot to truck
2025 RAILROADER OF THE YEAR
Congratulates
Joe Hinrichs CEO of CSX 2025
drivers, so there’s a lot of service-oriented pieces to this. We’re much better for the environment, too. ere are reasons why people want to do business with rail. It’s up to us to show them we can be reliable and dependable.
ere’s also merchandise opportunity with all the industrial development activity happening in the U.S., especially in the Midwest and Southeast on our network. ere’s growth opportunity as we bring [manufacturing] back to America. We see tremendous opportunity for growth over the next several years—if and when we deliver the service that customers expect and do it repeatedly and reliably. If they can’t count on us, they go to a truck because they can count on a truck. It’s all about us getting our service levels up and sustaining and maintaining them. at goes back to our people. And we’re cheaper for customers, too. ere are reasons why customers should want to do business with rail, but it starts with, can they trust us to deliver on time?
RA: Yes, it’s when they have a choice, that they make the choice for rail. Certain commodities, as you well know, will always move by rail because they move best by rail—grain, coal, iron ore, automobiles, what have you—but the commodities where the customer has a choice, we as an industry need to give them reasons to make the choice to move it in a train.
HINRICHS: We’ve given them the choice, but it has been higher risk in the past 10, 20 years to go by rail because of service inconsistency and the time it takes to deliver. We must keep compressing the time to get better at speed, but we also must reliably deliver on time so customers can trust us. Nobody gets red from moving from rail to truck, but if they move from truck to rail and it doesn’t get delivered, then they get in trouble. It’s on us. e onus is on us to show that we can be reliable. I think the opportunities are signi cant.
RA: e service provided by CSX has gotten considerably better. CSX was the rst Class I to be released from certain reporting requirements by the Surface Transportation Board.
HINRICHS: at’s right, and we were the winner of the inaugural Bill ompson award from Loop Capital last year for the best-run railroad. In the past three Journal of Commerce surveys over the last year and a half, we were number one each time. at consistency goes back to our people. It’s an honor and a privilege to serve with our team. Our people understand that we’re here to serve a customer and to do it together as a team. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made, and we know there’s a lot more progress we can make. at’s what’s exciting about coming into work every day and working with this team of people, this ONE CSX team: We know we can get better. Our customers are saying we’re industry-leading in service, but we’re nowhere near where we can and should be and where the opportunity is to grow.
RA: Joe, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you. We look forward to presenting you o cially with the Railroader of the Year Award at our annual dinner, which we hold in Chicago at the Union League Club. It has been wonderful to see the turnaround at CSX and the progress that CSX and the entire industry has made, in many respects, as we’ve discussed, led by CSX and your team. Congratulations again.
HINRICHS: ank you, Bill. anks for recognizing the ONE CSX team.
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MURPHY WAS AN OPTIMIST!
That is O’Toole’s Commentary on the infamous “Murphy’s Law.” Infamous anti-passenger rail activist Randal O’Toole did not originate it but, as far as trains in the United States are concerned, he might as well have. (Personal note: e rst piece I wrote for Railway Age, more than six years ago, was a rebuttal to one of Randal’s rants). e
prognosis for most of America’s rail passenger service is grim today and could become even grimmer as the new Administration comes to Washington, D.C. In this article, I will look at each of the di erent types of passenger train service in the country and the developments that have brought each to the place where they stood as 2024 ended and we prepared either to welcome 2025, or to dread it.
REGIONAL SYSTEMS
For this commentary, I will de ne “regional rail” not as the corridors operated by Amtrak, but the networks of trains surrounding cities that are operated by the local transit authorities. Some examples are Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad, New Jersey Transit, Metra in Chicagoland, and Metrolink in and around Los Angeles. ese lines are still sometimes
2025 PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK
need to raise fares and cut service drastically in the middle of the year. Other providers are facing nancial woes of various severity levels, but the picture is bleak for all of them. Can managers and elected o cials nd ways to keep the systems going without in icting catastrophic service cuts on the riders, especially those who depend on transit to get around? We will nd out soon. is will not be a good year for new starts on regional rails, although the MBTA is still planning to start service on South Coast Rail between Boston and the destinations of New Bedford and Fall River.
THREE FACES OF AMTRAK
Should we welcome—or dread—2025?
BY DAVID PETER ALAN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
called “commuter rail” lines, even though ridership is changing and there are fewer commuters now than before the COVID-19 virus struck nearly ve years ago and while weekend ridership continues to grow. roughout the summer of 2024, Railway Age presented my twelve-part series on the “ scal cli ” that transit providers are facing everywhere in the nation. e money that Congress authorized as part of the COVID
relief legislation kept transit, including the regional rail lines, going for the past few years, but that money is running out. Di erent providers, who depend largely on state funds, are in various degrees of trouble. New York and New Jersey will keep their transit going for another four or ve years. I recently reported that, even with a recent relatively small infusion of state money, SEPTA in and around Philadelphia might
If you listened to a program of presentations by the top brass at Amtrak that took place in Seattle on Dec. 3, you might think that President Roger Harris, CEO Stephen Gardner, Board Chair Anthony Coscia and other Amtrak o cials were running such a robust operation that they had “Made Amtrak Great Again.” ey touted recent ridership recovery since the COVID pandemic wound down, claimed record ridership for 2024 (which is legitimate), and projected that ridership would double by 2040. A dive under the surface (and not necessarily a deep one) reveals a scene that is not quite so rosy. We’ll look at Amtrak’s three components, one at a time.
NATIONAL NETWORK
When Amtrak started on May 1, 1971, its network of long-distance and corridorlength trains included only about one third of the trains that had run during April of that year. Fourteen long-distance trains survived. e network grew slightly over the years, but it has recently shrunk to its smallest size ever: only 13 trains that non-motorists and motorists alike are allowed to ride (the Auto Train only permits basic ticketing for a vehicle and driver; additional passengers must accompany them). As we reported extensively, the latest reduction took place on Nov. 10, 2024: the elimination of the part of the Silver Star route north of Washington, D.C. and its consolidation with the former Capitol Limited route between there and Chicago as the new Floridian, a train that bears little resemblance to the train of the same name from the 1970s, which served such cities as Louisville and Nashville. e main e ect
2025 PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK
was to eliminate through service between the Northeast Corridor (NEC) and south of Washington, D.C.
Amtrak claims two reasons for the downgrade: its East River Tunnel Project in New York City, and the lack of doubledeck long-distance Superliner equipment, which ran on the Capitol Limited. e change has eliminated one daily round trip between Penn Station and Sunnyside Yards, where the equipment is stored, but through-running between Empire Service trains to Albany and elsewhere in upstate New York could open slots for a restored Silver Star. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also negotiated a three-month reprieve for the two round trips that would have been sacri ced on account of the tunnel project. e other is equipment. Amtrak is short of Superliners for long-distance trains, which means shorter consists, o ering fewer seats and sleeping car rooms and, therefore, generating less revenue per trip. If Amtrak could step up its repair program at the shops at Beech Grove, it should be feasible to restore the Capitol Limited with its recent consist soon. Instead, Amtrak re-branded the combination of the Silver Star without the NEC portion and the Capitol Limited with Am eet II equipment as the new Floridian, a move that indicates the railroad’s intent to make the new change permanent rather than temporary. is sort of service cut, purportedly to save equipment, says a lot about Amtrak’s plans. Except for some relatively new Viewliner II equipment running on Eastern trains, most of the long-distance eet: the Am eet II cars and Superliners, are now about 40 years old. How much longer can they last? Amtrak expects to start ordering new long-distance equipment, according to a 1,000-page Request for Procurement (RFP) next year or shortly therea er. e issues then become: Who will manufacture that equipment, and how long will it take before it starts to run on Amtrak trains? A ten-year period to order the equipment, have it built, and take delivery seems reasonable. Can the existing equipment last that long in service? at seems questionable. If it can’t and if Amtrak does not nd a way to shave years o the time required for the process, then Amtrak seems to have little alternative but to cut schedules and train consists down to a network that can be operated with what
Amtrak already has. at would call for the loss of many routes over time, perhaps even to the point of emulating VIA Rail in Canada, which runs very few trains outside its corridors in Ontario and Quebec, every one of them o ering only two or three frequencies per week.
e existing Amtrak long-distance network could die by attrition over the next several years, unless Amtrak takes major steps now to strengthen it and make sure there will be enough equipment not only to run today’s network, but to expand it. Amtrak does not wish to expand the network and made that clear on Dec. 3. So, one very real possibility is that the longdistance network will die by attrition.
Amtrak’s existing long-distance network could die by attrition over the next several years.
STATE-SUPPORTED CORRIDORS
Amtrak currently has contractual relationships with several states around the country that support at least one daily frequency within those states or to at least one adjacent state. As I recently reported, the states have a major say concerning scheduling and operations, subject to negotiations with Amtrak and the host railroads. ey also pay Amtrak for operating the service, and they can withdraw that support, which means the train will be discontinued. at happened in 2019, when Indiana stopped supporting the Hoosier State train that ran between Chicago and Indianapolis on the four days of the week that the Cardinal does not run on that route, and when Missouri cut funding for the trains between St. Louis and Kansas City, so only one round trip operated, instead of the customary two.
ere are two programs that could help get some new state-supported trains onto the rails: the FRA’s Corridor Identi cation
and Development (Corridor ID) Program and Amtrak’s Connects US plan. e former will only fund the planning stage. e latter will fund capital improvements and part of the rst six years of operations but, a er that time, the states are on their own to pay the entire operating costs.
I expect that at least one new route will emerge from the program: Gulf Coast Service, which will consist of two daily round trips between New Orleans and Mobile and is expected to start in 2025.
e new service had strong backing from Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker and other o cials, but Alabama opposed it, and I have called the ensuing proceedings before the STB and elsewhere concerning the proposed service the “Second Battle of New Orleans” because it was a erce and long-lasting ght. If there are similar struggles over other proposed lines, especially between Amtrak and the potential host railroads, it is unclear how many proposed services will be implemented. Likely, there will be very few.
e states will have to contribute a great deal of money toward these new trains, and it is unclear how many of the states would be willing to come up with the money, especially a er the sixth year, when Amtrak stops chipping in. Some states, particularly California and Illinois, support several corridors and have demonstrated that they want to keep strong passenger rail networks operating, o en along with strong transit in their cities. ese are mostly “blue states,” but a number of those states, including California and Illinois, are experiencing nancial woes. ey want trains, but the limiting factor is how many they can a ord. “Red states” are generally not interested in funding passenger trains. e coming Gulf Coast Service might be the exception that proves the rule, including Alabama’s strong opposition. “Purple states” are generally not sure where they stand, and Virginia is carrying out an innovative plan to purchase tracks from CSX and Norfolk Southern in places, but it is unclear how many more trains will really run there.
ON AND AROUND THE NEC
Amtrak owns most of the NEC, and that is where more Amtrak trains run than anywhere else. Amtrak’s perceived favoritism toward that line has prompted advocates
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2025 PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK
from elsewhere in the country to say that “NEC” stands for “Nothing Else Counts.” However congruently their perception might match reality, there is no question of the importance of the NEC to Amtrak, in terms of the importance it holds today.
All is not well on the NEC, though. South of Trenton, Amtrak’s home rail does not deliver a smooth ride. Amtrak is preparing to re-equip the route over the next few years, but that equipment is relatively lightweight and not “built for comfort.” ere are problems on the part of the railroad north of Trenton, too. As Railway Age recently reported, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has blamed what he sees as de ciencies in Amtrak’s infrastructure (both the track and the electrical system for the catenary) for numerous delays, annulments and cancellations among the many trains on New Jersey Transit (NJT) that run between New York’s Penn Station and Trenton, or are diverted on to NJTowned lines somewhere along the way, as well as delays on some Amtrak trains.
We reported that Murphy has brought Amtrak and NJT o cials together to x the infrastructure problems, and Amtrak is conducting thorough inspections. Still, most elected o cials do not intervene as Murphy did, unless their constituents complain.
Is it time for a change for passenger rail in the Northeast? at depends on politics, as all decisions regarding passenger trains and transit do. Most Northeastern states are “blue states” (Pennsylvania is a “purple state”), where Democrats are strong, although the governorships in some of those states ip between the parties over the years. Republicans will be strong at the national level for at least the next two years, though, and federal transportation policy can override some aspects of traditional state policies. If some Democrats in the Northeast and some Republicans elsewhere can agree to try a di erent model for managing NEC infrastructure in the region and operating trains on it, circumstances could change.
CANADA
VIA Rail in Canada is looking toward the future, too, but it does not appear that big changes are in the works. e railroad has unveiled its VIAction 2030 plan, which is designed to generate savings of 15% on the company’s operating de cit, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% compared to 2005, and increase capacity by 18%. e company is introducing Siemens Venture cars on its corridors, which focus on Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, and extend as far east as Quebec City and as far west as Walkerville (Windsor), Ontario. e company also plans to purchase new equipment for its longer-distance trains elsewhere in the country and increase integration with other transportation modes. e VIA website did not describe any major service expansions for 2025. On Canadian rail transit, there is construction in Montreal on the REM lines and the Blue Line subway, with some service openings expected during the next two years. ere is major construction in Toronto, too.
However, there could be a major setback for regional rail in the Montreal area. Exo, the agency that runs the trains, has threatened to eliminate service entirely on the lines to Mascouche, Candiac and Mont-Saint Hilaire. Service on all three lines runs almost entirely for peak-period commuters.
HSR PROSPECTS
In the U.S., high-speed rail development appears to constitute a mixed bag. Brightline in Florida is promoting its service between Miami and Orlando International Airport, with decreased emphasis on short-distance riders going between Miami and West Palm Beach. Brightline West, which will link Las Vegas, Nevada with Southern California, including a connection on Metrolink for Los Angeles, is still slated to open for service in 2028. e California High-Speed Rail (CHSR) project is still under construction, but service is still not expected to begin for several years. Amtrak is still backing its takeover of the former Texas Central project for a high-speed rail route between
2025 PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK
Dallas and the Houston area, but it is currently unclear how long Amtrak will continue to back the project. We will nd out eventually whether there will be enough funding available to build projects of that magnitude.
PESD (POST-ELECTION
STRESS DISORDER) EFFECTS
Most of the information available for this article was posted before Election Day. While Republicans are generally less favorable to Amtrak and transit than Democrats, this election cycle was di erent. ere is reason to believe that the new Administration will be more hostile than most when it comes to transit and, especially to Amtrak. ere were e orts to shrink Amtrak during the new President’s previous term, but there were also more Democrats in Congress then. It appears that Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have made shrinking the government as much as possible a major objective. at renders almost all discretionary spending
vulnerable and, even worse, Musk is in the automobile business. e new President’s nominee for Secretary of Transportation, Sean Du y, consistently voted against bills that would advance passenger trains and in favor of bills that would harm them, including proposals to eliminate all funding for Amtrak, which would result in eliminating Amtrak trains as we know them.
Whatever happens to Amtrak, at least President Biden’s picks for the Amtrak Board were approved at the last minute, so they will have whatever opportunities are presented to them to make an e ort to save Amtrak and its trains.
We don’t even know how much will be le of the FRA and the FTA. Can proponents of Amtrak and transit make the “business case” convincingly enough to get su cient Republicans to join the Democrats who are already on board? at sounds like a long shot, but anything can happen in these uncertain times.
Maybe O’Toole was an optimist, too, and I’m not talking about Randal!
CPKC AUTOMOTIVE CLOSED-LOOP
Canadian Paci c Kansas City (CPKC) predicted at its 2023 Investor Day that the thennewly formed single-line transnational railroad would by 2028 generate $250 million of synergy revenue growth from its automotive business. “We’ll hit that number in 2025, three years early,” says Jonathan Wahba, Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing.
at quarter-billion dollars is a sizable chunk of the overall nearly $800 million in merger synergies CPKC expected to achieve by fourth-quarter 2024.
An innovative new service, Automotive Closed-Loop, is helping drive this growth. A recently opened nished vehicle compound at Wiley Logistics Park, Wylie, Tex. (near Dallas and originally opened by Kansas City Southern in 2015) helps
anchor the closed-loop service for nished vehicles among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Wylie is part of CPKC’s overall $275 million in capacity enhancements between Chicago and Laredo, Tex., among them the just-completed Patrick J. Ottensmeyer International Railway Bridge, the new second span crossing the Rio Grande linking Laredo with Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Its name honors the
CLASS I FOCUS
began to take shape pre-merger. “My team and I, and John and Keith, were talking to customers about the merger, what we hoped to do with the new company, and about the products and services we intended to introduce, which we had led in our STB application,” recalls Wahba. “If you think back to that time in the automotive space, it was the tail end of the pandemic and the peak of the microchip shortage. ere was this scenario where cars were selling at dealers over MSRP because of the supply crunch. Most car dealer lots in North America were bare. And whether it was the Americans, the Japanese or the Germans, everybody was backed up. It was a global phenomenon.”
How a concept became an innovative new service, thanks to synergies created by CPKC’s transnational network.
BY WILLIAM C. VANTUONO, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
last President and CEO of Kansas City Southern, who died in July 2024.
“ is compound is part of our playbook that unlocks an entirely new supply chain model for the OEMs, giving them the service, reliability and capacity certainty they’ve never seen before,” said CPKC Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing O cer John Brooks at the railroad’s 1Q24 earnings call. Wylie now provides
a destination for vehicles shipping out of Ontario, Canada, rather than shipping them to Chicago, as was done previously. It also enables empty autoracks to reach Mexico. Loaded autoracks that used to terminate at Laredo or Robstown now go to Minneapolis/St. Paul or Canada, o ering “signi cant, accretive incremental improvements,” President and CEO Keith Creel notes.
e Automotive Closed-Loop concept
Fast-forward to April 2023, when the CPKC merger was nalized. “We had control of the KCS, and we were making those same customer rounds,” Wahba explains. “One of the rst customers we saw was General Motors—and it was an unpleasant meeting. GM said to us, ‘We’ve got nished vehicles on the ground in Mexico we can’t move. What are you going to do to x it?’ It was a crisis situation, because on day one, being realistic, there was more demand than we were able to provide service for. Just because we came along as the new owners of KCS didn’t mean we had a eet of autoracks at our disposal. e question was, what are we going to do di erently with the new network that wasn’t possible with CP and KCS as separate companies?”
CP had already been serving GM’s plant in Oshawa, Ontario, through joint access with CN, hauling vehicles to Bu alo, Detroit and Chicago. “ at’s as far as we would take them, and we’d interchange with one of the U.S. Eastern or Western roads for transport to the markets where those products were consumed,” says Wahba. “Our concept for GM: With our new network, we can haul vehicles as far as we can, all the way to Texas. For example, the longest length of haul the new CPKC network would provide for someone buying a Chevy Silverado was now Dallas or Houston. Pre-acquisition, we took it to Detroit or Chicago, gave it to the Union Paci c, which took it to Dallas. We told GM, if you give us that business all the way to Texas, we will guarantee that we’ll take that empty railcar across the border and give it to you in Mexico. At the time, our demand in Mexico was double our supply. So, if every week we had a couple thousand
CLASS I FOCUS
autoracks of car supply, the demand was double—and that was GM, Ford, Stellantis (Chrysler), Nissan, Honda, everybody.
“KCS didn’t really have a strategy for how to handle that situation. How do you decide whom to give railcars to? If I’ve got 200 passengers at the gate and 100 seats on my airplane, who gets on and who gets
bumped? And so it was really a ‘spread the pain’ approach. Do the best you can.”
CPKC took “a totally different approach,” Wahba says. “For anybody who could give me a southbound load from the north, we will guarantee you that railcar into Mexico. That really was the genesis of the concept.”
AILWAY G
Supplier Spotlight
Then, the bigger question: How to operationalize it? “That was a lot harder because we didn’t have a compound in Texas to land the vehicles,” explains Wahba. “It took us the better part of 2023 to negotiate an agreement with GM on how we would do this. Now, we use the term “closed-loop” because everyone can get their head around it. We’ll move a train of product from GM in Oshawa to our new Wylie compound, where we’ll empty it, and route it to one of GM’s Mexican factories. It comes back loaded. Some cargo goes to Texas, some to Kansas City, some to Chicago, some to Minneapolis/St. Paul, some to Canada.”
e autoracks are traditional bilevels running in TTX pooled service, “free runners” that handle 40% of CPKC moves. “We can play pitch and catch with ourselves,” notes Wahba. “We’re still 60% reliant on TTX for a one-way move, so if we pick up a load of vehicles in Mexico that are destined for Denver, we’re still doing what we did before. We’ll go from Mexico
to Robstown or Corpus Christi and interchange with BNSF or UP. We obviously don’t go everywhere, but we can execute this operating model where it works.”
More opportunities could present themselves in the near future. Southern Ontario has the biggest node of OEM assembly plants on the North American continent outside of Mexico—GM (Oshawa), Toyota and Lexus (Cambridge and Woodstock), Honda (Alliston), Ford (Oakville, now closed for retooling) and Stellantis (Brampton, also closed for retooling). In Windsor/ Detroit, there are several legacy American OEMs that CPKC can access. Ford and Stellantis are CN-exclusive, but both plants, when open, will truck or drive vehicles to CPKC’s Scarborough facility for loading and rail transport.
“If you look at our footprint, we can access seven plants in Ontario, 18 or 19 in Mexico,” Wahba points out. “That gives us a good base at both ends of our network to play pitch and catch. We were able to capture some traffic from
our competitor’s exclusive factory access because CN now has the situation we had prior to the merger. We’re enthusiastic about the opportunities because even though all the other railroads have good origination destination networks depending on where they reach, none have access at both ends to OEM plants. In the world
of negotiating with automotive manufacturers, the railroad with the best access to the plants wins because the most important thing to the OEMs is building their vehicles, getting them off the lot, and getting them to market. Our role, our importance, in the relationship is based on servicing their plants.”
Managing Major Railway Projects
By Alfred E. Fazio, PE and Anthony Fazio, PE
Managing Major Railway Projects explains the analytical principles of Project Management as applied to executing large programs and major projects on active railways and rail transit systems. Topics include program set-up, Work Breakdown Structures (by systems), phasing and its relationship to maintenance of rail operations (and maintenance), Project Status including Earned Value Analysis and forecasting, risk management, System Safety (including FRA and FTA approaches, and Systems Integration/Systems Assurance.
Principles are explained from a theoretical perspective and then clarified in their application through a host of actual examples on recent projects e g, Philadelphia’s Frankford Elevated Reconstruction Project (FERP), The Hudson-Bergen LRT DBOM, New Jersey Transit’s New Initiatives Program, the addition of a third main track to the CSX mainline in Northern Virginia, and Amtrak’s NECIP (Program).
The book is written and recommended for railway operating officials, as well as for Engineering Officers, and PM/CM professionals.
CPKC Wylie, Tex., automotive compound.
ASSESSING TRUCK WARP RESTRAINT HARDWARE
BY STAN GURULÉ, SCIENTIST; AND WALTER ROSENBERGER, SCIENTIST (RETIRED), MXV RAIL
Recently, the Association of American Railroads (AAR)
Coupling Systems and Truck Castings Committee asked MxV Rail to evaluate how warp restraint systems might be evaluated for performance and durability in service. MxV Rail performed this evaluation under the AAR’s Strategic Research Initiative program. Truck warp is a serious performance concern for threepiece trucks. Premium trucks of various types and designs, all of which address the
warp problem in one way or another, have entered the market over the years. Some truck designs address warp by using wider wedges, split-type wedges, or additional components and hardware designed to keep the bolster square with the side frames. Transoms (also called spring planks) and cross braces are the most common components or hardware used to address truck warp. While transoms and cross braces have been in service providing proven superior performance for decades (Ref. 1), the problems associated with
them, including transom plate fractures and cross brace breaks, have been around for almost as long. e current assessment demonstrated that using hydraulic actuators in a load frame to attempt to warp a truck appears to be a feasible way to apply relevant stresses to truck warp restraint hardware.
Truck warp occurs when the connections between the sideframes and bolster and both wheelsets take a parallelogram shape instead of the normal square shape. Truck warp results in elevated angles of
William C. Vantuono
attack (AoA) on both wheelsets and, therefore, high lateral (gage spreading) forces on both rails (2-4). Optimal performance is achieved when the truck remains as square as possible. Warp restraint hardware can add signi cant bene cial warp sti ness without relying solely on the use of wedges. Figure 1 shows relevant geometry, forces, and moments.
MxV Rail developed a test program to measure warp angles and warp-induced strains in the components of two cross-
both with and without wedges installed. is work shows the viability of laboratory testing of warp restraint hardware, such as sideframe cross braces. In general, this study produced the following key ndings:
• Attempting to warp a truck using hydraulic actuators in a load frame appears to be a feasible method to stress-test warp restraint hardware.
• Laboratory warp testing produced warp moments and angles and warp
REFERENCES
1. Rownd, K and R. Walker. 1999. “Improving the Economy of BulkCommodity Service rough Improved Suspensions.” Technology Digest TD99027. Association of American Railroads/ Transportation Technology Center, Inc., Pueblo, Colo.
2. Mace, S.E. 1993. “Evaluation of Rail Rollover Derailment Study.” DOT/FRA/ ORD-93/12, Washington D.C.
3. Hanna ous, J.S. and S.E. Mace. 1995.
Optimal performance is achieved when the truck remains as square as possible. Warp restraint hardware can add significant beneficial warp stiffness without relying solely on wedges.
braced trucks operating in MxV Rail’s Facility for Accelerated Service Testing (FAST®) train. A er collecting data while negotiating track curves as tight as six degrees during two weeks of FAST train operations, both trucks were removed and set up, in turn, in a laboratory environment per the “standard warp test” (5, 6). e laboratory warp test measurements were not intended to duplicate FAST measurements. Instead, these measurements were intended to be complementary; providing a means to assess the warp moment observed with strains in the brace rods and warp angles of the truck. is assessment included measuring the warp behavior
sti nesses consistent with previous tests. Frame brace rod strains that were generally greater than the strains produced during FAST testing.
• e load frame could be optimized in a way that focuses the warp energy on the warp restraint hardware. e top three aspects of optimization are 1) a unitized vertical load frame that controls the vertical and pitch motions of the sideframes; 2) A unitized warp load frame that accepts warp actuator reactions; and 3) support at the bearing pedestals that does not rely on specialized wheelsets with independently rotating wheels.
“E ects of Pro le Grinding and Lubrication on Gage Spreading.” Technology Digest TD95-006, AAR/TTCI, Pueblo, Colo.
4. Read, D.M. and S. Kalay. 1996. “Initial Results of FAST/HAL Phase III Testing.” Technology Digest TD96-025. AAR/TTCI. Pueblo, Colo.
5. Tournay, H., H. Wu, and N.G. Wilson. 2008. “Investigation into the Root Causes for Loaded Car Hunting.” AAR Research Report R-995, AAR/TTCI. Pueblo, Colo.
6. Tunna, J. and R. Walker. 2004. “Characteristics of Long Service, Warp Sti ened Trucks.” Technology Digest TD04-023. AAR/TTCI. Pueblo, Colo.
Figure 1: Steering moment vs. truck turning resistance moment, resulting in square (left) and warped (right) truck geometry.
FELISMINA “MINA” DE OLIVEIRA
Norfolk Southern
HIGH PROFILE: NS has named Felismina “Mina” De Oliveira as Vice President Enterprise Resources, reporting directly to Chief Operating Officer John Orr. The move, the Class I said, expands the responsibilities of De Oliveira’s previous role as Assistant Vice President Enterprise Resources to include the company’s precision fuel program, strategic supplier management, and sourcing.
De Oliveira joined NS in June 2024 and has since “played a pivotal role in driving innovation and efficiency throughout the organization, significantly contributing to the railway’s operational improvement,” according to the Class I. In this new role, her focus will be “transforming the company’s broader sourcing function to deliver industry-leading value at every level of the supply chain. Leveraging the combined power of data and resources, she will lead partnerships to further refine processes and eliminate waste,” NS noted.
With more than two decades of experience in supply chain management, logistics, and supply transformation, De Oliveira previously held multiple roles of increasing responsibility for CN. She also served in leadership roles at global organizations, including her tenure as Chief Operating and Sustainability Officer at Targray Group Inc. She holds an Executive MBA from UQAM University and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Concordia University. She is fluent in English, French, and Portuguese.
“Mina is a master of combining boots on the ground with data mining to unlock previously unseen opportunities for resource optimization and efficiency,” Orr said. “In addition to her tenacity and ingenuity, she is an exceptional leader who builds resilient teams and champions sustainability, acting as a key enabler to enterprise goals.”
Norfolk Southern last month named Michael Barr as Vice President Investor Relations and Treasurer. He brings more than two decades of experience in finance and investment management, including leadership roles at Neuberger Berman, Shockoe Capital, and Prudential Equity Group. Reporting directly to Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jason Zampi, Barr will “lead efforts to strengthen investor relations and optimize the company’s financial performance,” according to NS. Additionally, he will oversee the
organization’s integrated resource planning process, a key component of the Class I’s “innovative and balanced strategy.” Barr joined NS after serving as Managing Director at Neuberger Berman, a $500 billion asset management firm, where he managed sector allocations within the firm’s research portfolio. Throughout his finance and investment management career, he has worked extensively with major transportation and logistics companies such as NS, CSX, and Union Pacific. “Michael is a welcome addition to Norfolk Southern,” Zampi said. “His expertise in financial management,
coupled with his experience in the transportation industry, will be invaluable as we continue to execute our strategy, deliver safe and reliable service for our customers, and provide long-term shareholder value.” Barr holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Virginia.
STV Inc. last month promoted Senior Security Development Manager Thomas Lentz, CPP, PSP, to Vice President, where he will oversee the firm’s national safety and security practice. Since joining STV in 2008, Lentz has played a key role in securing safety and security contracts from public agencies including Amtrak, Tri-Met, Valley Metro, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) and the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA). He has also led safety and security initiatives with several private sector clients. In 2023, Lentz helped launch STV’s cybersecurity practice. He has more than 30 years of industry experience, supporting the certification of more than 20 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Funded Capital Projects and conducting more than 50 security risk assessments and/or corporate security program support projects for public and private sector clients. Additionally, he was an FTA Transit Safety Institute Instructor for 10 years and a Region Eight FTA Project Management Oversight Consultant Safety and Security lead for four years. “During the past two years, STV’s safety and security team has doubled in size, expanded its backlog and captured significant new business, helping to further cement our organization within this market,” said STV Senior Vice President and Head of the National Systems Practice John Ponzio. “Tom’s leadership, innovation and aptitude for client service have been central to this growth.” Lentz earned his Bachelor of Science in biology and equivalent sports medicine from the State University of New York, Cortland. He is a Certified Protection Professionals and Physical Security Professional and has earned certifications from the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS), Transit Safety and Security Program (TSSP) and Transportation Safety Institute (TSI). He was also a Certified Vessel Security Officer, Company Security Officer and Port/Facility Security Officer with the U.S. Coast Guard.
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Tired of Change Initiatives That Go Off the Rails? Climb Aboard with ‘Change Questions’!
By Sonia Bot, Contributing Editor
Let’s face it, the ever-present need for organizational change within the railroad industry can be a complex challenge. Change initiatives can feel like a runaway train—lots of initial momentum but derailing before reaching the station. Truth be told, most studies peg the failure rate between 60% and 70%.
D. Lynn Kelley, a leader with proven experience in driving transformational change at Union Paci c Railroad, says that she learned the hard way. “When I was young, naive, and driven by ambition, I was tapped to lead a company-wide transformation. I was proud that those in charge had recognized my enormous potential and chosen me (of all my seasoned colleagues) to lead this high-pro le endeavor. Yeah … right. I failed—spectacularly. My boss lost her job and I barely held onto mine. is failure was the start of a 30-year exploration of why change fails. I read, I experimented, I failed (again and again), I persevered, and steadily saw an increase in the sustainment and success of the change initiatives I led—from a 30% sustainment rate to 95% over hundreds of change initiatives in multiple areas and businesses.”
Kelley, with co-author John Shook, o ers a solution in their book, “Change Questions.” Particularly during her tenure as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Continuous Improvement at Union Paci c Railroad, “Change Questions” showcases examples of transformational change at Union Paci c over a course of eight years. e book acknowledges the multifaceted nature of change e orts, particularly in industries like railroads where entrenched practices and external factors present unique challenges.
e heart of “Change Questions” lies in an innovative process that acknowledges the individuality of each organizational change endeavor. Unlike rigid methodologies that o er one-size- ts-all solutions, “Change Questions” enables organizations to create di erent approaches for implementation of change initiatives according to di ering organizational needs and challenges. ere are 11 essential questions, which ensure that no critical aspect is overlooked, striking a balance between complexity and simplicity to deliver
optimal results. By encouraging stakeholders to actively engage with the questions, “Change Questions” fosters a sense of ownership in the change process, leading to greater success and sustainability.
Studies have shown that one of the primary factors leading to the failure of change initiatives is the lack of visible leadership support. Kelley highlights the importance of establishing a supportive management system with appropriate leadership behaviors. e book provides examples of how Union Paci c overcame resistance and aligned leadership behaviors with organizational change goals.
ese activities incentivized proactive problem-solving and fostered a culture of innovation and collaboration.
Kelley references a study which examined 24 potential success factors for change, identifying three speci c success factors within communication. ey are: 1) Leaders communicate about the change initiative’s progress and success; 2) Leaders communicate about the change initiative’s implications for individuals in day-to-day work; and 3) Leaders share a consistent change message. e same study found that in companies where leaders address these communications needs, respondents are eight times as likely to report a successful change as those who say this type of communication doesn’t happen.
e “Change Questions” book includes a sample communications plan which was developed with the assistance of the Communications Department at Union Paci c Railroad. e plan can be used by any organization implementing change and it addresses each of these three critical areas.
Most notably, Kelley emphasizes the importance of measuring the impact of change initiatives over time. rough longitudinal studies and rigorous evaluation, organizations can identify areas of success and areas for improvement, ensuring that change e orts remain on track and aligned with strategic objectives.
Kelley’s extensive experience in leading organizational transformation, particularly during her tenure at Union Paci c, serves as a compelling testament to the e cacy of the “Change Questions” approach. Union Paci c achieved remarkable results by using the
“Change Questions,” including a dramatic increase in operational performance, employee engagement, and an impressive 95% sustainment rate across hundreds of change initiatives. ese tangible outcomes underscore the transformative power of a wellexecuted change management strategy.
“Change Questions” by D. Lynn Kelley with John Shook o ers a valuable resource for organizations navigating change management challenges. With its exible approach, comprehensive methodology, and focus on sustainability, this progressive book is poised to advance the way organizations approach change. As the pace of organizational change continues to accelerate, “Change Questions” provides a roadmap for success in an everevolving business landscape.
Sonia Bot, BMath, MASc, LSS MBB, is a global high-tech executive and strategic executive advisor specializing in complex challenges, excellence in business, operations, technology and innovation, and a published author. Contact her at info@ botgroupinc@gmail.com; https://www.linkedin. com/in/soniabot/.
D. Lynn Kelley, Ph.D., is a published author specializing in change management, continuous improvement, operational excellence, lean statistics and supply chain, and a keynote speaker. Contact her at https://www.changequestions.net/; https://www. linkedin.com/in/lynnkelleychange/.
Mechanical Department Regulations
215 Freight Car Safety Standards Updated 12-28-23.
216 Emergency Order Procedures: Railroad Track, Locomotive and Equipment Updated 12-28-23.
217 Railroad Operating Rules Updated 12-28-23.
218 Railroad Operating Practices - Blue Flag Rule Updated 6-10-24.
223 Safety Glazing Standards Updated 12-28-23.
224 Reflectorization of RailFreight Rolling Stock Updated 12-28-23.
225 Railroad Accidents/Incidents Updated 10-31-24
229 Locomotive Safety Standards Updated 12-28-23.
231 Safety Appliance Standards Updated 12-28-23.
232 Brake System Safety Standards Updated 12-11-20.
221 Rear End Marking Device-passenger, commuter/freight trains Updated 12-28-23.
FRA News:
There are no new proposals or final rules to report for this issue. Be sure to check back next month to see if there are any changes to FRA regulations.
Part 215: Freight Car Safety Standards
49 CFR 215. Prescribes the minimum safety standards for freight cars allowed by the FRA. Includes safety standards for freight car components, car bodies, draft system, restricted equipment and stenciling. Softcover, spiral. Updated 12-28-23
BKFSS Freight Car Safety Standards $11.00
Order 50 or more and pay only $9.90 each
BKMFR Mech. Dept. Regs. $37.50 Order 25 or more and pay only $33.75 each
Now Includes Part 224 more
Part 231: Railroad Safety Appliance Standards
49 CFR 231. General requirements for safety appliances including: handbrakes, brake step, running boards, sill steps, ladders, end ladder clearance, roof handholds, side handholds, horizontal end handholds, vertical end handholds, and uncoupling levers. 106 pages. Softcover. Updated 12-28-23 BKSAS Railroad Safety Appliance $11.50 Order 50 or more and pay only $10.35 each
Part 232: Brake System Safety Standards
49 CFR 232. Regulations and general requirements for all train brake systems, inspection and testing, periodic maintenance and training requirements, and end-of-train devices for Class I, II, and III railroads. Plus the introduction of new brake system technology. Softcover. 155 pages Updated 12-11-20
BKBSS Brake System Safety Standards $19.50
Order 25 or more and pay only $17.50 each
Railroad Operating Rules & Practices
49 CFR 217 to 218. Part 217: Purpose, Application, Definitions, Penalty, Operating Rules, Program of Operation Tests and Inspections; Program of Instruction on Operating Rules, Information Collection. Part 218: General Blue Signal Collection of Workers Protection of Trains and Locomotives, Prohibition against tampering with safety services, Protection of occupied camp cars. Softcover. Spiral bound. Part 217 updated 12-28-23, Part 218 updated 6-10-24.
BKROR Railroad Operating Rules & Practices $15.00
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