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For Canadian National Railway Co. and CSX Transportation customers, interline price quotes soon will be just a mouse click away. On Jan. 21, the Class Is jointly introduced "A+B Pricing," a Web-based tool designed to provide shippers instantaneous interline prices for carloads moving over the railroads' networks.

To be available soon on each Class I's Web site, the tool will enable railroad account managers to retrieve and combine CN's and CSXT's revenue requirements to quote real-time interline prices for any origin, destination and commodity. Customers would log onto the originating railroad's Web site to request a combined interline price.

"Traditionally, the process of quoting interline prices has been manually intensive and time-consuming," said James Foote, CN executive vice president of sales and marketing, in a prepared statement. "A railroad had to contact the connecting carrier by telephone or email to request a revenue requirement, [which] would result in delays of days, even weeks, in getting the interline price quote to the customer. We needed to change to be more competitive."

CN and CSXT plan to continue working with other Class Is and short lines to expand A+B Pricing coverage later this year.

"Because interline moves comprise more than half of our business, this innovation is anther important step in making our railroads … more focused on our customers' needs than ever before," said Clarence Gooden, CSXT senior vice president-Merchandise Service Group.

For more information on the Class Is' A+B Pricing initiative, see page 48 of Progressive Railroading's December issue.