BNSF Has Slowed Train Velocity By 16%; Slow On Ordering New Oil Tank Cars -- Both Smart Moves

If you were the owner of a railraod, would you order new oil tank cars now or wait until the new federal regulations come out?

Okay, if you were the owner of a railroad and were being accused of driving your trains "too slowly," would you just refer complaints to federal regulators who want you to go "slower"?

See story being reported at investorvillage:

BNSF Railway Co., the carrier owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., will need the rest of 2014 to untangle train tie-ups in the corridor that serves North Dakota’s Bakken shale region.

A system-wide traffic jam, caused by surging grain and crude-oil volumes coupled with harsh weather, is being resolved more quickly on the southern lines linking Chicago and Los Angeles, Chief Executive Officer Carl Ice said yesterday in an interview at the railroad’s headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. “Our southern region, we see that improving right now,” Ice said. “The central a little slower and the north taking through the year.”

That's the lead. Now, in the body:

Slower Trains

Train speeds for Union Pacific Corp., whose network is concentrated in the western U.S. like BNSF’s, fell 8.7 percent in the first four weeks of March from a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. BNSF’s velocity dropped 16 percent in the same period.

And then deeper in the body:

Upgrades

Railroads are lobbying for upgrades that include a thicker steel hull, while the shippers and leasing companies that own the rolling stock have said modifying current tank cars to those specifications is prohibitively costly.

There are about 92,000 tank cars in service hauling oil and ethanol. Of those, only about 14,000 were made after the industry agreed to safety enhancements in 2011, according to the Washington-based Association of American Railroads trade group.

BNSF will be flexible while working with railcar makers on the design, Ice said. The railroad would like to see “an aggressive phase-out” of the older tank cars, he said. “The right thing to happen is what we’ve called the next-generation tank car, at least for our railroad,” Ice said.

It was nice to see "oil and ethanol" in the same sentence. Bakken crude oil cannot be any more dangerous than ethanol; what's good for the goose is good for the gander, they say.

And if the feds want the railroad companies to drive their locomotives more slowly, well, that can be arranged, also.

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A Note to the Granddaughters

Talk about a wonderful day.

First, the NASCAR race was delayed until today while you are in school, so I can watch the race without interruption. Your grandmother is still out in California, so I have the race and the house and the junk food and the blog and everything else to myself. 

Then, tonight, the championship NCAA basketball game is on a channel we actually get, one of the few (CBS) and it comes on late enough that soccer and swimming will be over and, again, I will have an uninterrupted evening of another sports spectacle.

It can't get much better than this. I believe in miracles.

I Believe In Miracles, Hot Chocolate
It's hard to believe this was "top of the pops" once upon a time.

At about the halfway mark in the NASCAR race, Jeff Gordon is in lead, and about eighteen cars are a lap down. At least I think I heard them say that. If he stays true to form, he will finish 7th, and Danica Patrick will finish 18th. Kyle will win. [Later: I wasn't far off: Jeff came up short, #2; Logano won; Danica finished 27th, I think; Kyle almost won, coming in third.]