The two regionals that serve my home town of Sherbrooke, Quebec come to mind. Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic and the Gennessee and Wyoming’s St. Lawrence and Atlantic appear to be busier than ever.
Back when I was growing up I saw both CN and CP floundering. The long trains that were commonplace in the 70s gave way to ever shorter trains until the mid 90s when one locomotive and five cars would have been considered a big train. Whenever I get back home now I check out the railway scene…long trains on both lines are back…over 100 cars…and mostly general freight…not so much double stack and no commody freight like coal that keeps the big carriers in the black.
One has to respect the people who made that happen when the big players pulled out. And one has to wonder how they did it as economies of scale are so important in the rail business. Both roads run old locomotives that appear to be well maintained…
Both CN and CP should be kicking themselves for giving up such prime quality lines. CP in particular gave up on all of Eastern Canada while CN at least still has its trunk line to Halifax.
I work for the PTRA, a switching/terminal road here in Houston.
Last year, January and February, we handled more cars than ever recorded in the Port Terminal’s 83 years…and this January and February, we have already exceeded that, with two more days still to go.
Business for short lines, regional and terminal/switching roads is booming…
The St.L&A is even vastly improved just since they were bought by the G&W. I got to talk with a St.L&A spokesman last fall, and he said that business has been very good and much better than before. One of the things that he credited with their success has been the rebuilt slug-geep-geep-slug loco sets that they bought for around a $1 million a set (he would like more). Overall track speed is up, costs are down, while business is good and getting better.
The locomotives are a help I’m sure, although the turn-around is probably most attributable to putting the customer first again. Alot of that area (and all of Eastern Canada in fact) is resource driven and generates freight that is ideal for rail carriage. The fact that the rails couldn’t make a go of it is testament to how bad customer service had become. I know the rails blame an antiquated overbuilt infrastructure…but that’s just an excuse. Had CN/CP given more than lip service to customer service 20 or 30 years ago they would now be enjoying good revenues out of Eastern Canada…like the regionals are now doing. Instead they ran it like a big Lionel trainset where customers don’t matter and get in the way of running trains.