Bruce
Surprise! Surprise! [/sarcasm]
After an hour or so since I first saw the news I have had a chance to put a few thoughts together.
I think EHH is in for the fight of his life. The CPR is in a bad way. As I said back on January 3, 2012, in the thread “Changes at the top of Canadian Pacific” you can’t run a railroad, without a railroad. Cut, cut, cut, simply isn’t going to work in this situation. As it stands now CP doesn’t have enough infrastructure, motive power or personnel to deal with the expected and needed upturn in business. Where is the money going to come from to deal with the first two problems? And as far as personnel goes, you would need to cut and replace staff at a 1 to 1 ratio with better staff to even keep their head above water, and where do these people come from? Is “Precision Scheduled Railroading” even a viable or valid option at this point?
If CP weren’t an international company, there would be one obvious solution; sell out to a bigger railroad. But given the regulatory situation in Canada, that is a non-starter.
I don’t wish EHH any ill will, it is just that I am profoundly disappointed and yet not surprised that it has come to this. I hope he is the man for the job.
Bruce
Bruce ( AgentKid ) wrote [in part]:
"…As it stands now CP doesn’t have enough infrastructure, motive power or personnel to deal with the expected and needed upturn in business. Where is the money going to come from to deal with the first two problems? And as far as personnel goes, you would need to cut and replace staff at a 1 to 1 ratio with better staff to even keep their head above water, and where do these people come from? Is “Precision Scheduled Railroading” even a viable or valid option at this point?
If CP weren’t an international company, there would be one obvious solution; sell out to a bigger railroad. But given the regulatory situation in Canada, that is a non-starter…"
As another poster ( BaltACD) exclaimed!
Surprise!, Suprise! I tend to agree with his assessment. I think that EHH joining the management team at CPR was pretty much a foregone conclusion. The only questions being in the How, the When, and who were going to be the survivors still standing. [2c]
To the point you made about the conditions existing at CPR currently, referencing the physical plant, the equipment needed to run the railroad and the depth of the personnel needed to bring down the operating ratio and make the line a class operation again.
In another of your Threads:
"Canada might impose rules in r
I’m happy with this development. E H Harrison, love him or hate him, has a reputation for improving safety and bottomline results. This is exactly what CP needs. They need a strong leader who can bring about rapid change. His track record speaks for itself…if he can’t improve CP then I don’t know who can.
In the late 1980’s there was an article in National Geographic tracing the route of a typical carload of grain from a Saskatchewan farmer’s field to the port of Vancouver, with what I think are the four most important words ever written to describe the nature of the Canadian grain handling system; “distance is the enemy”.
To operate a railway in Canada 24/7/365 you have to be able to do it from -40° to +40° Celsius. In Fahrenheit, think 40 below to somewhere around 105-110 above. To do this requires a pretty good level of maintenance just to keep up with basic wear and tear. Having said that, it is when you get off of the mainline that things start getting problematic. Saying we will get to that next year, for too many years, is what led to Fred Green’s Multi-Year Plan
Saying Canadian railways have a shortage of equipment to handle the job is something that has been said since there were grain producers on the prairies. The one real solution, and one both railways have never really addressed, is equipment cycle time. Shortening cycle times is a problem that requires an expensive solution; involving track upgrades, motive power purchases, and hiring the necessary employe
Growing up in a large railway town on the prairies, a lot of my friends and family worked for the CPR I never heard one word praising the CPR, all we ever heard was how bad it was and how poorly run, I heard this all across Canada, from traincrews to clerks, and some of the reasons for firing crews for miniscule rule violations just before retirement age, my neighbours Dad was fired one year before retirement for stepping ON a rail, he never recovered from this financially and healthwise.
Also find out where the CPR got it’s money when they started up Canadian Pacific Oil & Gas, an interesting read in itself. Sounds like the past deeds have now caught up to present day. Many of the staff I knew always wondered just how the beauracratic bungling within over many years ever allowed anyone to really run a railway. I guess a monopoly self generates.
My, my, some people have described a mountain for Harrison to climb. I suspect he is just the person to do it. I have read many stories of smart, hard-charging executives (E.H. Harriman of the U.P. and J.D. Farrington of the Rock Island, to name only two of dozens) who led their roads out of situations much more dire than that at C.P.
It’s not that C.P. is so bad, but that it could be so much better. I’d buy my C.P. stock now. In fact, I AM buying my C.P. stock now. (Oops, not until Monday.)
The last element in improving cycle time of cars is the unloading, which the railroad, especially at the grain ports, has little control over. Enter Hunter and his attempts to force shippers to get things unloaded quicker, etc.
It also does not make a lot of economic sense to build a fleet of cars to handle the ultimate peak shipping demand that could ever happen.
Will be watching CP closely over the next year or more to see what progress wil be made.
I think that statement might not be altogether wrong. It sort of explains both how the CPR is still here, and how it got here in the condition it is in.
I can’t say I agree with your assessment of company/employee relations. Even today my Mom still speaks with pensioners who have good things to say about the company. And the pensioners clubs seem to be doing well. The CPR was strange in a way that modern HR consultants might find peculiar, in that on one hand there was always employee dissent, and yet the stories of employees going to the wall for the company are too numerous to repeat here.
One example I have posted before involves my Dad on a Sunday afternoon after a major blizzard closed the mainline in western Saskatchewan. A Section Man somewhere around Gull Lake, on his regular day off, came up on the dispatchers line and said that he had just finished shoveling out such and such siding, and where did Dad want him to go next. Dad quickly looked down at the Train Sheet and realized this fellow just had dug out a siding over a mile long armed with only a shovel and a speeder, and was looking for more work! As much as Dad wanted to tell him to go home and rest, he didn’t want to insult the Section Man, so he said since all the trains were still stopped he could go to which ever siding would work best for him. He ended his shift before he found out how the rest of that story ended.
Carriers can exert a great deal of control over port operations with their requrements for obtaining unit train rate and penalties for both excessive time in loading trains as well as unloading trains. Money talks South of the border, and I expect it can be made to talk North of the border.
I wonder what this will mean for CP’s routes in the US, especially the DM&E?
Bruce (Agent Kid) Posed the following [in part]
"…Even today my Mom still speaks with pensioners who have good things to say about the company. And the pensioners clubs seem to be doing well. The CPR was strange in a way that modern HR consultants might find peculiar, in that on one hand there was always employee dissent, and yet the stories of employees going to the wall for the company are too numerous to repeat here…"
Certainly speaks to the culture of the railroaders on CPR.
tatans’ post about some of the employees and their voicing how they felt about the CPR in pretty much pejorative terms; seems to follow an old military saw that said that, ‘as long as the troops very voicing their contempt for the bosses/organization the men were happy. It was when they quit their bellyaching that the brass should worry because something was afoot.’
I cannot speak to the culture of the CPR, but Bruce’s post about the MOW foreman seems to prove it in part. [ In the USMC there was a sense of pride that as Marines we were able to ‘do more with less’ than other branches in the US Military.]
One thing for certain EHH is going to have a heck of a mountain to climb as he faces a revamping of the CPR, its’ organization, and Culture. In the efforts to turn around the pr
For those of you who haven’t clicked on the link at the top of this thread since yesterday morning, you should do so again. CTV has added more to the story, including excepts from EHH’s letter to CP employees.
Bruce
I have to agree with the CN comments - I don’t see how EHH can operate CP without drawing from the ‘privileged CN’ information that is embedded in his mind. He may not consciously draw from that information, but having been exposed to it, it is something that cannot be forgotten when it comes to developing business strategy for CP.
I read the Letter and I can tell you this there are a Lot of Middle and Senior Management right now going WHERE IS THE DOOR. Things are going to be Bloody in a few Months and the Crews over there are going to be the ones to pay for it let alone the Managers. Look for the D&H to be sold off to the NS why would give NS a grip in the Upstate NY and better acess to NYC direct and allow CP to raise some Much Needed Cash for the Rest of the system. Also look for the Mainline across ND to get some MASSIVE captial Spending on it along with if he can come up with it the PRB Expansion for coal to move for Export to China. Think about it he has Approval and he could get the Chinese to fund it if he can get them to pay for it.
[quote user=“AgentKid”]
tatans:
Many of the staff I knew always wondered just how the beauracratic bungling within over many years ever allowed anyone to really run a railway. I guess a monopoly self generates.
I think that statement might not be altogether wrong. It sort of explains both how the CPR is still here, and how it got here in the condition it is in.
I can’t say I agree with your assessment of company/employee relations. Even today my Mom still speaks with pensioners who have good things to say about the company. And the pensioners clubs seem to be doing well. The CPR was strange in a way that modern HR consultants might find peculiar, in that on one hand there was always employee dissent, and yet the stories of employees going to the wall for the company are too numerous to repeat here.
One example I have posted before involves my Dad on a Sunday afternoon after a major blizzard closed the mainline in western Saskatchewan. A Section Man somewhere around Gull Lake, on his regular day off, came up on the dispatchers line and said that he had just finished shoveling out such and such siding, and where did Dad want him to go next. Dad quickly looked down at the Train Sheet and realized this fellow just had dug out a siding over a mile long armed with only a shovel and a speeder, and was looking for more work! As much as Dad wanted to tell him to go home and rest, he didn’t want to insult the Section Man, so he said since all the trains were still stopped he could go to which ever siding woul
It is nice that so many posts appreciate past CP employees. As with any large organization, you will find hard working employees and employees that try to do as little as possible.
I have been with CP long enough to know that Pershing and Harrison are right. I have seen management milking the CP cow for too long now. No accountability is (was) the norm. It is going to be hard, no doubt, to change. Change is never easy but in this case it is necessary.
CP has become so inefficient, it is, i don’t know, a joke. Even me at my low level as engr can see that what is happening is a joke. Management does not buy into the plans put forward by senior management. Without buy-in, plans will fail.
Hunter is going to shake things up, make people accountable for their actions and get rid of the dead wood. I myself welcome that as it will ensure my future employment and give me a sense of pride in the company I work for. As hard as it will be for me, I am sure it is going to be much harder on these managers that have been milking the CP cow for so many years. It will be fun to watch them run around in fear for their jobs.
This precision railroading that is mentioned is designed to create predictability in operations. Now, even though we have a scheduled railroad, trains seem to depart kind of close to their departure time, but they arrive at any time. Personally, I waste so much time because I cannot move due to a train arriving way too early, or hours late. Trains departing/arriving on time, is designed to save manpower and resources. Right now we are too undisciplined to get this done. Just two nights ago my crew wasted hours due to a train departing 5 hours late. Why was it 5 hours late, because the local manager was not able to handle a busy day and get the train built on time, but I am sure on his status report he blamed it on the switch crews. I hope Hunter can weed these people out and find a way to get rid of them.
I am sure he will get rid of some assets to c
It’s nice to see someone in train service with cptrainman’s positive attitude, along with his eye for the kind of things that need fixing.
He and those like him have nothing to fear from Hunter Harrison. May their tribe increase.
Thanks dakotafred for your encouragement during what will be a tough time.