From what I saw yesterday UP was keeping trains moving (I witnessed several meets and passes), seemed to be busy and yet staying fluid. Admittedly that was just a small portion of the railroad for just one day. If the terminals and yards get jammed up, then how fluid the mainline is doesn't mean much to the customer waiting for their freight.

Nine years ago I worked for a large shortline as a temp engineer that was in a complete meltdown, which I was told was an annual event. Poor railroad managers have a bad habit of trying to please the customer yelling the loudest. You can't let the customers run the railroad, neither do you just switch "cars" for certain customers. You have to switch the entire yard, sometimes the entire railroad, and often a day or more in advance.

It wasn't that long ago that UP had that hot UPS contract, and melted almost the whole railroad down. At the same time, they were trying to block for as many destinations at Roseville as they had tracks, which doesn't work. Dispatchers were ordered not to delay the hot trains no matter what, so they were sticking trains in sidings far in advance of meets.

Hopefully UP will have elarned their lesson and this extra traffic and profit will not go to their heads. I have seen them investing in the track around here, but other than replacing the signals for PTC there haven't been any obvious capacity additions. Time will tell if UP works smarter to handle the new found traffic and invests enough of the profits back in to maintain its efficiency.