This year will be another disappointing one for freight rail carriers hauling fewer carloads of coal and natural-gas drilling supplies through southwestern Pennsylvania.

For more than a year now, prolonged downturns in the coal, oil and steel industries have meant much less traffic on freight railroads.

Working in or around Conway Terminal, the sprawling testament to the might of the U.S. freight railroad system, it might be easy to forget the storm of troubles brewing at Norfolk Southern Corp.