Blanchard Railroad Week in Review, First Quarter 2025

The Railroad Week in Review:
First Quarter 2025

Week ending March 28
Three railroads have won the coveted ASLRRA 2025 Business Development Award for 2025; The properties have one thing in common: they have built on Peter Drucker's first principle of business — creating customers. Patriot Rail's new multi-commodity transload facility has been sited on CPKC in Denton, Texas; commodities such as lumber, cement, fly ash, steel, and consumer appliances will transload at the location.

Week ending March 21
Share prices today are increasingly driven by algorithms (algos) rather than traditional fundamental analysis; why fundamentals still matter, especially for long-term price trends. AAR Week 10 U.S. revenue units increased 5.4 percent compared with the same week last year. Intermodal continues to be the big leader, increasing 8.4% to carloads' down 1.5%, including coal and automotive. A new – to me at least – shortllne group, County Line Rail, has purchased the Sabine River & Northern, a 40-mile short line in the southeastern corner of Texas. Not all railroad performance metrics are created equally; why you can't use published performance metrics to compare one railroad to another.

Week ending March 14
Canadian National shares shed 7% last week, continuing a downward drift that could be traced as far back as April, 2024. All of which proves once again that railroading is indeed an outdoor sport, and CN has the playbook to deal with it. Scott Group spoke with an electric utility about current coal demand, rail service, and rail pricing trends. Coal burn for this utility declined in both 2023 and 2024 because of mild weather and fairly low natural gas prices.

Week ending March 7
Tariffs, cost-cutting at support agencies, and new not-well-thought decrees from the incoming executive mob in DC have the potential to cut deeply into railroad revenue unit counts ad revenues; some examples from the AAR STCC list. Charts and commentary that reflect not only current trends but also likely direction from here. CN and IANR tie the knot.

Week ending February 28
BNSF 4Q2025 revenue units increased 7% to 2.5 million with consumer products (intermodal and automotive) up 14% mainly on intermodal. Industrial products and ag-related carloads increased a point and change. Freight revenue dipped a point to $6 billion. System RPU drifted south 7% mainly on intermodal pricing and 20% lower FSC collections. Patriot forms partnership with trainload operator Commtrex; Tom Tisa has left CSX and is now Patriot's Chief Commercial Officer.

Week ending February 21
Week 7 carload commodity report; how to use in finding additional carloads for new and existing customers. UP aggregates example. Table. Using ASI/Transmatch carload volume charts — the importance of "cyclical" commodities; CSX chemicals example.

Week ending February 14
Week 7 carload commodity report; how to use in finding additional carloads for new and existing customers. UP aggregates example. Table. Using ASI/Transmatch carload volume charts — the importance of "cyclical" commodities; CSX chemicals example.

Week ending February 7
Why I write Week in Review; the target audience and intended benefits to readers. A review of business cycles and why railroad owners and operators need to pay attention. The relationship between and among railroad performance, business cycles, and railroad share prices on the stock market.

Week ending January 31
Norfolk Southern's 4Q2024 car-count and revenue results needle didn't move much year-over-year. But dig into the financials and some of the finer measures and you'll come away not a little impressed. Canadian Pacific checked in with freight revenues of $C3.8 billion, up 3%, on 1.1 million revenue units, down 4%; Keith Creel's confidence in the stability of U.S.-Mexico trade relations. Canadian National operating income came down 11% to $C1.6 billion due to revenue units down 5% to 1.3 million and freight revenue off 3% to $C4.2 billion.

Week ending January 24
Union Pacific's 4Q2024 results show what can be done when you pay more attention to running the railroad than you do making the numbers look right. CSX was next up — my overall impression was they were bit on the defensive side. A conversation with Chat GPT about the future of coal as a source of electricity to met the increasing demands of technology in general and AI in particular; railroad implications.

Week ending January 17
Why railroad Key Performance Indicators are better predictors of future volumes than management comments and PDFs; Chat GPT as a speech writer. How charts of revenue unit volumes track charts of share prices. Share prices as leading indicators of future volume growth.

Week ending January 10
Western Pennsylvania's Carload Express has asked the STB for approval to acquire the Maryland & Delaware short line; key to this transaction is the extant Carload-NS lease that connects the three MDDE properties, Registration now open for Michigan State University/Center for Railway Research & Education's (CRRE) flagship Railway Management Certificate Program (RMCP); program is particularly beneficial in nurturing a "greenhouse of talent" for ongoing organizational "bench strength." Having a strong chemicals franchise can be quite worthwhile; the STCC 28 category is very inclusive, including everything from fertilizers to plastics and propane. Class I volume chart.

Week ending January 3
The steam locomotive is a marvelous magnet for attracting ordinary citizens trackside to show what the railroad is, was, and can be. How UP, CPKC, NSC (no more, alas) do it. Reading & Northern Iron Horse Rambles. How short lines continue to show what the railroad is and can be. It looks like the politicization of the FRA may at last be over: David Fink has been tapped by the incoming administration to head up the agency.

THE BLANCHARD COMPANY
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Roy Blanchard, rblanchard@rblanchard.com
Laura Blanchard, lblanchard@rblanchard.com