CPKC's IT consolidation jammed its network — the STB demanded a fix plan

Canadian Pacific Kansas City — the 2023 merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern linking Canada, the US and Mexico — switched its US information-technology systems over on 3 May 2025. The railroad quickly ran into trouble: it could not maintain accurate car inventories or up-to-date railcar locations, and interchange data for cars delivered at legacy-KCS locations required extensive manual rework.

Because the data was wrong, the necessary work orders could not be created until records were reworked by hand; railcars piled up in classification yards, dwell times rose, train speeds fell, and customers reported elevated delays, missed switches and congestion — a feedback loop that made locating individual cars routed to customer facilities harder still. On 17 June the Surface Transportation Board wrote to CPKC citing its own oversight data, and on 20 June the railroad filed a Service Action Plan.

The plan centres on updating inventory data so operating personnel and customers can generate waybills and restore network fluidity. CPKC said it was 'too early to offer firm predictions' for a full return to service but expected operations to be fixed by mid-July.

Higher dwell times, slower velocity, missed switches and congestion across the legacy-KCS network since 3 May; STB oversight letter and action plan required

The cutover merged two railroads' operating data without a working path for legacy-KCS interchange records, which needed extensive rework.

Inaccurate car locations blocked work-order creation, so processing fell back on manual data repair.

Yard congestion from unprocessable cars fed on itself, driving up dwell times and burning extra locomotive and crew resources.

Conditions deteriorated enough that the STB intervened on its own data within six weeks of the switchover.

Merger integration is not done until the data merges: railroads run on accurate car locations, and one bad cutover can congest a three-country network.

CPKC told the STB its two-track remedy — updating inventory data and restoring network fluidity — was largely implemented, with service expected fixed around mid-July 2025; it cautioned that firm predictions on timing were premature.