>register for free to finish the article!

yay
Don't need Pac-Man gobbling up the NS

Back in 1992 I had a financial advisor explain to me that CP Rail was showing healthy earnings, in large part, by selling off parcels of choice property in its vast land holdings via Marathon Realty. While not technically illegal, it certainly has shades of questionable ethics (I know.. I know.. "ethics" + "business" :-P ).

Anyways, that's exactly how he explained it: a type of shell game. Eventually it has to end, usually not in a good way.

>>131850
It's really just a Hunter Harrison thing.

www.c p consolidation.com

(Remove spaces, board doesn't like those 2 letters lol)

Here's something for Valentines Day

>>131893
sigh I would use this but nobody I know would get the joke.

>>131893
I know of one case on this board whee it would work really, really well.

>>131899 Bawhahagaaa, Texypoo you crack me up.

When I get home tonight I'll come back amends revisit this. Article has a lot pig truth to it.

Sweet article. Really places into perspective how Ackman's Pershing Square used the EHH Show to turn CP into an investors cash cow. Yet now that things are settling we're seeing that CP is coming under fire for no longer living up to investors expectations.

Was the NS bid only to drive up CP's stock price? I dunno. Yet EHH left CSX well alone after one merger meeting back in 2014 when their stock was still doing really good.

I also find interesting that while head of CN, EHH was limited somewhat in his powers involving labor relations. At CP however he's fully unleashed to discipline or terminate according to his vision. So that leaves us with no direct comparison to see if EHH's trimmed staffing levels will have long term consequences upon the railroad.

The second part of this is Norfolk Southern is changing, dramatically, from the inside. In the last few years we've gone from something around 2/3rds of the workforce being over 55, now to around 1/3rd. We even have a new CEO, Jim Squires, who's beginning to make his vision and direction for the company known: Safety & Service, Stewardship, and Growth.

Frankly our company needed a culture change. NS has been running a great railroad for 30 years now. It seems that in the last 10 years we've become complacent in some areas and stopped innovating and really growing. Now our OR and other metrics have really stayed constant over the last 10 years while everyone else has shown a continual improvement. I'm not sure if CP's bid for NS really spurred our company into action or if it was just a catalyst in a plan already in development. Either way it's time now for us to step up and make some positive changes. Frankly the rallying cry of "keep NS, NS" has really caught on.

Yet there are some changes that folks, including myself, really don't like to see. For instance our previous CEO, Wick Moorman, was an unabashed rail-fan and spent untold amounts on the 21st Century Steam program and updating the Officer Car Train. Likely we will see less and less of these as time moves forward. The insurance policy for NS sponsored steam trips is rumored to expire this summer. Likely why all the public trips behind NW 611 are in the first half of 2016. Moorman also loved inspection trips across the system in the office cars. With that came new locomotives and passenger cars to increase our business car fleet. Don't expect that trend to continue. Yet these changes and countless others will be what brings Norfolk Southern into step with the other class 1 railroads.

I didn't know this until recently but Hunter is a big deal in the race horse world. Look up Double H Farms if you have a chance. The man's in his 70's so why won't he just retire to Florida where he owns stables?

Perhaps all Hunter really wants is... the Thoroughbred.

>>131916

There's something very depressing about the idea of a man being in charge of a company where he isn't very interested in what that company represents. I recall reading an article about the early days of Amtrak, where the author was riding a train over Horseshoe Curve with the first head of Amtrak. The author asked said head over lunch in the dining car "Hey, wanna go to the vestibule and watch the train go around the curve?" to which said head declined. The author then mused about various failures of early Amtrak, and how they showed a general lack of interest in rail travel from higher-ups.

So if Jim Squires isn't a rail buff, that's fair. I just hope he continues to recognize the value of things like the OCS. Even CSX, hater of railfans and fun in general, recognizes that having some passenger cars to pamper your shippers and stockholders with is good for business. I can understand if we don't see much mainline steam anymore, though. Come to think of it, WAS there a measurable business benefit to running steam trains on the mainline? Did all that publicity have any noticeable impact on the bottom line?

For that matter, what sort of cultural changes are you saying need to happen? Aside from getting back on board with innovation and whatnot.

>>131917

AAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

>>131922 The OCS is a bit like the steam program: it's more about the intangible benefits and doesn't really help the bottom line. I shudder to think that Squires in uninterested in what the company does for a business. Rather he seems embattled against market/CP and focusing on what's in the best interest for getting NS back on par with our peers.

Plus how fun could it be for all the VP's to get cuddled up together for a few days, and answer questions on the fly directly from their boss? Pic related.

Regarding the culture change really I think innovation and accepting change are the core issues. For instance I've heard that NS had bad experiences trying the first generation of concrete crossties. I've heard them called "expensive rip-rap" and seen them in such use all around the system. Now 15 years later concrete ties are used to great effect by other carriers. Yet NS is laser focused on wooden ties because concrete ties would make changes in our procurement, maintenance standards, and replacement cycles.

>>131922
More than just depressing, it's absolutely painful to watch.

>>131946

Intradasting. Now that you mention it, NS certainly doesn't seem to have done much innovating since the turn of the 21st century. All I can think of would be the battery powered #999 which was a flop, and they sure made a big deal about their rebuilt mother/slug sets as a Green initiative, even though slugs have been around for decades.

Reading this here book, it's amazing how much stuff was pioneered by the Southern. They were one of the first RRs to fully dieselize, they were at the front of the intermodal revolution, not to mention all the other experiments that didn't pan out, but at least they were trying stuff!