One way to make a merger look like its working seamlessly from the word “go” is to wait to integrate the IT systems of the two railroads until two years later. Then when you do, things go south quickly.
I have full confidence that CPKC will overcome their problems on the KCS portion of the system relatively quickly. It does make me wonder, however, if CSX-UP or NS-BNSF type mergers could ever be made to work without creating epic operational problems. CPKC should have been duck soup and, yet, its Penn Central all over again.
Anytime you get 2 complete different computer systems that have to be merged into 1 system there’s going to be problems. At least modern-day computer’s are easier to get to talk to each other unlike the crap from the 60s. They’re barely a month into getting things integrated and have gotten it almost figured out. It’s not like the meltdown of the UP in 96 when it swallowed the SP and damn near crippled the entire economy.
It is not about computers talking to each other - they have done that for the year+ since the merger was made official. The problem is in IMPLEMENTING A NEW system on at least on half the system if not requiring BOTH halves to learn a new system.
For two+ years before CSX merged SBD and Chessie System into CSXT - serious actions were taking place to train all ‘back office’ personnel on the requirements of the CSXT computer system as opposed to the system SBD had been running and the different system Chessie System had been running.
Computers talk to each other all across all different businesses - the problem come when one of the businesses change their computer system - to a new system that some or all of the employees have gotten minimal training on.
I can’t help but brag on Robert Krebs who started out on the Cotton Belt.* When the disaster hit Houston due to his “bottom up” rise to executive status, he fixed the mess. Another example of promotion within. Bosses who know how thing work, 'cause they worked “down there at the, where it happens level”.
*He started out working for SP subsidiary Cotton Belt in the early 1960s becoming the youngest Superintendent of Cotton Belt’s Pine Bluff Division in 1971 at age 29. endmrw0612251627
I remember hearing something like that was also one of a bunch of different problems with the Penn Central merger. Pennsy was using one computer system and New York Central was using another and they were just plain completely incompatible with each other.
If one system lists first name, middle initial, last name, and the other has it last name, first name, middle initial, it’ll take some time to sort it out. When you start including railroad specific data, it can get messy, as a single entity (cargo, car type, what-have-you) probably is completely different on each system. Or one system catalogs a bit of data that the other doesn’t.
I’ve been there, and that was just +/- 800 line items on a fire department inventory.
Way back in 03 I worked for the Hilton Hotel Company as a Reservation specialist. My job literally was to book hotel rooms from the 800 number and hotel specific calls. Well Hilton had just bought another chain of hotels a couple years before they owned Embassy Suites and a few others.
The 2 systems didn’t talk to each other at all but I literally had access to both chains systems. It really sucked if one chain was sold out as we couldn’t look at the others sides remaining rooms. But the perks were nice free rooms when we traveled familiarization trips all over the Midwest getting to eat at 5 star restaurants on the companies dime on those.
Railroads have been sharing car movement and identity data across the National Network starting in the late 1970’s with the assistance of the AAR and its computer resources, which includes use of the Universal Machine Language Equipment Register (UMLER) which is a computer repository for data about all cars operating in the national network - the big shippers and consignees also participate (for a fee) in the system to manage private owner cars under their control.
The shippers transmit ‘paperless’ Bills of Lading to the carriers and by the same token paperless Freight Bills are sent to many customers.
I participated in some the the steps CSXT took to integrate the IBM based SBD Car and Train Movement computer application with the Chessie Systems Burroughs based Car and Train Movement computer application into the IBM based CSXT Car and Train Movement application. When CSXT went ‘live’ there were equal IBM Mainframes installed at BOTH Jacksonville and Baltimore - at the time - the combined installations were considered to be the 7th largest IBM installation in the World. The two installations backed each other up in real time in a manner similar to that used by Tandem Computers at the time.
The stumbling block in the transition was the ‘accuracy checks’ that existed in the SBD system but not in the Chessie system - clerks in the field had to be taught how to correctly resolve errors that failed the accuracy checks - it was not a ‘simple’ procedure. Until ALL accuracy checks on a train’s consist were resolved, the system would not accept and transmit the car for car consist for a departing train. There were situations where trains arrived at the destination terminal and the consist had not been transmitted from the prior terminal - such happenings create a operational problem, as the destination terminal doesn’t have the data to switch and handle the arriving train.
This is fairly normal after any merger. Been through a couple while during my IT career. Always batches or parts of systems missed. I am still comming across Y2K patches all these years later (some improperly done).
I somehow missed this merger back in 2023, but just today I was reading about the ownership of the Indiana Harbor Belt and learned that CPKC owns 49% through its subsidiary, the Soo Line.
this combining needs IT wiz kids to sort out. Since it only happened on parts of KCS system was the first cut over?
Were new terminals set up side by side?"
were KCS computers given access to CP system,?
Then how was data to be transferred.?
All this above my IT pay grade.
The ‘paper’ side of railroading never gets the ‘glory of railroading’. BUT, without the paper side of railroading NO ONE makes money. Without money railroads go bankrupt.
The paper side of railroading is the glue and lifeblood that allows railroads work, prosper and grow. Railroads desire is to get paid for every element of the transportation services that they supply to their customers. It is a simple and complex as that.
To me if you look at the states it looks like something to do, IT practice wise with the former Louisiana and Arkansas Railway which was merged into KCS before computers but probably adapted into the KCS computer system via it’s merger but NOT incorporated into the CPKC system or accidently overlooked? Just my rough guess.
So you think in over 30 years KCS failed to upgrade computer systems on the critical part of the former L&A?
Interesting if so, but I find it hard to believe. Not all the L&A trackage is critical (I spent several years in Springhill), and while I agree they would likely have had sketchy-at-best computerized systems, KCS would have extended their ‘best practices’ early and then upgraded as part of their critical mainline trackage.