EAST PALESTINE — Norfolk Southern fired back at Ancora, the activist group attempting a takeover of the railroad, by filing a presentation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that addressed “the flawed assumptions of Ancora’s highly unrealistic near-term financial targets,” and defended its response to last year’s train derailment in East Palestine.

It was the latest in a back-and-forth between NS and Ancora, setting the stage for a showdown at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on May 9 in Atlanta.

Last week, Ancora, which holds 928,921 shares of NS common stock and a $1 billion stake in the company and is months into a proxy battle with the current NS board, released a presentation criticizing the actions taken by the railroad before and after the derailment. Ancora accused Norfolk Southern of not prioritizing safety and not doing enough to “make it right” in East Palestine in the wake of the rail disaster.

In its filing with the SEC, Norfolk Southern countered those accusations, stating that prior to East Palestine, NS and its competitor, CSX, had comparable safety records while maintaining that no action or inaction on the part of its board or CEO Alan Shaw led to derailment, though NS did acknowledge the heavy impact the accident has had.

“The East Palestine incident was not due to bad management or inattention to safety. It was a wheel bearing that overheated on a railcar NS doesn’t own,” the filing said. “To put this incident into context, it could have happened to any of our peers. The board and management acted decisively and appropriately. There was no violation of NS’s safety protocols, but the consequences were still significant.”

Aside from forcing East Palestine residents from their homes and leaving a cloud of lingering health concerns over the village and surrounding communities, cleanup of the derailment has cost NS over $1 billion so far. The railroad also faces a slew of lawsuits, including legal action filed by the state of Ohio and the federal government. On April 9, Norfolk Southern agreed to a principal $600 million agreement to settle a class action lawsuit with plaintiffs impacted by the derailment. Meanwhile, the railroad has donated more than $105 million back to the community, including $20 million directly to area families.

Norfolk Southern used the presentation to emphasize its overhauling of safety standards since the derailment and what it called “enhanced safety initiatives and community engagement that has rebuilt trust and credibility.

Though criticized by Ancora and some residents for not doing enough in the wake of the derailment, Norfolk Southern has made notable investments towards safety following Feb. 3, 2023, according to a news release sent by the company.

Norfolk Southern announced a six-point safety plan in March just days after the National Travel and Safety Board’s preliminary report pointed to the overheated wheel bearing as the likely cause. The points of the plan focused on changes that could prevent a similar derailment. It promised to add more hot bearing detectors (wayside devices that measure ambivalent heat of things like wheel bearings), pilot the next-generation of “multi-scan” hot bearing detectors, work with the industry to re-evaluate temperature thresholds and fast track the Digital Train Inspection (DTI) program that uses machine vision, algorithms and artificial intelligence to identify defects much more effectively than traditional human inspection.

The first DTI portal was deployed in Leetonia last year. The portal, which resembles a modern highway tollbooth housed in a tunnel-like structure with high-powered stadium lighting, uses 38 high-resolution cameras to capture over 1,000 images of each rail car from different angles for a full 360-degree view while the train is at full speed. Those images are then analyzed by AI.

The railroad plans to install 17 portals along its nearly 19,000-miles of track — one every thousand miles or less – by early 2025. Norfolk Southern has already added 250 wayside detectors to its network, making space between one detector to the next less than 13.9 miles apart.

The six-point plan also “supported a strong safety culture” by announcing NS as the first among its peers to join the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Confidential Close Call Reporting System which encourages railroad employees to confidentially report instances they consider to be “close calls”.

In addition to the six-point safety plan, the filed presentation also underlined its hiring of an outside firm to conduct an independent review of the company’s safety culture following the derailment, and made note of “implemented enhanced employee training”.

Not highlighted in the presentation is the significant investments the railroad has made toward improving response to derailments — particularly ones that involve hazardous cargo like what was spilled in East Palestine. A regional first responder training center, which will be based in East Palestine and offer specialized training in the derailment of chemical trains, is currently in the design phase. The center is expected to be under construction in the coming months and will be funded by a $25 million endowment from Norfolk Southern.