SPRING 2013
Shortline Message • with Dick Ebel
Much to accomplish in little time
Future Tracks
The Transportation Technology Center, Inc., in Pueblo, Colo., makes it a priority to research and test railroad equipment. Whether Class Is or shortlines, railroads ultimately benefit from the trial-and-error processes that are part of the daily lives of some 270 employees who work at the 52-squaremile site. Please see our story beginning on Page 4.
Welcome to our quarterly newsletter. Time has been marching on and it is shocking to me that we will soon be entering the“ dog days of summer.” I have to share a comment a friend made to me at my daughter’ s wedding recently.“ Dick,” he said,“ just think, in less than 45 days the days are going to begin getting shorter!” What a humbling statement. While true, I know that we are all thinking about the track work we have to accomplish during the short summer season.
We continue to experience very strong demand in several segments of our business; that is no surprise to many of you who are engaged in shale play operations. We are also seeing a nice upward trend in orders for lumber and housing-related commodities. That will certainly help a number of our shortline connections, which had been working through vol-
In this issue
ume declines driven by the plunging housing markets.
Ag commodities have been adversely impacted by reduced crop yields resulting from last year’ s drought conditions. We are all hopeful that we will see a much better year. In the short term, the impact of the drought has sent ag commodity movements in directions that are not the norm. Much of the flow has turned to support domestic consumption markets, creating shorter hauls and engaging shortline connections in high volumes of grain activity compared to previous years.
Our BNSF equipment team is sensing a tightening of car supply on fleets that support sand and lumber moves. It is in all of our best interests to ensure that we are managing dwell and moving these cars as expeditiously as possible so that collectively, we do not miss loading opportunities.
I am excited to report BNSF presented the next version of its Webbased tools to explore velocity-related measurements online. We demonstrat-
See Message Page 2
BNSF Customer Service stays one step ahead 3
TTCI has eye on future 4-5
Illinois Railway manages increased sand growth 6-7
Shortline Shorts 8 bnsf. com