Most of us are aware of that the industry today does not exactly have the best relations as far as interacting with the public.
It seems for some reason though (and many would agree), Norfolk Southern in particular for some reason seems to want to isolate themselves from any interaction with the public along with being difficult to co-operate with. I speak to quite a few engineering friends that have difficult experience with NS. Most don’t judge the industry on the company. I have do not understand why this is? Is it mostly legal issues?
Those are pretty broad statements. How about providing some specifics or at least general characteristics of the events and interactions with NS on which those statements are based ? Then it would be a lot easier and more accurate to respond.
For instance - why do you say NS wants to isolate itself, when it ran the OCS to the Kentucky Derby and the Master’s Golf Tournament, and sent BP-4 999 to Washington along with many people for National Train Day ? See the photos in that thread for the details.
And your engineering friends - what type of engineering are they doing ? And what kind of projects / experiences have they had or are they speaking about ?
It’s easy to get along with a railroad - just like with the proverbial 800 lb. gorilla - ‘‘Give them exactly what they want, when they want it, for the price they want, and you’ll get along just fine.’’
Seriously, even many civil and municipal engineers have no idea of what the railroad’s engineers are concerned about and want - and the railroad’s engineers are only part of the process, which can also involves the operating or transportation, legal, and real estate depts., among others. Whether it’s pipe crossings, grade crossings, new bridges, right-of-way acquisitions, etc., it can all get very complicated. Most non-railroad engineers don’t appreciate the loadings and other physical factors involved with a heavy moving train, and the concerns based on mnay years of long and bitter institutional experiences with stormwater runoff, earth subsidence, future maintenance problems, etc. that can make life for a roadmaster, track supervisor, or division engineer very trouble-filled - and who needs more of that ?
[:-,] Just see how accomodating those same engineers are for some developer who wants to build a new street or connect a sanitary or storm sewer to their municip
[%-)]I did not mean to make a quick snap at NS, but I was told of a situation of wanting to bore a culvert under the NS mainline for water to be filtered in a water treatment facility, the engineers were well aware of the higher live & dead loads of trains and were more than willing to co-operate with the NS engineers on what needed to be done, but NS engineers never seemed to be interested or even want to speak about the situation.
It also seems more difficult to get NS to participate in the Altoona Railfest. Conrail once let the public tour the Juniata Shops, now no.
Here is a link to a local dispute between a municipality and NS.
http://tribune-democrat.com/local/x519143998/Lilly-s-road-access-deal-no-longer-viable/print
I am not trying to take a snap at NS, but I was wondering if NS seems to run a tighter ship compared to Conrail or the other Big Four. It just seems I hear about people complaining about NS whether it is people I know or when I am out rail spotting. I know I should not believe everything I hear, but I can’t help but wonder if NS seems to be more of a stiffer RR company compared to others.
My engineering friends did not go into detail, but they have heard of other friends that deal with engineering issues with other RR’s and things seem to go along more smoothly. [%-)]
I second Paul North’s opinion whole heartedly. Sorry that some engineer got his ego bruised, but he probably deserved it. NS is very much by the book, and in the case of pipeline crossings it has a right to be. The folks in Atlanta are conservative by nature and very good at what they do. They do not play favorites and treat all applications equally. If you know what you’re doing, then usually there is no problem.
(I watch the whining and moaning regarding railroads inside my own company’s engineers- sometimes with amusement and other times with disgust for some of my fellow employees. The usual culprit is an absolute lack of planning and poor grip on reality on the part of the engineers. They often create a last minute crisis and expect the railroad to jump to it just because some knothead engineer failed to heed instruction to apply for a pipeline crossing license permit in advance, not with the trench already dug and the contractor at the R/W line and in a hurry. They also tend to expect something for nothing in terms of the contract fee. Doesn’t work that way…Want to see arrogance in action? - Watch an oil pipeline industry construction project as it tries to cross a railroad.)
I would defer to Paul and M.C. Their expertise is well authenticated and respected in this Forum. In reading the linked article, it would seem to be to be a major failure to communicate between the local Borough authorities and the NS.
The railroad is a rather large bureaucracy, and finding the correct door to go through to resolve the particular issue can be somewhat problematic. My own experience was with another railroad (CSX), and the problem was localized flooding of our plant. We went for some time without any positive results. It was a Kabuki Dance between the State Hwy Dept., the County Engineer/Road Dept. The local community, and our company, and then finally, the CSX. At times it was like a Three Stooges comedy, with a little of Sgt Schultz thrown in for comedy relief.
We finally accomplished getting a 36 in corrugated culvert driven along side the road ROW, and under the CSX ROW. It was part dumb luck, part schmoozing to find the ‘GUY IN Charge’ of that particular group in the RR bureaucracy, the man with the ability to give our project the go ahead, and lots of time, too many phone calls, and cajoling ( read lots of lip balm). But we bought the culvert and agreed to pay a pretty good chunk of $$$$ for the installation. We had Engineers. MOW guys, and signal dept folks ( electric crossing signals). It took about five hours and it was in. No more water in the plant or the employees autos from the back up, whicvh was due when they put the road in they failed to set a drainage condition and the raliroad ROW was like a dam. And the State road guys never even showed up to watch!
Best of luck with your project.
Cannot believe that the local political cronies had 20 years to replace a bridge and did nothing. They just hoped they could get by in economic good times and bad times and blow available money on non infrastructure projects. Sorry but no crying allowed after 20 years. There is one project in my local city that is under the same delusion of pospone - postpone - postpone.
[EDITED 20 May 2010 Thurs. 0940 AM - format and misc. - PDN]
Note that you didn’t say in your Original Post what the nature of the problem was - but in my reply comment I took an educated guess that it was likely a pipe crossing of some kind, and sure enough, it was - and in most of the other responses, too. That’s been my experience in several firms as well - it just seems to be the frequent ‘sticking point’.
What people need to remember is that the railroad is there to move freight as safely - that’s NS’ key credo, of course - and efficiently as possible, not to drop everything else to facilitate or expedite someone’s pet pipeline project, or to make local officials feel good, etc.
One other aspect occurred to me this evening, with which our colleagues in the C&S Depts. can likely sympathize: Ask the local engineers how many of their highway traffic signals are synchronized [just could not think of that word late last night], phased, timed, sequenced progressively, or otherwise coordinated between successive intersections, even if they’re a couple miles apart. The answer is going to be either “A few” or “None” in almost all locations. But on the railroad, the signals are interconnected together for miles on end - sometimes hundreds of miles. It’s no simple task to just jump in someplace and rearrange or install some new signal or other feature - there are lots of ‘ripple effects’, without the isolating that the separated highway signals usually provide to make it easier there.