New Haven Joe posted:I have been reading the Wall Street Journal article mentioned above about PSR. The article is mostly about how NS is trying to implement the PSR. The article says that NS estimates that PSR will allow the railroad to cut 3,000 jobs and idle 500 locomotives. It also says that PSR will allow NS to run trains faster and make the system more fluid.
The article mentions that there was a total meltdown when CSX implemented PSR. NS is going to try to avoid CSX's mistakes. The article says that the only major railroad that is not going down the PSR path is BNSF. BNSF is owned by Warren Buffet;s Berkshire-Hathaway.
I am not sure how PSR results in faster trains. It appears to me that trains will run on fixed schedules and will not spend as much time in yards or waiting in sidings. It does not mean that they will travel at a higher speeds. Faster really means fewer stops and less waiting.
Clearly PSR is not good for the employees who are laid off or engine manufacturers. It may be good for Wall Street investors and perhaps for shippers. One shipper is quoted in the article as saying: "It's [PSR] still doing less with less and not charging any less." NH Joe
As I read that WSJ article, was remined of Yogi Berra saying it's "deja vue all over again". That first paragraph about fixing the problem of a cut of cars witing 26 hours being fixed by having the train leave a few hours later. That's exactly what we did on a project that I worked on in 1968 for the B&M. Train BM-1 departed Boston at 7:00 pm, always with the cars that came in on locals and industrial switchers yesterday and were switched in the evening. By stting back BM-1's departure time by about five hours, it was waiting until after the inbounds were switched and taking today's traffic.
51 years later, railroads are reinventing the wheel and making headlines 
We're talking here about what good management should be doing every time traffic flows change. But it takes educated management with sound analytical capabilities combined with a knowledge of what is going on on the ground, a difficult combination to acheive.
