Letter From Jack Koraleski
June 3, 2004
To our Customers:
This is the fifth in a series of letters intended to help keep you aware of our efforts to restore our service levels. Since the last letter was posted on May 17, we have also posted on our Web site the slides from a presentation that we made to a customer meeting in San Francisco. (PDF File)
Tornadoes in Nebraska hit one train and disabled others:
The news media carried a number of stories about dozens of tornadoes that moved across Nebraska on Saturday, May 22. In addition to causing widespread property damage, this line of storms disrupted our system as well. In Buffalo Creek, Nebraska, one of our trains was hit by the largest of these storms, knocking about 40 cars off the tracks and blocking one of our lines for almost 24 hours. The same storm system dropped electrical transmission poles across other tracks in Nebraska and caused some storm-related delays in Iowa and Illinois as well.
These and other weather related events were a major reason for the slight decrease in train speed that we reported to the Association of American Railroads for the week ending May 28, 2004. Train speed was 20.9 mph for the week; a decline of 0.4 mph and terminal dwell was 33.4 hours, an improvement of 0.8 hours.
We have ordered an additional 125 locomotives:
Originally scheduled for delivery in 2005, 125 locomotives have been pulled ahead for delivery in 2004. These EMD SD70 units will begin arriving during the third quarter.
Some progress continues in the Los Angeles Basin, Tucson and Phoenix:
We now have had several weeks where our service in Southern California and the Sunset Route has been improving. We are encouraged that as new employees complete their training and become qualified to begin work, our manpower gap is shrinking. The metrics for this region show it. The average number of trains held per day during the last week of May in Los Angeles, Tucson and Phoenix improved 90% when compared to the last week of April.
We continue to add locomotives in Houston:
Our power situation in the Houston area is improving as we see the results of sending extra locomotives to that critical hub with terminal dwell time down by 2.9 hours from the prior week.
We are still facing operating challenges in our network:
While the overall metrics stabilized in May, some problem areas remain. For example, we continue to suffer from lower velocity and longer terminal dwell times in our Portland service unit. Trains are delayed between Portland and Spokane to the northeast, Nampa, Idaho to the southeast and Roseville to the south. Again, the problem is high demand combined with a shortage of qualified crews. We moved an additional 26 qualified employees from less busy parts of the Railroad to Portland, and nine people graduated from training there last week. We have a steady flow of new employees joining that service unit each week, but we have not yet seen substantial improvement.
Other developments:
The embargoes that were put in place in Northern California because of the work stoppages by independent truck drivers have been lifted.
Executive Vice President-Marketing and Sales