CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

Who said anything about blaming the crews? T&E employees in the Albany region continue to leave/retire from CSX much more quickly than they can be replaced, combine that with summer vacations and mark-offs and here we are.

taracer wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 5:28 pm Yes handwave all the damage that PSR has done at CSX over the past 5 years, the crew shortage it created.

It's all the crew's fault. I just don't see the big picture.

I certainly am not blaming the crews nor whitewashing PSR.

If you want to blame anything, blame the general workforce cuts during Covid that CSX believed could be rehired quickly. Foote went into great detail in the STB hearings in April about this. In case you have not noticed, businesses of all shapes and sizes are having issues filling positions.

The general trend of blaming every single thing on "PSR" as if it were a single malevolent force has just gotten old.

According to CSX's "Rail Service Data" spreadsheet for 8/24/22 submitted to the STB, Selkirk Yard is taking over two days to process cars on average. And on a weekly basis, almost 10 CSX manifest trains per day are being held awaiting crews.

Looking on the bright side, the second image suggests that CSX's locomotive fleet is in a state of very good repair.

But yeah, Selkirk is a big yikes.

That 50 hours processing time doesn’t begin to tell the whole story as trains are stacked up like cordwood all the way out to Buffalo awaiting for an opening into Selkirk which is plugged up solid.

Here's article from Trains Magazine on-line of Friday 8/26/22 (ie, today): "CSX refutes union allegations of problems at Selkirk Yard". On August 9, RCO crew size was reduced from two to one. Excerpt:

CSX acknowledges that it is short of crews, partly because availability has dipped due to summer vacations.

“We are currently in the peak vacation period at Selkirk and we expect to be in a better position with crews after Labor Day,” Schild says. “We continue to hire and we also have a number of temporary transfers that are being sent to Selkirk to help in the meantime.”

The average amount of time cars spend at Selkirk has been rising in recent weeks. Dwell was 50 hours last week, compared to 43.8 the week before single-person remote control switching jobs were introduced, and 35.6 hours in the third week of July. Railroads generally aim for cars to spend no more than 24 hours in a hump yard.

CSX reduced remote-control switching jobs from two-person crews to one person on Aug. 9, Therrien says. “Since then, Selkirk employees have been harassed, intimidated, and bullied into accomplishing more work with half of the crew,” he wrote.

Therrien also claimed that CSX is violating its own safety rules as well as Federal Railroad Administration regulations.

“CSX strongly refutes the allegations of harassment and intimidation in the local chairperson’s letter. CSX operates in accordance with all federal regulations and local laws. We are committed to providing a safe work environment for employees, evidenced by our strong safety record,” the railroad said in a statement.

CSX also says it took proper steps before implementing single-person crews for remote control switching operations at Selkirk.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... kirk-yard/

24 hours dwell time, that would be comical on Pan Am. It was common to have trains sitting there waiting to be switched for 3 days and then sit in the class yard waiting for a departure for another 2.

As of 8/24/22, CSX has posted Conductor job openings for hire for ST at "Deerfield" and Ayer. The Portland ME and Waterville ME conductor openings no longer appear but there is a conductor opening at Framingham that offers a new hire bonus. Q: if lived in the Worcester - Boston area, why would I even think about pursuing the Ayer ST conductor position when I could get a new hire bonus at Framingham?

Also there's a Business Development - New England position to be hired apparently at Billerica:
https://fa-eowa-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.orac ... e=location

Mr. Barlow, the more reports such as you note come to light, the more it becomes evident that Chessie recognizes that there is a valuable industrial franchise in Northern New England waiting to be developed that will depend upon reliable railroad service.

No longer will this road simply be a "rich kid's 1:1 Lionel set".

newpylong wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:14 pm I certainly am not blaming the crews nor whitewashing PSR.

If you want to blame anything, blame the general workforce cuts during Covid that CSX believed could be rehired quickly. Foote went into great detail in the STB hearings in April about this. In case you have not noticed, businesses of all shapes and sizes are having issues filling positions.

The general trend of blaming every single thing on "PSR" as if it were a single malevolent force has just gotten old.

It is PSR, they just used covid as cover for plans they had before that.

For example, they had been messing around with the 436/437 for at least a year before 437 was finally abolished during covid. They used the T's reduced service to accomplish that. Trying to cut a local out of Framingham and making 436 do the Westboro drop. Cutting yard jobs so the 437 road crew would have to make like 6 doubles to build the monster train and set out rips, just to depart the yard. Then outlaw before getting to Selkirk because of this. Pre PSR the yard would have had most of the train built, rips setout. The road crew may have had to make 2 or 3 doubles at most. So now Worcester is always backed up, always single track due to trains parked on the main and siding. That would have been unheard of pre PSR.

Those changes are absolutely because of PSR, same with people with 10- 15-20 years leaving which again, would be unheard of pre PSR. It's not mass retirements, that happened about 8-10 years ago in Selkirk.

johnpbarlow wrote: ↑Fri Aug 26, 2022 6:43 am Here's article from Trains Magazine on-line of Friday 8/26/22 (ie, today): "CSX refutes union allegations of problems at Selkirk Yard". On August 9, RCO crew size was reduced from two to one.

This is mostly CSX propaganda. The fact is the road crews are in the wrong place due to the trains not running when they should due to the fact they cut the workforce down to the bone in the 5 years since PSR took over. They never had a problem covering vacations before 2017.

I'll give another example that has nothing to do with Selkirk yard. 022 use to run like clockwork out of Selkirk around 5-530 am. Now DeWitt is so plugged due to almost every intermodal train block swapping there it's leaving Selkirk at 9, 10, sometimes 11 in the morning. Block swapping to combine trains to cut crews, all started under PSR before covid.

So now when a crew should have been done in Worcester at 130 pm, and rested for a westbound train at 1130 pm they are now getting done in Worcester at 5,6,7 pm. Now you are running out of crews in Selkirk because they are in Worcester when they shouldn't be.

PSR is an absolute failure.

Oh, but the shareholders love it.

Wasn't PSR working pretty well on CSX before Covid?

No, and covid was an opportunity that was squandered. It was a known temporary situation.

Instead of mass layoffs, they could have sent people to engineer school. Or qualified them on different lines. Remember that all of us that didn't get furloughed worked like nothing had changed, except we had to do more with less.

Staying in the same shity hotels, sharing vans, hot swapping crews. All while everyone else was sitting at home.

It was a management failure that they furloughed so many. All dictated by the short-term goals of PSR, and similar to what the major airlines did. The airlines being a bit worse because they took federal money to keep crews on payroll.

Now there is a pilot shortage. Same mindset as the railroads.

With all of these service issues at CSX, it is a wonder that the CSX-Pan Am merger was granted or at least, it could have been delayed until service returned. Not sure that NS would have been any better if they were the buyer of Pan Am as they are experiencing many of the same types of service issues that CSX has across their network. As a side note, do believe that CSX acquired Pan Am to keep NS at bay in the New England rail marketplace is the primary justification for the merger; if NS were not PSR, with Pan Am, they could have gone after a big chunk of the Maine carload traffic plus some of the container business that CSX enjoys on the B&A. As someone recently said, Penn Central was a screwed up railroad, but at least they ran trains. Only time will tell on how long it is going to take to get these railroads running pre-COVID levels, especially with the ongoing impasse between management and labor that is not over as of yet.