# When Precision Scheduled Railroading derails



## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

Saw a piece on this morningAug 8th) newscast seeking to find out why Los Angeles dock has 3500 (or was it 35000?) containers waiting to be disbursed. Finger pointing was to Union Pacific and their embrace of PSR ( I remeber reading there were derogatory meanings with those PSR letters). Apparently UP laid off/right sized their work force awhile ago, keeping the shareholders bottom line happy, but now are scrambling to re-hire or train newbies to get more trains moving.

I am sure this forum has beaten PSR in other threads to death. PSR works great IF no equipment failures, all crews are in right place and time, no broken or kinked rails, no signal outages, no snow storms, no rock slides, trains made up and ready to go on time with no last minute add ons/loadings, etc, etc, etc. You are welcome to add to this list of "pinch points".

Like anything, it all looks good on paper until the real world intervenes with above annoyances. When I was in business college I chuckled at the ivory toer proffessors who believed if you crossed every T and dotted the I s, what can go wrong. They should have talked to my dad who was purchasing manager for HJ Heinz company for 40+ years. The tales he could tell about missed dates, missing shipments, parts unavailable to finish project on critical time lines, no matter how many T s or I s were checked..


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## SF Gal (11 mo ago)

Only takes one wrench in the works to screw it all up. Best laid plans of mice and men.


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## Lehigh74 (Sep 25, 2015)

I haven't seen much here on PSR, but the train mags I get don't have anything nice to say about it. There is a commentary in the current issue of Trains magazine that basically says wall street with the quest for the best operating ratio is now running the railroads...and causing supply chain problems.


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## bigdodgetrain (Jun 12, 2015)

rrman987 said:


> Saw a piece on this morningAug 8th) newscast seeking to find out why Los Angeles dock has 3500 (or was it 35000?) containers waiting to be disbursed. Finger pointing was to Union Pacific and their embrace of PSR ( I remeber reading there were derogatory meanings with those PSR letters). Apparently UP laid off/right sized their work force awhile ago, keeping the shareholders bottom line happy, but now are scrambling to re-hire or train newbies to get more trains moving.
> 
> I am sure this forum has beaten PSR in other threads to death. PSR works great IF no equipment failures, all crews are in right place and time, no broken or kinked rails, no signal outages, no snow storms, no rock slides, trains made up and ready to go on time with no last minute add ons/loadings, etc, etc, etc. You are welcome to add to this list of "pinch points".
> 
> Like anything, it all looks good on paper until the real world intervenes with above annoyances. When I was in business college I chuckled at the ivory toer proffessors who believed if you crossed every T and dotted the I s, what can go wrong. They should have talked to my dad who was purchasing manager for HJ Heinz company for 40+ years. The tales he could tell about missed dates, missing shipments, parts unavailable to finish project on critical time lines, no matter how many T s or I s were checked..



the back log is not only los angeles but oakland too one of the reasons the big boy tour was cancelled.

psr was for one thing only, too give the share holders more money.


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## J.Albert1949 (Feb 3, 2018)

The best thing Hunter Harrison (the guy who came up with "PSR") did was... to die early.

Unfortunately, his legacy lives on.

Sooner or later, the railroads will realize that PSR isn't the panacea they've been looking for. Then they'll jettison it for something else...


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## gunrunnerjohn (Nov 10, 2010)

J.Albert1949 said:


> Sooner or later, the railroads will realize that PSR isn't the panacea they've been looking for. Then they'll jettison it for something else...


Sadly, it's likely to be something even worse!


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