Holiday Fails to Ease NS, CSX Backlog

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Norfolk Southern and CSX Corp. continued to be plagued by late trains, congested yards and other service problems last week, despite their hopes that the Independence Day holiday would allow them to catch up on deliveries slowed since the two Eastern railroads carved up Conrail on June 1.

Shippers, government agencies and officials reported that the carriers made some progress, but their difficulties are far from over. As a result, NS attempted to induce unionized employees to lend additional support to its recovery efforts by sweetening the pot with monetary incentives.

Meanwhile, United Parcel Service, the biggest intermodal customer of both railroads, continued to divert about half of its rail traffic to the highways.

“Every train is still running late on both lines,” said UPS spokesman Norman Black, who characterized the improvement he has seen as trains “running up to 10 hours late, instead of up to 12 hours late.”

Hopes had been high — among shippers and the railroads — that the three-day weekend would provide an opportunity for the carriers to clear out congested yards and terminals. It was also widely predicted the closing of auto plants for retooling and the annual coal miners’ holiday would produce a two-week respite from service demands.

These events, however, “didn’t prove to be the magic bullet we had hoped for,” said Edward H. Rastetter, director of policy for the National Industrial Transportation League.

He said it may have been unrealistic to expect employees to give up their holiday after working hard for the previous two weeks to deal with the railroads’ problems.

In addition, only two auto plants have shut down so far, with DaimlerChrysler still operating at 60% capacity.

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