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Thursday, November 27, 1997

Chairman to face questioning about clogged lines

By JIM O'CONNELL / Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON -- Last month, the chairman of Union Pacific Railroad boldly told federal regulators that the monumental traffic jam that's gripping the nation's largest railroad would be mostly cleared by Thanksgiving.

But soon after the holiday feast is over, railroad chairman Richard Davidson will find himself before the Surface Transportation Board explaining why idle trains filled with industrial and consumer goods continue to clog the railroad's 36,000 miles of track.

Railroad critics complain that Union Pacific's problems have held up delivery of coal, chemicals and other industrial goods to manufacturers, left corn harvests rotting in fields and even threatened the supply of Christmas trees.

Union Pacific's rail lines ribbon through 23 states in the western two-thirds of the nation, from Seattle to New Orleans and from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.

The merger with Southern Pacific approved last year gave Union Pacific more than 50,000 employees and three times that many freight cars.

But that has proven to be part of the problem. The company has more freight cars than it has locomotives or engineers to take the freight cars to their destinations.

So some loaded trains have remained idle for days or weeks, sometimes blocking the tracks at bottleneck rail yards while customers wait with growing impatience for their deliveries or for empty rail cars to fill for shipment.

Among the hardest hit are Midwest corn farmers and Gulf Coast chemical companies. The Texas Railroad Commission estimated that delays have cost customers in that state alone $100 million a month.

Some Agriculture Department officials contends the delay could eventually raise prices slightly for consumer products like chickens, because of the higher cost of shipping feed by truck.

Big toy stores and other national chain stores also used trucks to insure that there would be no shortages of gifts during the Christmas shopping season, said Pamela Rucker of the National Retail Federation.

And Rep. Peter DeFazio D-Oregon, publicly warned that delays threatened to strand the nation's Christmas tree supplies in the Northwest. Shortly after DeFazio's highly publicized complaints, thousands of rail cars showed up in Oregon, easing the crisis, said Kathie Eastman an aide to DeFazio.

"They did a fabulous job after they made it a priority," Eastman said.

Railroad officials insist Union Pacific was never in danger of becoming the Grinch that stole Christmas. Two special trains will haul Oregon trees south in plenty of time as they do every year, and retailers never had to worry about their gift supply lines, said John Bromley, a spokesman for Union Pacific.

Still, problems Davidson's statement to the Surface Transportation Board that the railroad's problems would be "substantially fixed" by Thanksgiving was merely his hope, not his vow, Bromley said.

The company is "making substantial progress, most corridors are very fluid now," said Bromley.

The number of blocked sidings nationwide dropped from 140 on Oct. 24 to 105 last week, according to the railroad's weekly report to the Surface Transportation Board.

"The service recovery plan continues to progress very well," the railroad reported to the board last week. "The data reflect this with car inventory, blocked siding and trains held all improving."

But Edward Emmett of the National Industrial Transportation League, said that his 1,700 industrial members have seen "marginal improvement at best."

"They are still showing large numbers of trains held without power and without crew," Emmett said.

After an emotional hearing Oct. 27, the board ordered Union Pacific to open a small portion of track in Texas to competing railroads to ease the crisis.

Some customers will ask at the Dec. 3 meeting that the board take a stronger stand by ordering the company to release customers from contracts it cannot fulfill, and to get more help from rival railroads.