HEAT RESTRICTION!!???

Conrail was proof that its not just the physical plant that made the difference but the dedicated and motivated people they employed who took up the slack. CSX has some great people. But people from the South do tend to go a little slower and apparently have trouble understanding concepts that made Conrail succesful.

csxchris wrote:Conrail was proof that its not just the physical plant that made the difference but the dedicated and motivated people they employed who took up the slack. CSX has some great people. But people from the South do tend to go a little slower and apparently have trouble understanding concepts that made Conrail succesful.

Enough of the southern slurs - despite speech patterns, there are as many go-getters down South as anywhere else.

The problem is, different focus and arrogance. CSX is seen as a profit factory, not a railroad. Efforts go into maximizing dividends, stock prices, public image. Not smooth rail operations.

FWIW, that mindset came from the (Northern) Chessie clique, not from the Seaboard people.

And that Chessie Mafia is made up of people who're too cool for school; who can't be taught anything because they know it all.

You are right about the lack of motivation and dedication on the part of CSX rank-and-file. I guess being threatened constantly with termination can do that.

Enough of the southern slurs - despite speech patterns, there are as many go-getters down South as anywhere else.

believe what you want

get back on the topic of speed restrictions or im locking it

Ironman wrote:And of course the past is always viewed through rose-colored lenses.

I submit that if Conrail were around today, in other words 2007, that things would not be all that much different from the way CSX is running things. Slow orders do not prove that the railroad is falling apart, or is unsafe. Remember that alot of valuable and dangerous cargo is transported over track that is good for 10 MPH or less safely every day.

So if this is the case are slow orders really bad for business? Is CSX focused on speed? Probally not, but maybe their business model dosen't list speed as a must.

CSX has been around for a long time, and the railroads that made it up were always money makers, who didn't need to take a taxpayer bailout, or change the rules to make it.

Maybe these guys know what they are doing.

CSX is the most backward thinking, backward acting organization on the face of the earth.

Their business model in 40 years behind the times.

They are more interested in enFORCEment than results, whatever the topic.

And didn't you know, if a track is not good for 10 mph, it isn't a track, it just resembles a track.

EVERY slow order costs thousands of dollars EVERY day, day after day after day!!!!!!!.. Those that are around for months and months cost this company many times more in wasted fuel (slowing and accelerating 25-30 trains ) than if they just sent a gang out to fix the danged thing!

You must be company management, Ironman.

CSX is the only one of the Clas I's that the feds force to impose heat restrictions...according to an article I read a year or so ago covering delays caused by the host Class I's. (Don Phillips, Trains).

The only one with heat restrictions.....what does that tell you?

And it is my understanding the primary reason for the heat restrictions is CSX's minimal standard of ballasting the roadbed.

I can attest to the fact that CSX had crews shove ballast away from the track into a nice little long pile stretching for a few miles west of Erie, PA, near QD 104. Some time later it appeared that a contractor was reclaiming that skinny line of ballast and hauling it away in dump trucks (or someone was stealing it!).

I just keep thinking they don't want the track too well maintained. Guess it might look too much like when they took the place over (I won't mention any previous owner's names to keep the ((anti-CR)) cry babies happy).

I know when they clean the ballast, the stuff left over is in a little line right next to the tracks. You sure that wasnt what you saw.

dutchboy wrote:I know when they clean the ballast, the stuff left over is in a little line right next to the tracks. You sure that wasnt what you saw.

Nope...was fairly clean ballast.

Actually, this year is the first I've noticed the cleaner working between Buffalo and Cleveland. I've been going that way for six years or so.

I think the ballast removal was part and parcel of the mentality behind the comment, purportedly made by a newly arrived CSX Official soon after split date, which went like this: This railroad is over-maintained.

Sure appears like they believed that, hindsight being 20-20.