To many in northwest Ohio, the trains just seem to keep getting longer and longer.
And it’s a direct result of a near standstill with business for some rail companies.
Rail traffic has tailed off in recent months, mainly because of declining coal and oil business but also a struggling domestic steel industry. It’s so rough that both Norfolk Southern and its main regional rival, CSX Transportation, are laying people off.
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And the longer trains they’re building, to haul more freight with fewer train crews to save money, are causing headaches in some area communities, particularly when those trains stop and block multiple adjoining road crossings.
“If there’s one crossing blocked, that’s frustrating. If it’s two or three, that’s beyond frustrating,” said Glenn Goss, the police chief in Rossford, where on a recent morning a 14,000-foot CSX train sat on Glenwood, Lime City, and Bates roads for an hour waiting for an arrival track at nearby Stanley Yard in Lake Township.
Sometimes, train crews even run out of legal working time while the crossing is blocked, shutting it down for hours, too.
While State Rt. 18 has a bridge over the tracks about a mile farther east, that “puts you out of your way a couple of miles” if you’re leaving Defiance, “and if you’re a rescue truck, you can’t afford that,” Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said.
The sheriff said he understands that the railroad sees a need to run longer trains “to stay in business,” but it should be a part of the solution to the problems that can create.
“Sometimes it gets really frustrating — it really does,” he said.
Railroad cuts in northwest Ohio have not been nearly as brutal as those occurring in Appalachia, where both NS and CSX have closed entire sections of railroad. Among recent shutdowns are an NS track linking Columbus with Charleston, W.Va., and a once-strategic CSX rail yard in the Ohio River town of Russell, Ky., that has faded with the decline of coal and heavy industry in that area.
The cutbacks are all happening just 18 months after Norfolk Southern was so short of crews for freight trains between Cleveland and Chicago that it was offering bonuses to employees from other parts of its system to relocate temporarily to northern Ohio and Indiana.
Operations, jobs cut
After a sharp decline last year, Toledo’s Lake Erie port could get some of the coal traffic diverted by NS’s decision to close a coal dock in Ashtabula.
CSX shared use of that dock, and railroad spokesman Gail Lobin said shipborne coal CSX formerly moved through Ashtabula will come to Toledo instead. NS’s former Ashtabula trains will go to Sandusky instead.
Both railroads also historically have delivered coal directly to power plants in the Toledo area, but several of those plants have closed in recent years.
FirstEnergy’s closing of coal-fired generators at its Bay Shore plant in Oregon affected traffic on NS, while Consumers Power recently stopped receiving coal at its Whiting plant in Erie Township as that plant’s operations wind down.
The Whiting plant, while located along a Canadian National line, received some of its coal from mines served by CSX, and CSX also ran coal trains through Toledo that went to several other coal-fired plants farther north in Michigan before they closed.
CSX’s local operations also have been affected by AK Steel’s recent idling of its steel mill in Ashland, Ky., one of two principal destinations for iron ore transferred from boats to trains in Toledo. AK Steel blamed that shutdown on steel “dumping” from Chinese mills after the domestic market there collapsed.
And both CSX and NS have been running fewer trains of oil from North Dakota to East Coast refineries after Saudi Arabian price cuts undercut the economic viability of oil from the Bakken Shale region.
Reduced oil drilling there and in Texas and Oklahoma has also affected the rails in northern Ohio, because tubular-products mills in Lorain and Youngstown — major producers of oil-drilling pipe that typically moves by trains to the oilfields — have stopped production.
If that weren’t enough, both CSX and Norfolk Southern have been feeling pressure to enhance their bottom lines because of acquisition overtures from Canadian Pacific, whose president, E. Hunter Harrison, has a track record of cost-cutting at his current company as well as during his past presidencies at Canadian National and Illinois Central. The latter two merged under his leadership.
The Association of American Railroads, a trade organization, reported recently that for the first 12 weeks of this year, rail traffic on 13 reporting North American railroads was down 5.8 percent compared to the same period in 2015.
During the week of March 26, U.S. rail traffic was down 16.5 percent, with coal down 37.8 percent and petroleum down 22.1 percent.
Ms. Lobin acknowledged in late February that two car-repair staff and 10 transportation and engineering employees in Lima, Ohio, had been furloughed in addition to that railroad’s announcement that it would close its car departments in Detroit and Grand Rapids, Mich.
“We have not made significant furloughs at Willard, Toledo, or Walbridge,” the spokesman said.
But Ron Hummel, a local chairman with SMART-UTU, a union representing train conductors, estimated about 100 conductors laid off at CSX’s Toledo-area terminals, “and they also cut way back on their maintenance crews.”
Mr. Hummel said part of the problem was the railroad hired too many people when traffic was booming just a year or two ago. Some of those laid off recently had just completed their initial training when they were pink-slipped.
“I warned the new hires not to overcommit themselves,” the union chairman said. “They were marked up two, three days and they got laid off.”
Dustin Ohlman, who holds the same position for a SMART-UTU local representing Norfolk Southern workers, said about 40 conductors from his local had been furloughed and 15 trainees laid off. The layoffs have affected conductors only because the least-senior train engineers are demoted to conductor rather than being laid off, he explained.
Mr. Ohlman said he considers the current situation a temporary slump.
“We’re not really coal-driven and oil-driven in our area,” Mr. Ohlman said. “It’s bound to turn around. In the short term, yes, they [local railroaders] are a little worried, but they know they’re going to come back.”
Norfolk Southern declined to comment on local cutbacks, responding to such an inquiry by referring to a company statement describing a company-wide cost-cutting strategy that includes reducing its workforce by 2,000 during the next five years; halting or reducing operations in “several” rail yards this year and “consolidating traffic on fewer, larger trains,” and disposing of or downgrading 1,500 miles of secondary routes by 2020, with 1,000 of that to be accomplished this year.
Area crossing issues
The only recent track spinoff in the Toledo area is Norfolk Southern’s lease of several industrial branches in North Toledo to the Ann Arbor Railroad, which already operated other tracks to which those connect. Ann Arbor took over the branches’ operation in 2014 under a 10-year lease.
But train consolidation has already occurred on CSX in a big way in the Toledo area, and while trains have become fewer, the delays for motorists at railroad crossings have sometimes been much longer.
CSX last year cut many freight schedules that had operated daily to six trips per week, 28 hours apart, and in some corridors has combined trains entirely. One particular run from Garrett, Ind., to Stanley Yard is now routinely 2½ miles long or longer.
Chief Goss said in some cases CSX trains have been parked on local crossings many hours — as many as 20.
Complaints are up from residents, the chief said, and reports of blocked crossings from police and firefighters, both on-duty and off, also have increased since last summer, when CSX started combining trains.
Chief Goss said he’s particularly worried that Lime City will be blocked by stopped trains at the same time as a bridge just to the north is out for replacement later this year. Three houses and an Eagles clubhouse between the tracks and bridge would be cut off from all access if the crossing is blocked, he said.
City officials have requested a meeting with CSX representatives to discuss that matter, the chief said.
The same monster trains have caused problems near Defiance, where they stop to pick up and drop off freight cars at a yard near the GM Powertrain complex and block busy Hire Road while they’re there.
Rossford’s Chief Goss, whose prior career included a lengthy hitch as a railroad police officer, said he understands why crossing blockages sometimes can’t be avoided, but in many cases better planning could prevent problems.
“They know how big their trains are, and where they need to go,” he said.
And while uncoupling between train cars to create a gap at a crossing or two means a delay when the train has to be put back together, he said, that’s preferable to having no way to get through for hours upon hours.
Similar problems have also been reported along CSX lines elsewhere, particularly in Virginia.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.
First Published April 10, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
