From the Editor — Outlook 2023: Here comes the sun?

By Pat Foran, Editor

It’s been rough sledding in Rail Country the past three years. For all the reasons you know. But more than a few rail execs believe brighter days are ahead. Last month, some rail leaders were pinching (in tone, at least) phrases from George Harrison’s song “Here Comes the Sun.” They told us that even though it “seems like years since it’s been clear,” they weren’t expecting a “long, cold lonely winter,” but instead were anticipating “sun, sun, sun, here it comes,” as Managing Editor Jeff Stagl reports in the preface to our annual Outlook coverage. 

Other observers were less than sanguine about the sun coming up anytime soon. At our annual RailTrends® summit, held Nov. 15-16 in New York City, intermodal expert Larry Gross said market share recovery for intermodal had run out of steam. In a Nov. 29 video conversation with Senior Associate Editor Julie Sneider posted on RailPrime, our digital subscription offering, FTR Transportation Intelligence’s Todd Tranausky said he didn’t see carload traffic growth in 2023. And more than a few industry analysts expect work-life balance issues to present rail workforce challenges for the foreseeable future. 

It’d be so much easier for rail execs to default to the noncommittal “cautious optimism” language they tend to offer up this time of year, so their confidence about the year ahead feels genuine. That said, I don’t hear the Harrison song when I listen to some of them talk. Between the lines, I hear this snippet of dialogue from “The Wizard of Oz,” courtesy of the Scarecrow: “Of course, I don’t know, but I think it’ll get darker before it gets lighter.” Here’s hoping I’m mishearing things, and that the sun’s on its way. 

CN gets back (to basics) with Harris 

On Nov. 16, CN President and CEO Tracy Robinson told the RailTrends audience she and her team were “trying to restore the legendary focus on service at CN,” and that priority No. 1 was “getting back to basics with scheduled operations.” 

Turns out part of “getting back” meant luring scheduled railroading expert (and former CN-er) Ed Harris out of retirement. 

On Nov. 28, CN appointed Harris executive vice president and chief operating officer, succeeding Rob Reilly. Harris, who came out of retirement to serve as CSX’s EVP of operations in 2018 before retiring in August 2020, had been working with CN’s operations leadership team since April. He spent 38 years at Illinois Central Railroad and CN and was EVP of operations when he first retired in 2007. Harris also served as Canadian Pacific’s COO from 2010 to 2012. 

I last spoke with Ed just after he’d retired from CSX. “It was a great way to end my Class I career — again,” he said. “Who knows what’s down the road?” Welcome back to the front, Ed.