A Revolution Sweeping Railroads Upends How America Moves Its Stuff

Under pressure from Wall Street to improve performance, Norfolk Southern and other large U.S. freight carriers, including Union Pacific Corp. and Kansas City Southern, are trying to revamp their networks to use fewer trains and hold them to tighter schedules. During the recent five-day work session, Norfolk Southern Senior Vice President Michael Farrell outlined the railroad’s objectives to a group Norfolk executives, union workers and customers gathered at the downtown Decatur Club. Operations executives who had performed similar exercises at other Norfolk Southern yards drilled workers about how long it took to perform tasks such as switching cars between trains and turning around a locomotive.

Source: www.morningstar.com