http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/news/wires2/index.sml Slow trains making life miserable in northern Ohio towns 2.04 p.m. ET (1811 GMT) October 16, 1999 By John Seewer, Associated Press

FOSTORIA, Ohio (AP)  Children climb under boxcars to get home from school. Firefighters send two trucks on different routes to the same fire  just to be sure one gets through. One neighborhood can be entirely hemmed in by trains.

No wonder many people in northern Ohio are experiencing "rail rage,'' as a bottleneck of train traffic boils tempers and tests patience. "I've threatened to do everything but blow the damn train,'' Huron County Sheriff Dick Sutherland said at a recent town meeting  where the only topic was train traffic.

The rail jams are being blamed on one of the most massive rail acquisitions in U.S. history. Traffic along some routes in the Midwest has tripled since CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. started splitting up Conrail's routes in June. There simply were too many trains and not enough tracks.

"We absorbed more cars than could be processed efficiently, and we found ourselves in a deep hole from which we're having a hard time recovering,'' Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode said last month.

CSX and Norfolk Southern spent two years planning the Conrail split, but have had problems with computerized routing systems and staffing.

"Our goal first and foremost is not blocking railroad crossings,'' said Norfolk Southern spokeswoman Susan Terpay. "It's impacting our customers and the communities we work in.''

Both railroads have lost business to trucking companies because of train delays. United Parcel Service and General Motors Corp., two of the largest rail customers, turned to trucking companies in order to meet shipping deadlines. But for residents in the affected areas, waiting for stopped trains is becoming more than an inconvenience  it's downright dangerous, say ambulance drivers and firefighters.

This summer, a train crew blocked two crossings for three hours and forced an ambulance to make a 21-mile detour while carrying a patient to a hospital.

In Fostoria, a town with three major rail lines and 100 trains a day, the traffic forces the fire department to alter its routes.

"Any time we go on a run, we'll send one truck one way and one the other way so that at least one truck will make it,'' said Fire Lt. Bob Young.

One section of town known as the "Iron Triangle'' is completely enclosed by railroad tracks. Firefighters were once blocked from getting to a kitchen fire in the neighborhood and had to crawl under a train with extinguishers in tow.

Another time, three police officers who had responded to a traffic accident inside the triangle couldn't get out. And they were the only officers on duty.

In Sandusky, children have crawled under stopped trains that were blocking streets, said City Manager Gerald Lechner.

Authorities say there is little they can do to get the trains moving. Cities can fine railroads a maximum of $1,000 for blocking a crossing, but townships and counties are limited to $65 fines. "The fines are a spit in the wind for the railroads,'' said Republican state Rep. Rex Damschroder. He and other Ohio lawmakers are working on legislation to make the penalties a lot more costly.

-- US (Trains~R~Us@no.time), October 16, 1999

Answers

AH...but they are compliant. Boy, testing that system would put all new meaning to the term, "end to end" testing. They can't even find the ends!! But they are compliant!!!!!!!!!! BWAAAAAHHHHAAAAAAAAAA !!

-- Taz (Taz@aol.com), October 16, 1999.

Will they be able to get coal to power plants? We may have power in January but not February.

boxed in ...

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), October 16, 1999.

Key line in article is that they spent 2YEARS planning the split. Of course , if it's a Y2K problem, they'll have it fixed over the weekend...NOT.

-- profit_of_doom (doom@helltopay.ca), October 16, 1999.

My question is "Will they be able to get coal to the power plants IN NOVEMBER?" It seems that one of the big four railroads is having some sorts of VERY SERIOUS problems which is affecting its cash flow.

So much so that Chapter 7 bankruptcy was discussed. So badly affected that they have put their properties in Atlanta up for sale to raise cash. So severely that they have sold forty percent of the company- owned stock to a western railroad to have funds to meet the corporate payroll.

And what kind of problem does this railroad have? Labor touble? Nope. Equipment failures? Na-ah. Loss of business? Nah, they've got more than they can handle.

Well what could it be? Computers problems, maybe? BINGO!

Seems that their Y2K remediated system has lots and lots of accounts recieveable information. But somehow this data can't be translated into BILLING INFORMATION. The company is running properly, but they can't genrate bills for the transportation services rendered. And it's gone on for some time now, long enough to drain a corporate cash fund of several Billion dallars and to put this corporation into near bankruptcy. All since June this year when their new computer system was cut-over.

This jives with some of Cory Hamasaki's statements of what to expect to see when companies have IT failures. The question here is will XX Corp survive? Can they get this problem fixed before they've exhausted their cash reserves and all possible lines of credit? How does this bode for Y2K response by XX Corp if they've already used up their reserve resources?

And what happens if if this railroad, one of the big four, goes belly- up? What happens to all the customers, especially power plants, which depend on XX Corp for shipments of materials and fuel to operate?

As far as those of you who might question what source I have on this information, let me say this. This info was new to me as of 5PM today. It came from a railroad employee who showed me his copy of a union letter detailing the stock sale and the underlying reasons for it. The union is concerned about the possibility of another merger, this one with the "western white knight" railroad just so soon after XX Corp acquired a certain Big Blue railroad.

The individual who gave me this info is a Terminal Operations Manager for the railroad in question and has been a freind for almost fifteen years. And he is also pretty GI on the Y2K issue, too.

Pollies may squeek and squawk and say it isn't true because CNN didn't say so. But this is the kind of field reports that are going to tell the real story of Y2K as it unfolds up to the end of this year.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), October 16, 1999.