CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

and the Canadian provinces of

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

and

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. The company operates as the leading subsidiary of

CSX Corporation CSX Corporation is an American holding company focused on rail transportation and real estate in North America, among other industries. The company was established in 1980 as part of the Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries merger. ...

, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in

Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...

. CSX Corporation (the parent of CSX Transportation) was formed in 1980 from the merger of

Chessie System Chessie System, Inc. was a holding company that owned the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the Western Maryland Railway (WM), and Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad (B&OCT). Trains operated unde ...

and

Seaboard Coast Line Industries Seaboard Coast Line Industries, Inc., incorporated in Delaware on May 9, 1969, was a railroad holding company that owned the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, its subsidiary Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and several smaller carriers. Its railroa ...

, two holding companies which controlled a number of railroads operating in the Eastern United States. Initially only a holding company itself, the subsidiaries that made up CSX Corporation were gradually merged, with this process completed in 1987. CSX Transportation formally came into existence in 1986, as the successor of

Seaboard System Railroad The Seaboard System Railroad, Inc. was a US Class I railroad that operated from 1982 to 1986. Since the late 1960s, Seaboard Coast Line Industries had operated the Seaboard Coast Line and its sister railroads—notably the Louisville & Nashv ...

. In 1999, CSX Transportation acquired approximately half of Conrail, in a joint purchase with competitor Norfolk Southern Railway. Later, in 2022, it acquired

Pan Am Railways Pan Am Railways, Inc. (PAR) is a subsidiary of CSX Corporation that operates Class II regional railroads covering northern New England from Mattawamkeag, Maine, to Rotterdam Junction, New York. Pan Am Railways is primarily made up of former Cla ...

, extending its reach into much of Northern New England. CSX and its chief competitor, the Norfolk Southern Railway, have a duopoly on the transcontinental freight rail lines in the

Northeastern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...

and Southern United States (

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

and East South Central states).

History

Early years

CSX Corporation was formed on November 1, 1980, as a merger between

and

The name came about during merger talks between Chessie System and SCL, commonly called "Chessie" and "Seaboard". The company chairmen said it was important for the new name to include neither of those names because it was a partnership. Employees were asked for suggestions, most of which consisted of combinations of the initials. At the same time a temporary shorthand name was needed for discussions with the Interstate Commerce Commission. "CSC" was chosen but belonged to a trucking company in

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. "CSM" (for "Chessie-Seaboard Merger") was also taken. The lawyers decided to use "CSX", and the name stuck. In the public announcement, it was said that "CSX is singularly appropriate. C can stand for Chessie, S for Seaboard, and X, which actually has no meaning." However, an August 9, 2016, article on the ''Railway Age'' website stated that " ... the 'X' was for 'Consolidated' ". A fourth letter had to be added to CSX when used as a

reporting mark A reporting mark is a code used to identify owners or lessees of rolling stock and other equipment used on certain rail transport networks. The code typically reflects the name or identifying number of the owner, lessee, or operator of the equip ...

because reporting marks that end in X means that the car is owned by a leasing company or private car owner. The originator of SCL was the former

Seaboard Air Line Railroad The Seaboard Air Line Railroad , which styled itself "The Route of Courteous Service," was an American railroad which existed from April 14, 1900, until July 1, 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, t ...

, which previously merged with the

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was a United States Class I railroad formed in 1900, though predecessor railroads had used the ACL brand since 1871. In 1967 it merged with long-time rival Seaboard Air Line Railroad to form the Seaboard Coast L ...

in 1967 to form the

Seaboard Coast Line The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad was a Class I railroad company operating in the Southeastern United States beginning in 1967. Its passenger operations were taken over by Amtrak in 1971. Eventually, the railroad was merged with its affiliate lin ...

. In later years, it merged with the

Louisville & Nashville Railroad The Louisville and Nashville Railroad , commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States. Chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1850, the road grew into one of the ...

, as well as several smaller subsidiaries such as the

Clinchfield Railroad The Clinchfield Railroad was an operating and holding company for the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway . The line ran from the coalfields of Virginia and Elkhorn City, Kentucky, to the textile mills of South Carolina. The 35-mile segmen ...

Atlanta & West Point Railroad The Atlanta and West Point Rail Road was a railroad in the U.S. state of Georgia, forming the east portion of the Atlanta- Selma West Point Route. The company was chartered in 1847 as the Atlanta and LaGrange Rail Road and renamed in 1857; constr ...

Monon Railroad The Monon Railroad , also known as the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railway from 1897 to 1971, was an American railroad that operated almost entirely within the state of Indiana. The Monon was merged into the Louisville and Nashville Ra ...

and the

Georgia Railroad Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. From the late 1970s onward, these railroads were known collectively as the Family Lines. In 1982, they were merged into a single railroad, the

. The origin of the

was the former

Chesapeake & Ohio Railway The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway was a Class I railroad formed in 1869 in Virginia from several smaller Virginia railroads begun in the 19th century. Led by industrialist Collis P. Huntington, it reached from Virginia's capital city of Richmond t ...

, which had merged with the

Baltimore & Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. Merchants from Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the construction of ...

, and the

Western Maryland Railway The Western Maryland Railway was an American Class I railroad (1852–1983) which operated in Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. It was primarily a coal hauling and freight railroad, with a small passenger train operation. The WM beca ...

. Despite the merger in 1980, CSX was a

paper railroad In the United States, a paper railroad is a company in the railroad business that exists "on paper only": as a legal entity which does not own any track, locomotives, or rolling stock. In the early days of railroad construction, paper railroads h ...

(meaning no CSX painted locomotives or rolling stock) until 1986. In that year, Seaboard System changed its name to CSX Transportation. On April 30, 1987, the B&O merged into the C&O. With the Western Maryland having already merged into the C&O, this left the C&O as the sole operating railroad under the Chessie System banner. Finally, on August 31, 1987, C&O/Chessie System merged into CSX Transportation, bringing all of the major CSX railroads under one banner.

Conrail acquisition

On June 23, 1997, CSX and Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) filed a joint application with the Surface Transportation Board for authority to purchase, divide, and operate the assets of the Conrail, which had been created in 1976 by bringing together several ailing

railway systems into a

government-owned corporation A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the governmen ...

. On June 6, 1998, the STB approved the CSX–NS application and set August 22, 1998, as the effective date of its decision. CSX acquired 42 percent of Conrail's assets, and NS received the remaining 58 percent. As a result of the transaction, CSX's rail operations grew to include some of the Conrail system (predominantly lines that had belonged to the former

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Mid ...

). CSX began operating its trains on its portion of the Conrail network on June 1, 1999. CSX now serves much of the

, with a few routes into nearby Canadian cities. In actuality, not all of Conrail was eliminated. There were a few parts of Conrail that both CSX and NS wanted, and neither wanted to allow the other to have total control over. Those small pieces remained owned by the renamed "Conrail Shared Assets," (later "

Conrail Shared Assets Operations Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO) is the commonly used name for modern-day Conrail ( reporting mark CRCX), an American railroad company. It operates three networks, the North Jersey, South Jersey/Philadelphia, and Detroit Shared Assets Area ...

") so that the pieces were effectively owned and operated by a separate railroad owned by both railroads, thus neither railroad would control those pieces.

Into the 21st century

The company introduced its current slogan, "How Tomorrow Moves", in 2008. In 2014, Canadian Pacific Railway approached CSX with an offer to merge the two companies, but CSX declined, and in 2015 Canadian Pacific made an attempt to purchase and merge with

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

, but NS declined to do so as well. In 2017, CSX announced Hunter Harrison would become its new chief executive officer; a settlement with activist investor Paul Hilal and Mantle Ridge. CSX added five new directors to their board, including Harrison and Mantle Ridge founder Paul Hilal. Mantle Ridge owns 4.9% of CSX. Harrison quickly moved to convert CSX rail operations to

precision railroading Precision railroading or precision scheduled railroading (PSR) is a concept in freight railroad operations pioneered by E. Hunter Harrison in 1993, and adopted by nearly every North American Class I railroad. It shifts the focus from older pract ...

. On December 14, 2017, CSX announced that Hunter Harrison was on medical leave. Two days after the announcement, Harrison died, one day after being hospitalized for complications of an ongoing illness. CSX initially saw a 10% drop in its stock price, but turned around to hit a new 52-week high less than a month later (January 2018). Harrison's successors have continued the shift to precision railroading, with most

hump yards A classification yard ( American and Canadian English ( Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English ( Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railwa ...

converted to flat yards, low volume shipping lanes eliminated and reductions in rolling stock and work force.

Pan Am Railways acquisition

On November 30, 2020, CSX Transportation's parent company CSX Corporation announced on social media that they had come to an agreement with Pan Am Systems to purchase

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

based Class II

, pending regulatory approval from the Surface Transportation Board. The STB approved the purchase on April 14, 2022. As part of the acquisition, Norfolk Southern Railway will gain trackage rights over several CSX lines, and

Pan Am Southern Pan Am Southern, LLC is a freight railroad jointly owned by Norfolk Southern Railway (NS) and CSX Corporation subsidiary Pan Am Railways (PAR). After the June 2022 acquisition of PAR by CSX, PAS will be independently operated by the Berkshire ...

, 50 percent owned by Pan Am Railways, will be operated by the Berkshire and Eastern Railroad, a new

Genesee & Wyoming Genesee & Wyoming Inc. (G&W) is an American short line railroad holding company, that owns or maintains an interest in 122 railroads in the United States, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom and formerly Australia. It operates ...

subsidiary formed explicitly for this purpose. CSX completed the purchase on June 1, 2022.

Unit trains

CSX operated the Juice Train which consisted of

Tropicana Tropicana may refer to: Companies *Tropicana Entertainment, a former casino company that owned several Tropicana-branded casinos *Tropicana Products, a Chicago-based food company known for orange juice Hotels and nightclubs *Tropicana Casino & Re ...

cars that carried fresh

orange juice Orange juice is a liquid extract of the orange tree fruit, produced by squeezing or reaming oranges. It comes in several different varieties, including blood orange, navel oranges, valencia orange, clementine, and tangerine. As well as vari ...

between Bradenton, Florida, and the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey. The northbound train was originally designated on CSX as K650 during the 1990s, and Q740 in the 2000s. The Juice Train has previously been studied as a model of efficient rail transportation that can compete with trucks and other modes in the perishable-goods trade. The train was abolished in 2017 north of

Tampa, Florida Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...

, and now mixed freight trains deliver the cars to their respective destinations. It still operates between Bradenton and Tampa however, but is designated as local O823.

CSX operates Coke Express

unit train A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are dist ...

s. They carry coke for

steelmaking Steelmaking is the process of producing steel from iron ore and carbon/or scrap. In steelmaking, impurities such as nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur and excess carbon (the most important impurity) are removed from the sourced iron, and alloy ...

, power generation and other various uses, running between

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and other places in the

Rust Belt The Rust Belt is a region of the United States that experienced industrial decline starting in the 1950s. The U.S. manufacturing sector as a percentage of the U.S. GDP peaked in 1953 and has been in decline since, impacting certain regions an ...

Locomotives

CSX has rebuilt a significant number of locomotives. Some of the EMD GP38-2, GP40-2, and SD40-2 have been rebuilt to Dash 3 standards with updated Wabtec Electronically Controlled Air Brakes, air conditioning, automated starting controls, a crash safe cab, a new electronic control stand, and Positive Train Control (PTC). In 2019, 25 SD70AC locomotives were rebuilt at the CSX Huntington Heavy Repair Facility, with rebuilt prime movers, in-cab electronic and comfort improvements, New York Air Brake CCB II airbrake systems, and new Mitsubishi drive controls. CSX has also partnered with

Wabtec Wabtec Corporation (derived from Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation) is an American company formed by the merger of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) and MotivePower Industries Corporation in 1999. It is headquartered ...

to rebuild GE locomotives at their Fort Worth facility with prime movers upgraded to the FDL Advantage spec and new electronic controls such as the Wabtec Trip Optimizer Zero-to-Zero system. CSX has also obtained a few

EMD F40PH The EMD F40PH is a four-axle B-B diesel-electric locomotive built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division in several variants from 1975 to 1992. Intended for use on Amtrak's short-haul passenger routes, it became the backbone of Amtrak's ...

-2s—nos. 9992, 9993, 9998, and 9999 (All locomotives except 9999 have been renumbered to CSX 1, 2, and 3 and were repainted into a heritage Baltimore and Ohio Railroad scheme)—that were retired from

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

for executive office car service and geometry trains. Another locomotive, ex-MARC GP40WH-2 no. 9969 was acquired for the same purpose. With the arrival of Hunter Harrison, CSX has begun to store many locomotives. By the end of 2017, CSX plans to store or retire all of the GE CW40-8, CW40-9, CW60AC, CW60AH, CW46AH, EMD SD50, SD50-2, SD50-3, SD60, SD60M, SD60I, SD70M, SD70AC, and SD70AE (SD70ACe) units. Most of the GE C40-8, B40-8, and B20-8 units stored in Corbin, Kentucky, have already been retired and sold off. Even with the passing of Harrison, his replacement, James Foote, confirmed the locomotives would still be retired. CSX ordered ten SD70ACe-T4s in August 2018, which were delivered in July the following year. They are classified as ST70AHs. CSX also has a contract with Wabtec for modernizing their fleet of CW44s. The modernized locomotives, nearly thirty in number as of June 2020, are being classified as CM44AC. On April 30, 2019, CSX unveiled locomotives 911 and 1776, two locomotives created to honor the first responders and veterans. Another special unit, CSX 3194, was unveiled on August 22, 2019, in honor of the law enforcement.

Safety

Because of

Ross Rowland Ross E. Rowland, Jr. (born 1940) is a figure in United States railroad historic preservation, preservation. He has run public and demonstration excursions on existing railroads utilizing steam locomotives. Steam Excursion Career Ross Rowland b ...

running

Chesapeake and Ohio 614 Chesapeake & Ohio 614 is a class "J-3-A" 4-8-4 " Greenbrier" (Northern) type steam locomotive built in June 1948 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) as a member of the J-3-A class. As one of th ...

above the speed limits, in 1995, CSX started a new

liability insurance Liability insurance (also called third-party insurance) is a part of the general insurance system of risk financing to protect the purchaser (the "insured") from the risks of liabilities imposed by lawsuits and similar claims and protects the in ...

requirement of $200 million to introduce their official policy, "no steam on its own wheels", banning the operation of steam locomotives and other antique rail equipment on their trackage due to safety concerns, and increased risk.

List of accidents and incidents

*1986

Miamisburg, Ohio Miamisburg ( ) is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio. The population was 20,181 at the time of the 2010 census. A suburb of Dayton. It is part of the Dayton metropolitan area. Miamisburg is known for its large industry (mainly for its nuclea ...

, train derailment *1993 Big Bayou Canot train wreck * 1996 Maryland train collision *199
Train collision kills 1 in West Virginia
*2000 Tennga, Georgia bus–train collision. 3 killed, 4 injured *2001

CSX 8888 incident The CSX 8888 incident, also known as the Crazy Eights incident, was a runaway train event involving a CSX Transportation freight train in the U.S. state of Ohio on May 15, 2001. Locomotive #8888, an, was pulling a train of 47 cars, including some ...

, 1 minor injury. This was the inspiration for the 2010 action film ''

Unstoppable Unstoppable may refer to: Film and television * Unstoppable (2004 film), ''Unstoppable'' (2004 film), an American film directed by David Carson * ''Unstoppable: Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis'', a 2005 America ...

'' *2001

Howard Street Tunnel fire The Howard Street Tunnel fire (also known as the Baltimore Freight Rail Crash) was a 60-car CSX Transportation freight train derailment that occurred in the Howard Street Tunnel, a freight through-route tunnel under Howard Street (Baltimore), How ...

*2007 Brooks derailment *2011 Mineral Springs, North Carolina, train wreck-fire involving 2 (Union Pacific) units and its train of fuel tankers at the back, 2 killed *2012 Ellicott City, Maryland, train derailment, two killed *2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment *2014 ''Midnight Rider'' train incident *

2015 Mount Carbon train derailment The 2015 Mount Carbon train derailment refers to a derailment in Mount Carbon, West Virginia, on February 16, 2015, which involved a CSX Transportation train hauling 107 tank cars of crude oil from North Dakota to Virginia. It resulted in a larg ...

* 2015 Tennessee train derailment *2017 Biloxi collision with tour bus stuck on tracks, 4 killed 44 injured *2017

Crawford County Crawford County is the name of eleven counties in the United States: * Crawford County, Arkansas * Crawford County, Georgia * Crawford County, Illinois * Crawford County, Indiana * Crawford County, Iowa * Crawford County, Kansas * Crawford Count ...

train derailment, 21 cars derailed, no injuries *2017 Pittsburgh suburb coal cars derailment *2017 Hyndman derailment, chemical release and fire *2017

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

derailment destroys occupied home *2018

Cayce, South Carolina Cayce ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, along the Congaree River. The population was 12,528 at the 2010 census and rose to 13,789 in the 2020 United States Census, and it is the third-most populated municipality in Lexington Coun ...

, train collision involving

Silver Star and a CSX autorack train (Q210-03). 2 dead, 116 injured. *2018

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

– July 21, 2018. CSX Intermodal train from Worcester, Massachusetts, hits a low overpass, causing 12 cars to derail. One car nearly crashed into a car full of toxic chemicals, engineer injured. *2021 Barnsley, Kentucky – December 10, 2021. A

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

strikes & derails a CSX train, several cars thrown uphill including 1 landing on a house.

Major yards

Hump yards

, trains are slowly pushed over a small hill as cars are uncoupled at the crest of the hill and allowed to roll down the hump into the appropriate tracks for outbound trains. *

Avon, Indiana Avon is a town in Washington Township, Hendricks County, Indiana, United States. The population was 21,474 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Indianapolis metropolitan area. History The first settlement at Avon was made around 1830. The fi ...

– Avon Yard *

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...

– Queensgate Yard *

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

– Radnor Yard * Selkirk, New York –

Selkirk Yard Selkirk Yard is a large freight railroad yard located in Selkirk, New York, about south of Albany. The yard is owned by CSX Transportation and is its major classification yard for the northeastern United States and the gateway to points east ...

Waycross, Georgia Waycross is the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Ware County in the U.S. state of Georgia. The population was 14,725 at the 2010 Census and dropped to 13,942 in the 2020 census. Waycross includes two historic districts (Downtown ...

– Rice Yard

References

Bibliography

*
CSX Transportation TimetablesFRA Highway-Rail Crossing Inventory Files

External links