What are your thoughts on the 2nd recent train derailment in Ohio? (Tony Hatch - ABH Consulting)

Another high-profile derailment?!? Are you freaking kidding me??

Any thoughts that the world’s spinning would stop when I headed off to the California desert for REF – Railroad Equipment Finance, or REF, the big annual rail car owner, user, OEM, etc conference: REF 2023 (railequipmentfinance.com) were quickly, er, derailed. This second incident, again with no injuries and this time no hazmat issues, could not have been worse timed. The public is now convinced that NS - and hence “railroads” – are unsafe, stats be damned (not to mention greedier than Facebook), and that maybe they have a “thing” for Ohio after all (Vance & Brown’s idiotic grandstanding be damned). NS had to play safer-than-safe, Caesar's wife-like, and instead have acted like Claudius’. 

This has become an almost existential issue for the industry – they have lost control of the narrative and could face huge, unfair consequences (see Elizabeth Warren now calling for a rejection of the CPKC – based on safety and job losses, without understanding that those very, very few job losses would be her favorite kind: white collar). Meanwhile:

• NS CEO Alan Shaw will testify on the hill on Thursday – after having sent our good friend Darrell Wilson to the second town hall meeting in East Palestine to take one for the team, like a mop-up pitcher struggling on down by 10. Meanwhile, Politico is already setting them up as a “clash” because:
• NS’s “Six Point” safety/response plan isn’t as aggressive as, say the DOT Secretary’s rather hysterical response which contains:

• • NS plans to add hot-box detectors (every 15 miles rather than every 10 as suggested) would cost them a back-of-the-envelope $55mm; full suggested rollout nationwide would be possibly over, maybe well over $1B.
    • Does anyone remember that the rails that have “always lobbied against safety” (see Krugman/NYT, despite rails being in favor of the new tank car type, etc., etc.) it was railroads who installed hot-box detectors voluntarily! Derailing is bad business, forgotten in the torchlight parades.

• • I am told here that acoustic detectors have a false-positive rate of as much as 40%.
  • NS and the other Class Ones have all joined the FRA’s “Close Call Program.”
  • Acceleration of digital train inspection, which has been hampered by the FRA.
  • 46 seconds in on Bloomberg Radio ABH explains all:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2023-02-27/covid.
  • 6 charts that explain the train industry - The Washington Post.
  • At SEARS, NS CMO gave a sober and somber assessment of East Palestine that drew praise from shippers in the audience - and STB Commissioner/Vice Chairman Hedlund. The STB doesn’t regulate safety, however.