Hints and tips:
...For each day that the crossings are closed, Union Pacific must hold 60 trains — or almost 4,500 rail cars — with an equivalent amount of goods stranded in Mexico, the company said....
...The Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers — Transportation Division and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen have said they will not accept any proposal from the railways that...
...Precision railroading was evangelised by Hunter Harrison, a renowned manager who introduced it first on Canadian railways....
...A series of mergers in the 1990s left just Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe in the western US; Norfolk Southern and CSX in the eastern US; CP and Canadian National in Canada; and Kansas City...
...The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Pacific railroads merged in 1995, while Union Pacific took over the Southern Pacific the following year....
...The company last October approached CSX but was rebuffed. ....
...A still more formidable barrier could well be the US’s Surface Transportation Board....
...The secondary market for shuttle trains on the Burlington North Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways, which dart between the western farm belt and grain customers, illustrates the situation....
...Omaha for the company’s annual meeting....
...Many of the railroads — particularly Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the second-biggest, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway — have had to invest heavily to relieve congestion....
...“We will be making decisions that are in the best interests of shippers and the best interests of the longer-term recovery,” the company said....
...Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, operator of the US’s second-biggest rail network, will be the only freight operator with a significant amount of track using PTC by the December deadline...
...Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the Warren-Buffett-owned operator of the US’s second-biggest rail network, started refusing from Monday to accept containers from other railroads heading for export from west...
...John Brooks, a senior CP executive, told the hearing the company was handling record volumes of grain on its network in the US’s northern plains but that it had suffered because of a severe winter and congestion...
...“Last year was the worst it has ever been,” Mr Burkhart says of the service the company received from Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Canadian Pacific, the two railroads that serve its nine facilities....
...Berkshire’s main businesses span insurance, railways and power companies, and the group also owns retailers, industrial companies, newspapers, and a portfolio of stakes in brand-names groups such as Coca-Cola...
...Ken Buenker, vice-president for corporate transportation of UPS, the logistics company, says better service has significantly improved railroads’ attractiveness....
...As Lord Smith confirmed earlier this month, the Scotland Bill meets the vow made by the parties of the union when the people of Scotland voted to remain in the United Kingdom....
...Transportation of wheat and other key commodities across western US and Canada has slowed sharply as a bumper harvest, booming shale oil shipments and severe winter weather have all combined to snarl rail...
...Workers from the US’s United Steel Workers’ union also won an arbitration ruling obliging the parties to negotiate new assurances with the union about job security and future healthcare and pension obligations...
...As the price differential between inland and coastal oil markets narrows, railways and logistics companies are reporting falling traffic on the lines connecting oilfields to refineries....
...Biggest Deal: The $26.6bn acquisition of US railway Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2009....
...US utility companies turned to Powder River Basin coal in the 1970s and 1980s because its low sulphur content helped them meet the era’s strict new energy requirements....
...Such trains, heading for US coastal refineries, are becoming increasingly common sights on Union Pacific and other big US railways exposed to the US shale oil boom....
...Kleinman cites Warren Buffett’s BNSF railway as another example of substitution; that’s indeed a big company that uses a lot of diesel. Yet its move to natural gas is nowhere near certain....
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