Rail traffic down considerabley

I attended a cook out over the Memorial Day holiday and two of the attendees were my niece and her husband who happens to be a conductor for Norfolk Southern Rail Road. He has worked for years on runs all over the state of Pennsylvania and in some cases beyond, so I was surprised when he told me that he had taken a job working in the rail yard. He said that it didn't pay quite as much but that he worked Monday through Friday and had his weekends off which has been a welcome change.

What surprised me even more was that he said that the entire industry is doing very poorly at the moment. He said that the downfall of Detroit and the auto industry has hurt the rail roads greatly. There apparently have been a large number of lay off's in the last several months and the volume of freight being moved by rail is down across the board.

I do most of my rail fan watching on the Conemaugh line a long stretch of which runs along the other side of the river from me. I haven't really noticed a drop off in traffic on that line unless I'm just not paying close enough attention. I have noticed that I am now seeing long strings of hoper cars that carry coal east bound coming back empty during daylight hours. For the last few years I have seen the full cars going east but never any empties so I asked about it and was told that the empties return during the night or very early morning hours. Have any of you noticed a drop in the number of trains you see in your normal travels? Drop me an email or leave a comment for the Rail Fan Net.