Ancora’s proposed directors, team for Norfolk Southern release safety statement

Ancora Holdings Group, which owns a large equity stake in Norfolk Southern Corporation, announced that its slate of director candidates and suggested management team have issued a statement and released a summarized white paper that includes analysis and recommendations pertaining to the Company’s safety culture. “As proposed directors and executives, we continue to analyze Norfolk Southern’s challenges and opportunities with the focus and intensity of a sitting corporate leadership team. We realize that the most important assets of any railroad are its experienced operators. Conductors, engineers and other workers on the railroad are the essential factor in ensuring safe and productive operations. Today, we are announcing our firm support for a policy that would ensure that every Norfolk Southern train operating on a mainline has a two-person crew. We believe a two-person crew is one of the very best ways to enhance operational safety and empower operators to identify, assess and resolve problems. Under our leadership, we intend to ensure that Norfolk Southern’s mainline trains always have a two-person crew. We recognize that railroads are complex organizations, and railroading is dangerous work. While we appreciate the technological advances that continue to enhance safety and operational performance, safe railroading still relies primarily on human oversight and ingenuity. Crews routinely respond to unusual and unanticipated circumstances that require rapid decisions based on human judgment of many variables. Workers will remain, for the foreseeable future, the bedrock of safe railroad operations.”