The responsive applications are in + if you were hoping for a quiet autumn, we have bad news for you. David + Harris work through what BNSF, CSX, CPKC, + CN each asked for if the UP–NS merger gets approved + what those asks give away about where the Class Is think the industrial economy is heading. Anyone else have Pennsylvania + the Gulf as the freight rail destinations of 2026?

Then, of course, comes the part nobody could have possibly priced in at the beginning of the year. Diesel is sitting comfortably above six dollars a gallon, WTI is over a hundred, oil inventories are sitting at a 20-year low, + railcars are being retired faster than they can be built.

And finally, Barstow. BNSF is spending BIG money in the middle of the Mojave Desert + Harris went deep into causal diagrams + old Jay Forrester papers to figure out why.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

Harris + David break down the Fourth Edition of the Telegraph Market Consist, out now. What’s inside? Q2 carload volumes came in up 6% against our own forecast of down 5%, so the conversation starts with what the model missed, why chemicals flipped from down 11% last quarter to up 9% this quarter, + what the "Washington Hat Trick" thesis means for the rest of the year.

They also get into what shippers should be thinking about for the upcoming bid season. Namely that every Class I signalled the same thing to investors on their Q2 calls, which we are reading as a 2% to 5% increase across the board this fall. Plus: roughly 35% of the US tank car fleet are out-of-compliance DOT-111s, which comes just as Congress weighs pulling the phase-out forward to December 2028 + subsidising telematics on those same cars.

Download the Q3 2026 Market Consist to follow along with the conversation.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

Harris + David unpack the presentation Harris delivered at MARS + the research behind it. The headline finding: train speed + volume are negatively correlated, which means record service metrics may say more about a thin network than a well-run one.

From there, the conversation turns to the constraints on growth. Is freight rail demand constrained, or is it really that supply is constrained? What happened to service between 2014 + 2024 as the industry chased operating ratio? Why should rail be indexed to industrial production rather than GDP? And what does it mean that, over the past twenty years, every dollar of capital expenditure has been matched by roughly a dollar fifty returned to shareholders?

Slides available on our website www.telegraph.io + on the Telegraph LinkedIn page.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

The headline agreements are largely done. Now it’s time for the fine print.

In our latest episode, David + Harris walk through the revised UP–NS filing + find the numbers moving in one direction: diverted intermodal units revised down, projected job creation revised down, + a plan for job cuts sitting right alongside an advertising campaign promising a “job for life”. As Harris points out, a guarantee that you will have a job is not exactly a guarantee on what or where that job will be.

The conversation also covers CPKC’s Q2 earnings call + their pointed response to the recent UN-CN concessions, as well as committed gateway pricing that comes with an expiration date attached. Plus: the prediction David keeps making that lands very differently inside the industry than outside it - whether or not we will see a US government equity stake in the first modern transcontinental railroad.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

Chicago has always been the bottleneck. CN’s decision to no longer oppose the UP-NS merger comes with better Mexico access for CN, terminal ownership, + a few other perks…but UP gains running rights over the all-important former EJ&E, which is conveniently the fastest way around Chicago. Harris + David unpack what that concession reveals: if the merger needed a bypass bolted onto it, perhaps the merger was never actually going to fix the problems in Chicago in the first place.

Also on the table: Q2 earnings, where volumes are up across the board (though Harris argues the story is being written on the truck side, not the rail side, as capacity exits + rates climb), as well as data centers, the building boom they have unleashed, + how that looks with crews at a seasonal low.

Sinclair called Chicago the Jungle. The stockyards may be long gone, but the congestion remains the same.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

Freight markets always turn. The question, then, is what shippers + carriers should do before that happens. In this episode of “Talk Track”, David is joined by Dr. Angi Acocella, research scientist at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, for a deep dive into how freight cycles actually work.

Angi shares her “Elephants or Goldfish?” research, which is a data-driven look at how shippers + carriers truly behave as markets shift. It's a rare empirically researched answer to a long-standing debate: do relationships in freight actually matter?

The pair also dig into what drives freight cycles, which indicators have proven most reliable, + the question every railroader should be asking: with trucking tightening + rail acting as the relief valve, what does that mean for rail volumes through the rest of 2026? Spoiler: even the brightest minds in freight say predicting the turn is hard.

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

The Surface Transportation Board hit the industry with a surprise May 28th when it suddenly came in with a ruling on the UPNS merger application. In our latest Talk Track episode, Harris + David start unpacking what the filing actually says + how the STB is currently looking like the winner in all this.

They cover the Board’s pretty pointed request for more competitive data, what the further hearings might mean, + how the industry as a whole is starting to position itself - from capital being closely held to contingency plans being made. Alongside all of this, they also turn the conversation towards the Build America 250 surface transportation bill - CRISI grants, telematics investment, + the two-person crew mandate, in particular. Freight railroads are truly a hot topic right now + we expect more headlines to come!

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...

The revised merger filing between Union Pacific + Norfolk Southern has landed on + it grew from roughly 6,800 pages to over 7,000. But do more words on paper actually mean more clarity? On this episode of Talk Track, Harris + David dig into what's really in the updated submission, what's noticeably absent, + whether any of it changes the fundamental calculus around approval.

From regulatory history that shaped today’s STB standards to whether or not this merger is enhancing competition or merely consolidating power, the duo breaks down every angle. The operational logic is sound. End-to-end service, fewer handoffs, better value for shippers - on paper, it all makes sense. But whether those efficiency gains flow to shippers or straight to shareholders is a very different conversation. The politics of this particular moment matter too. This is a deeply political merger in a deeply political environment. Watch closely for the STB’s response in the coming weeks - this merger for the ages story is far from over!

Talk Track, hosted by Harris Ligon + David Correll of Telegraph™, is a spin-off series dedicated to timely rail industry news. From service shakeups to technology breakthroughs, each episode delivers a behind-the-scenes perspective on all the happenings shaping the future of freight rail.

Harris + David will bring their decades of rail experience to help them parse through the latest industry headlines, evolving regulations, + the long-term forecasts for how railroads move freight across North America. Find us at telegraph.io/insights, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

About Our Hosts

Harris Ligon is the co-founder + CEO of Telegraph. Prior to launching Telegraph, he spent nearly 15 years in surface transportation at Uber Freight, Norfolk Southern, + BNSF Railway. During this time, he led teams in operations, strategy, business development, + product development.

David Correll is the Director of Freight Market Intelligence at Telegraph. He has spent two decades in transportation and logistics with the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Clark University.

About Telegraph

Telegraph is a leader in delivering digital solutions to railroads, shippers, logistics service providers, terminals, + railcar leasing companies. With an integrated platform that prov...