CSX review

There was an AP article on our business page the other day that federal railroad officials found more than 3,500 problems with CSX Corp. railroad properties in 23 states. The study was done following a series of accidents involving the company's trains.

To quote the AP:

The Federal Railroad Administration's inspection, conducted over four days in January after a derailment on Jan 16 in East Rochester, N.Y., recommended that CSX be fined for 199 violations, including failure to replace defective rails, failure to make repairs and improper handling of hazardous materials.

Joseph Boardman, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, said in a prepared statement that CSX ''is still not doing enough to make safety a top priority.''

The agency's inspectors, he said, ''identified problems in every area of the company's safety performance, including track, hazardous materials and on-track equipment.''

... CSX, in a prepared statement, said it would ''continue to work closely and promptly'' with federal railroad officials to solve the issues identified. The company said its safety record has been improving with an overall 24 percent reduction in train accidents last year.

Last week, Michael Ward, CSX's chief executive, told analysts that the railroad operator won't cut down on spending, especially on projects related to safety, to improve cash flow.

''That's something we won't even consider,'' Ward told analysts at the JP Morgan Aviation & Transportation Conference in New York.

Naturally, I called the FRA to get a list of problems in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. A spokesman for the agency said the state-specific list is not ready yet. And, in an e-mail, he issued a bit of a disclaimer regarding the situation.

“Please note that the 199 violations recommended for civil penalties are presently being reviewed by the FRA regional offices and headquarters staff for technical and legal sufficiency before being transmitted to CSX — in other words, they are not yet official violations in the technical, legal sense,” he wrote.

The reason this interests me is because back about eight years ago, I was involved in coverage of something similar around here. As some may recall, the CSX track along the Ohio River from Huntington to Parkersburg had several derailments. In checking our archives, I found a reference to six derailments between Huntington and Point Pleasant in a 14-month span, and there were other derailments beyond Point Pleasant.

Eventually, CSX invested $20 million or more in replacing several miles of track. Some of the rail along the river weighed only 112 to 115 pounds per yard. It was replaced with 136-pound-per-yard rail.

If there have been any problems on the Ohio River track since the new rail was installed, they must have been minor ones, because I can’t remember them.