How long have you lived in Cincinnati? There's really no place to sit them other than on the main and I've seen plenty sitting in Cincinnati waiting for space to get into or thru Queensgate or Gest St. If there wasn't such an issue in Queensgate do you think CSX would be dropping $100 million on the LIRC project to avoid Cincinnati? If Queensgate isn't so congested why does CSX take loaded ethanol trains from the I&O to Columbus and then north to the Indy line west to Sidney then south thru Cincinnati on the way to Jacksonville when the I&O could hand them off in Cincy? That takes at least 2 CSX crews to pull off not counting the one to take it south out of Cincy..... Also why did CSX try their hardest to convince NS to lease out part of Buckeye to G&W so that the I&O-CIND interchange could be moved to Columbus for the G&W to deal with there? Domtar could be one of the biggest customers for the I&O on the Midland, but CSX can't get the cars to Cincinnati from Tennessee with any consistency. Go back 10 to 15 years ago CSX used to switch them twice a day...
NS could give a rats arse about customers and getting stuff delivered on time other than a select handful of large ones. Talk to anyone that deals with them and the past three to four years they have gone done the tubes when it comes to customer service and it's only getting worse. They decided right or wrong to put all their eggs in one basket and funnel everything to Bellevue. Including rerouting stuff hundreds of miles out of the way just to run it thru Bellevue. There's your congestion problem. The issue with NS is like many companies these days. Instead of improving on what works and doesn't work they have an entire legions of management that's mantra is to reinvent the wheel. Life is a continuous evolving process which requires one to be evolve with it. Nowhere does it say every week I go out and change my mission in life or management of a company. That does nothing but lead to failure. Do what you do and strive to do it well, otherwise you're spinning your wheels or becoming dead weight. I just worked for a healthcare company that is trying to reinvent the wheel in that market of service they provide. Premise is good and they pay unbelievably well, but they don't get the business. Business is based on service. You provide a need and someone pays you for it. Once you lose sight of that basic tenant of business and delve into reinventing the wheel because your smarter than anyone else, you're sunk nine times out of ten.
As for this Peavine drivel....let it die for God's sake. It takes a certain amount of gusto or ego to advance in the world. It also is the downfall of most people in their business careers at some point. The same problems with proving a point in making Bellevue work come into play with the Peavine rumors, but that's as far as that's going until some people retire. You brought up the STB reports. Read the Peavine fillings again by NS and the dollar amounts to justify the discontinuance of service. There's a couple of reasons they filed the way they did. Several of us have tried unsuccessfully at numerous places to explain it, but it just doesn't sink in for some. Let's try once more shall we....? Indeed tomorrow NS could reopen the line in short order. Nothing that the 3 M's can't handle: Money, Materials and Manpower. We can debate how much real work needs to be sunk in but none of us are track inspectors for NS that would have to sign off on it. I'll go with brc0227 that it's probably not as much as NS stated to get some sort of basic service up and running. But here's the stickler to that and YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THIS FROM A BUSINESS SENSE so I'm pretty sure that's where we lose a lot of the foamers.. If you reopen you need to hire and staff T&E, maintenance of way etc. Then once you get to Cincy where is it going? Talk to anyone that works in Cincy for NS and ask them what more traffic is going to do. There's the main issue with the Peavine as it doesn't give you anything but shoving the issues into Cincy and up the New Castle District which already has enough traffic problems. So you haven't fixed anything and now added a bunch more people to the payroll to let things sit more but just now somewhere different. Now why did NS spend so time going into detail the repairs needed? Simple they did it for themselves and the CCET to help if they ever decide to reopen the line farther. Read the ORDC minutes and you can see their thoughts on protecting the Peavine. NS threw the carrot out to the ORDC if and when they or CCET reopens the line. Get some grant money to pay for stuff. It's sort of like a Where's Waldo puzzle. NS thru the STB filings painted the picture of the Peavine future for the most part.
heypal6878 wrote:I'm grasping pal just trying to learn is all. I go up though Bellevue a few times a year and every time I go up there mass trains are on the tracks not moving. Here in Cincinnati even on very busy tracks we never see mass trains just sitting with no place to go. Even Queensgate has one large yard in even years ago when it was extremely busy Queensgate never was overloaded. Trains always got in and out with no problem. Of course back in the day I don't think trains were hauling as many frights as they do today.
Now I know Bellevue and Queensgate are not even close but just saying. Belleuve is tight adding track is surely not the answer. I can see your point shorter trains would speed things up. Maybe NS doesn't have enough crews to run shorter trains. I do know NS is all about getting product on time to their customers. From what I have seen in the past CSX runs shorter trains. NS trains are well over a mile long sometimes with over 200 frights and tankers. I can see why it takes time to park these frights and move them off the line. Meanwhile everything backs up. Hopefully they will figure it out. I'm sure they are keeping an eye on what is going on up there.