Norfolk Southern (NSC) FY2025 results: revenue $12.2 billion, up 0.5% on the year

Norfolk Southern owns a major freight railroad, Norfolk Southern Railway Company, carrying raw materials, intermediate products and finished goods mainly in the Southeast, East and Midwest, and reaching the rest of the country by interchange with other rail carriers. It also moves overseas freight through several Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports, and describes its intermodal network as the most extensive in the eastern half of the country. The company is based in Atlanta, Georgia and was incorporated in Virginia on 23 July 1980.

Being acquired by Union Pacific

On 28 July 2025 the company entered a merger agreement with Union Pacific and two of its subsidiaries. Union Pacific would acquire the company in a stock-and-cash transaction: the first merger folds a Union Pacific subsidiary into Norfolk Southern, leaving Norfolk Southern as a wholly owned subsidiary, and the second merges Norfolk Southern into a second Union Pacific subsidiary. Each Norfolk Southern share would convert into one Union Pacific share plus $88.82 in cash. Completion requires approvals including the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, and if the agreement is terminated in specified circumstances either side may owe a termination fee of $2.5 billion.

The network

At the end of 2025 the railroad operated approximately 19,100 route miles in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Counting every kind of track, it owned 27,607 miles and operated another 7,352 under lease, contract or trackage rights, 34,959 in total. The heaviest freight corridors are New York City to Chicago via Allentown and Pittsburgh, Chicago to Macon via Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Atlanta, central Ohio to Norfolk via Columbus and Roanoke, Birmingham to Meridian, and Cleveland to Kansas City. The system reaches manufacturing plants, electricity generating stations, mines, distribution centres, transload facilities and other businesses in its territory. Freight trains also run over lines carrying Amtrak and commuter services, including track owned or leased by Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, Metro-North, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority and the Michigan Department of Transportation.

What it carries

Traffic is reported in three groups. Merchandise covers agriculture, forest and consumer products, chemicals, metals and construction, and automotive; it carried 2,313.2 thousand units in 2025, up 2 percent, with automotive up 7 percent and chemicals up 6 percent. Intermodal is the largest single group by volume at 4,055.0 thousand units. Coal is the third group.

Track and equipment

During 2025 the railroad installed 479 track miles of rail, surfaced 4,061 miles of track and installed 2.0 million crossties. Of the 16,200 route miles it dispatches, 10,300 carry signals: 8,600 miles under Centralized Traffic Control, 1,700 with automatic block signals and 600 with cab signals, most of them controlled wirelessly through the company's own train control messaging and advanced train control networks. The owned locomotive fleet averaged 30.5 years in service at the end of 2025 and the freight car fleet 24.1 years; 27 locomotives and 1,182 freight cars were retired during the year.

Safety and the Eastern Ohio Incident

Safety is measured internally by accidents, injuries and serious injuries per 200,000 employee-hours, and against the metrics established by the FRA for reportable accidents per million train miles and injuries per 200,000 employee-hours. A Risk Reduction Program covers safety policies and procedures, risk-based hazard management, outreach, technology and work with craft employees, and gives every employee authority to stop work where a risk is not safeguarded. The board has a standing Safety Committee. The filing states that environmental compliance has not materially affected the company's position or results apart from its response to the Eastern Ohio Incident, and that insurance and other recoveries during 2025 exceeded the incremental expenses of resolving matters arising from it.

People and the operating ratio

An average of 19,400 people were employed during 2025 and 19,300 at the year end. Approximately 80 percent of railroad employees are craft employees covered by collective bargaining agreements with various unions, and the rest are management. The company reported an operating ratio, which it defines as the share of operating revenues consumed by operating expenses, of 64.2 percent for 2025, or 65.0 percent adjusted. It also notes that the comparison with 2024 was affected by the absence of $433 million of gains on sales of railway lines recorded in that year.

From Norfolk Southern's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025. The filing

Written from the 10-K filed 9 February 2026: read the full 10-K.