Author Topic: NS team shines on D&H South Line  (Read 1394 times)

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NS team shines on D&H South Line
« on: December 04, 2015, 07:06:40 PM »
As far as railroad acquisitions go, Norfolk Southern’s purchase of the D&H South Line earlier this year was considered a “minor transaction” by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. Bringing the 282-mile line under NS’ ownership and control, however, was a major undertaking for employees, touching nearly every department at the company.

 
Key players included representatives from strategic planning, transportation, labor relations, human resources, information technology, communications and signals, maintenance of way, bridges and buildings, mechanical operations, dispatching, operations service and support, marketing, transportation systems, network service design, revenue accounting, law, and government relations.
 
“At any time, we probably had 50 people at NS working on implementation over a period of six months, in addition to doing their day jobs,” said Chip Meador, director strategic planning, who helped orchestrate planning. “There were a lot of details. Knowing that the best laid plans don’t always work, we had to be nimble on our feet.”
 
NS’ execution of operations on the South Line was relatively flawless. Hiccups were addressed quickly. For example, on Day 1, a Saturday, communications and signals hustled to start connecting signals directly to NS’ network after getting reports that signals data being routed to NS via CP’s Minneapolis dispatch center were moving slower than anticipated.
 
The original plan called for passing the data through CP’s system for about the first two weeks to allow time to connect each signal directly to NS’ network. Instead, to ensure smooth train operations, C&S engineers from Atlanta and local crews worked through the weekend to install software and rewire equipment at 23 control points.
 
“To keep the trains moving, we work weekends, holidays, nights – it doesn’t matter,” said Shane Mills, C&S senior electronic engineer.
 
At sunrise on the first day, about a dozen operations service and support people dispersed along the South Line to count and inventory rail cars that CP was handing off to NS for local customers.
 
“They checked every siding for cars tucked away and to make sure tracks we said were clear were actually clear,” said Patrick Horgan, manager OSS. “CP had sent us electronic data about the cars that were on the territory, and once we put eyes on a car, we added it into our system and brought the waybill for it over.”
 
In the months before that, OSS employees visited multiple times with local customers to understand their business model and gather information to design a local service operating plan. In concert, employees from network services developed an operating plan for merchandise trains moving over the South Line, setting up train schedules and plans to efficiently build and route blocks of rail cars to yards and customers across the Northeast.
 
Working mostly behind the scenes, IT employees helped to integrate operations of the new territory into NS’ computer system, and they also ordered and helped install computers and other communications infrastructure.
 
The successful outcome is a credit to talented employees who rolled up their sleeves and worked together to advance NS’ business goals, said John Anthony, C&S assistant general supervisor.
 
"When they were called on, they stepped up to the plate to make things happen,” Anthony said. “When you needed something done, people were there and ready to respond and got it done.”