PSR on CSX Chicago Line in Northern Indiana

In June of 1999 the face of railroading in the East changed overnight. It has now been over twenty years since CSX and Norfolk Southern split up Conrail and began operating their respective shares.

And after Hunter Harrison’s arrival at CSX in early 2017 with his Precision Scheduled Railroading, or PSR, railroad operations on CSX have undergone the most significant change since the Conrail split. Trains have grown much longer, distributed power is now common on all of CSX’s main lines, seven of CSX’s twelve hump classification yards have had their humps closed, and the track has been removed in some of these yards. One can even see three mile long, two hundred and fifty car trains at many places throughout the CSX system. And, as we will see, the train count through here is down considerably since before Harrison’s arrival.

This program shows the changes in operations on CSX’s busiest main line – their Chicago Line – on the Garret Subdivision in northern Indiana in October of 2019. There have many changes since our last look at this busy line across northern Indiana in 2010. And Canadian Pacific still runs a pair of Montreal or Toronto to Chicago intermodal trains across northern Indiana on CSX’s Garrett Sub.