Author: Rick Paterson

Commentary

The Eternal Battle: Weather vs. Railroads

The hits just keep coming with another arctic blast this week and some extensive flooding, primary impacting Norfolk Southern in Southern West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and Eastern Ohio, resulting in

Commentary

A Successful January

This report analyzes operational and service trends for the North American Class I railroads, incorporating weekly operating data through Jan. 31. January is typically the most challenging month for rail operations and

Commentary

Industry Navigates Polar Vortex Well

The big winter weather challenge has now come and gone in the form of last week’s polar vortex. The Eastern railroads got doubly lucky as they also had to contend with Winter

Commentary

Western Intermodal; Incoming Cold Snap

Here, we look at weekly operating data through Jan. 10. U.S. West Coast container imports were strong last year, particularly in the second half, driven initially by diversions from the East Coast

First Half Opportunities for UP, BNSF, NS, CN

In recent weeks, we’ve been highlighting positive trends in some of the operating metrics, and this augurs well for 2025, particularly on a year-over-year basis in the first half. Some specifics: Yards

Commentary

Restarting Analysis on CPKC

We’ve made some major changes to the CPKC data this week. Ever since the KCS operational consolidation on April 14, 2023, we’ve been using the consolidated velocity and dwell from 4/14/23 forward

Commentary

The State of the Rails—Waycross

We attended CSX Investor Day 2024 on Nov. 7. There are 25 Wall Street analysts who cover CSX and 24 of them went to hear what CSX’s average annual EPS growth guidance

Commentary

NS: Textbook Rebound from Hurricane Helene

The Eastern railroads have had an eventful hurricane season, including landfalls from hurricanes Debby on Aug. 5 (Cat 1), Helene on Sept.26 (Cat 4), and Milton on Oct. 9 (Cat 3). Helene,