It's Thanksgiving and CSX is moving!

NS is working.  We had just sat down for our Thanksgiving dinner at 3PM when my son was called for a 5PM UPS intermodal.

Curt

Thanksgiving wasn’t a systemwide holiday. 

Christmas day last year was.

We only have about 15 crew working today, and about 10 off tomorrow 

I thought it was the dispatcher who "herd"s trains?

Jon

I thought it was the dispatcher who "herd"s trains?

Nah, herd it on the grape vine!

When I was a railroad employee (1972 - 1987; GM&O/ICG), nothing stopped the trains from moving. Not Xmas, not T'giving, not anything. RR's were 24/7/365 enterprises, like the power company. Years later, after I left the RR, I was talking to an L&N engineer and he mentioned being "shut down for Xmas". I was shocked.

This "shut it down for holidays" RR business is a new thing, in the long view. 

D500,

The L&N shutting down for Christmas goes back to the seventies. Channel 5 interviewed Colonel Phil Hooper, who was a high L&N official in Nashville. TN. I do not remember his exact title, but he represented L&N to the local press whenever the need arose. Anyway, he announced on Channel 5 during that interview that L&N would be closed for Christmas in about 1973 or 74 and that this shut down had been worked out with the railroads they interchanged with.

NS must of ran everything they could put to the rails on the Pittsburgh mainline Thanksgiving. Even outlawed a PP&L Coal train west of Mifflin. I never understood there reasoning to have to move coal on either holiday unless maybe there was a boat waiting for it. But a coal train to a power plant that has months of coal reserves piled up shows just how little they think about the people that works for them. I was one of them.

I thought it took at least 20 trains to make a herd. My favorite is a "murder" of crows.