60-Hour BNSF Shutdown, CSX Outage Disrupt Week 43 Rail

BNSF’s Southern Transcon, North America’s busiest mainline and intermodal corridor, shut for roughly 60 hours from Saturday, Oct. 24, through the following Tuesday after Laguna, New Mexico, received 8 inches of rain in three days. Laguna averages 10 inches of rain annually, making the late-October total a record for the area.

What did the shutdown do to week 43 rail traffic?

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported 4.3% year-on-year growth in North American rail traffic for week 43. Beneath that headline, U.S. intermodal growth fell sharply below its recent 10% pace.

BNSF’s weekly intermodal volume dropped 0.4% from a year earlier, reversing its 14% gain in the prior week. Union Pacific, which also operates in the West but was unaffected, posted a 17% year-on-year intermodal gain in the same period.

What did CSX’s technology outage interrupt?

CSX’s technology outage began Oct. 27 and ended Oct. 28, lasting nearly 30 hours in the East. The railroad could not call crews, issue train or work orders, or exchange data with other Class 1 railroads, which stopped interchange traffic entirely.

RailState, which monitors rail movements through a network of trackside sensors, measured a 46% plunge in CSX train counts during the outage. Train counts rebounded sharply after the system returned.

A CSX spokesman told Trains Magazine: “CSX says this was not caused by a cyberattack and there was no data breach.” The railroad attributed the failure to a disruption in part of its cloud computing infrastructure and said it was pursuing a comprehensive root cause analysis with technology vendor partners.

Why did container dwell rise at Los Angeles and Long Beach?

The Southern Transcon shutdown created a direct operational feedback loop at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. With the line down, BNSF could neither move loaded containers east nor reposition empty railcars west, compounding container dwell times at both ports.

Speaker B said BNSF would have reopened the line in roughly 24 to 30 hours, but a second wave of heavy rain delayed recovery. That additional rainfall extended the closure to 60 hours.

For shippers, the consequence was longer container stays at the two ports. For forwarders, it was less reliable planning around inland rail capacity, container availability and the return of empties.

How much did fuel surcharges lift third-quarter earnings?

Third-quarter results across the Class 1 railroads combined rising volumes, higher rates and fuel-surcharge revenue. At Norfolk Southern, fuel surcharges accounted for eight percentage points of a 14% revenue increase.

Union Pacific reported revenue growth of 6% excluding fuel surcharges and 15% including them. Its operating ratio came in at 59.1, below 60, while CSX posted 60.9.

Canadian National was the only railroad with flat volume. The company partly attributed that result to deliberate demarketing of lower-margin international intermodal traffic and production disruptions at Canadian coal mines.

The earnings pattern shows how revenue can diverge from traffic. Surcharge-backed revenue lifted Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific while Canadian National’s volume stayed flat. The numbers leave carriers balancing surcharge-backed revenue against the service interruptions exposed in week 43.

Which commodities moved in week 43?

Overall U.S. rail volume rose 3.5% from a year earlier.

• Chemicals and petroleum increased 6.6%, with chemical shipments up 7.9%.
• Motor vehicles and parts rose 9%.
• Coal volume remained flat year over year.
• Agricultural and food products fell 2%, dragged down by an 8.3% decline in grain shipments.

The coming weeks will test whether restored Southern Transcon and CSX capacity can reduce dwell at Los Angeles and Long Beach. With fuel surcharges already driving outsized revenue gains, carriers also face a service-reliability test after two failures that lasted about 60 and nearly 30 hours.