Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993 TAG: 9306250038
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Daniel Howes
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Norfolk Southern Corp. and a handful of its Roanoke-based executives are teaching Russian railroaders how to run an efficient free-market railroad. That's second nature to NS hands, many of whom have played bit parts in the company's perennial recognition as the nation's leanest railroad.
It began with a call from Drew Lewis, the first Reagan administration secretary of transportation who now heads Union Pacific Corp. Lewis, it turns out, has close ties to the Citizens Democracy Corps, a Bush administration creation intended to lend American business leaders and their know-how to struggling enterprises in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
So with Thanksgiving turkey leftovers still hogging space in the fridge, two NS execs left Roanoke Dec. 1 for what would become a five-month tour in Moscow . . . during a Russian winter.
David Helmer and Tom Hord set up housekeeping in the Hotel Aerostar, a small hotel on the northwest side of the capital near the famous Dynamo soccer stadium. Each day they'd head downtown, ready to lead classes in the art of managing railroads in the global '90s.
"We thought we were going over as BTICs - Big-Time International Consultants," says Helmer, whose German-Russian parents left the motherland before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. "Instead, we were Big-Time International Teachers."
Abandoned was talk of long-range strategic planning or ways to land Western financing to improve the country's deteriorating rail infrastructure. The 150 Russian railroad managers were more interested in Norfolk Southern's take on the arcana of railroading: competition and customers, finance and costing, personnel and marketing.
"You can't knock these people in terms of the railroads," Helmer says, dismissing the very American notion that Russians are "behind us" on this, too. "They knocked off the cabooses long before we did. They were laughing at us" for keeping cabooses long past their usefulness.
"In many cases, they came five and six days by train to meet with us," he continues. "Practically all of these folks were ex-Communist Party members," attesting to their station in the socioeconomic hierarchy.
The Russian railroad, subdivided into 19 smaller regional lines, was the lifeblood of the Soviet economy and its military-industrial complex. Bureaucrats attended special railroad institutes, wore special uniforms, enjoyed special privileges.
They hauled the nation's military from Fortress Soviet to outposts in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Eastern Siberia. Indeed, they move more people than any other rail system in the world.
"They know how to run a railroad," Helmer says admiringly. "But they don't know how to operate a railroad from a managerial perspective. They move goods and people like you've never seen."
Yet, the demise of the empire Lenin and Stalin built with blood and fear has left Russia's railroads in a precarious state:
Diesel locomotives came from Ukraine, now a foreign country with its own currency and a visceral distrust for things and people Russian; passenger cars were built in Latvia, among the first Soviet republics to bolt from the union; electrical locomotives came from Czechoslovakia, first freed from Soviet domination then split asunder.
Meanwhile, the Russian rail fleet ages. Maintenance is deferred; workhorse rolling stock is run and run. Spare parts and replacement units are increasingly hard to come by, and moving goods between former Soviet republics and Russia is problematic.
"Russia's economic future is tied directly to the railroad's viability," Helmer says, trying to explain Norfolk Southern's motivation to spend some $100,000 on the project. "It was, in its entirety, philanthropic," done with "no expectation of one carload of freight."
A senior executive in Norfolk agrees, saying the company also wanted a chance to assess the Russian economy first-hand, to see whether the struggling nation could offer some future business opportunities. "There have been some tentative discussions with some people," concedes Charles W. Moorman, vice president for employee relations, "but nothing I'd call a plan."
The education of the Russians is continuing.
Vladimir Starovoit, the railroad management and training instructor who organized Helmer's Moscow classes, is now in Roanoke to learn more about American railroading, Norfolk Southern-style.
Joined by translator Marina Burkova, he's visited the company's coal export and intermodal operations in Norfolk; he's lunched with the top brass in the executive dining room atop NS headquarters at No. 3 Commercial Place.
He's met with marketing folks and costing experts in Roanoke, some of whom he met in Moscow; there were sessions on claims prevention and environmental protection. Next week comes a firsthand look at the company's new officer orientation program, a tour of its Roanoke car shop and maintenance operations before heading to Atlanta for more meetings.
But first, this weekend, a look at what Roanoke railroaders do when they aren't working: a trip to the City Market, a summer cookout, an outing at Smith Mountain Lake. Sound about right?
Daniel Howes writes about business and political issues for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB