Commentary

TD Cowen: NEARS Conference Key Takeaways

We attended the NEARS (Northeast Association of Rail Shippers) Conference, where shippers discussed the current state of the rail industry. Rail service and safety was center stage, with panelist consensus embracing a challenged rail network to start 2023. In our view, decelerating rail volumes and excess capacity over the road may lead the rails to revise outlook during Q123 earnings.

(The Greenbrier Companies Photograph)
Commentary

TD Cowen Insight: GBX Investor Day

For The Greenbrier Companies (GBX), we see gradually subsiding volatility in revenue, margins and earnings over the next three to five years. This is as the company targets higher—albeit measured—lease fleet growth, and as the right-sized manufacturing footprint for GBX and the industry should mean less erratic annual builds.

Commentary

Water By Rail a No-Go for Now

Forty years ago, in September 1983, Southern Pacific launched a new service to haul crude oil from well sites in central California to a refinery south of Los Angeles. Some called it

Commentary

TD Cowen Insight: Freight Traffic, Railcars, Trade Tensions

Carloadings fell short of our expectations as a slow start to ‘23 volumes took hold in Q1 despite easy comps. Intermodal continues to pressure the group, given loose capacity and a lull

Commentary

Hazardous Reading Material

A co-worker of years gone by sent me a link to the ProPublica article “The True Danger of Long Trains.” ProPublica advertises itself as “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism

Commentary

DeWine’s Rail Safety ‘Laws’ Vintage Politics

I’ll attempt to be brief: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed into state law a $13.5 billion state transportation budget that includes rail safety legislation largely pre-empted by federal law, or moot.

Commentary

Aberdeen, South Dakota: Where Railroading Roots Run Deep

In the northeast corner of South Dakota, nestled in the James River Valley, is the town of Aberdeen. Nicknamed “Hub City,” Aberdeen’s many railroad tracks intersect here, just like spokes on a wheel. With eight trains daily passing through the town of 28,000, South Dakota’s third-largest city still has “ties” to deep railroading roots.

Commentary

Response to FRA Request for Comment on ‘Amtrak L-D Service Study’

The Federal Railroad Administration has an ongoing program, the Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study, implemented Oct. 28, 2002, in accordance with Section 22214 of the Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA), which

Commentary

Amtrak Adirondack Returning to the Rails

Amtrak’s New York City-Montreal Adirondack train, the only Amtrak service that was discontinued because of the COVID virus, is finally coming back. Its first northbound run from Penn Station New York will

Building on a 25-year relationship, Argonne and Progress Rail are working to lower the carbon intensity of the rail industry. (Caption and Progress Rail Photograph Courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)
Commentary

Argonne, Progress Rail Testing Low-Carbon Fuels

Argonne scientists will test bio- and renewable diesel fuel on a locomotive combustion test engine.

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