I don't know about you, but this last year has been much like a roller coaster! Complete with the up and downs associated!



I know it has been awhile since I posted. There certainly has been a whirlwind of activity over the last quarter of the year.

Between unexpected emergency surgery at the end of October, the financial markets, the economy, and a sudden water leak in the basement, it certainly has not been boring. I'm glad to say that the surgery went better than anticipated and that I am definitely very healthy right now! I wish we all could say the same about the financial markets and economy in general...

With all of that going on, the various things I was hoping to get done by the end of the year just didn't happen.

So, now on to more interesting things... What I really was going to continue in the series about how railroads work...

Follow up:

In my last post I talked about some of the differences in types of trains and how they get the product from A to B. That is for the big guy, the Class 1.

There are two other classifications, Class II and Class III or Regional and Shortline railroads respectively. Fundamentally the difference is in annual revenue. Class II typically have between $20 million and $250 million in annual revenue with the Class III or shortline having less than $20 million. Keep in mind that most shortlines have far less revenue than that! However between the Class II & III there are over 520 of them in the US & Canada! Now that is a lot of railroads!



Most Shortline railroads have less than 75 miles of track and the vast majority are within one state. Now how are they formed? Easy. The big guys (Class 1) did a lot of line rationalization over the years. They look at the business and see what is profitable and what isn't. And if something isn't profitable, they go through an extensive process to try and sell it off or abandon it.

Often a shortline can operate a piece of track much more efficiently than the big guy because of the lack of overhead expenses. Think about it. BNSF has over 40k employees and over 26k miles of track today! That is a lot of people and a lot of expenses to run the company. A shortline may have 5 or 10 people and 25 miles of track. And they would likely have one non-union person being able to multi-task on multiple jobs and positions. Something not able to be done with the unions of the Class 1.

You may ask, Does it really work that way? Yes, it really does. I have seen several shortline railroads that have only 3 people employed and about 10-25 miles of track they operate over. And those 3 people handle all of the work needed. Including paying the bills and talking to customers.

Next time... The different kinds of railcars

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