(Reuters) - Norfolk Southern ( NSC ) has named former Canadian National Railway CEO Claude Mongeau as the new chair of its board, effective immediately, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

A veteran railroad executive, Mongeau has been on Norflok's board since 2019 and replaces previous board chair Amy Miles, who shareholders ousted earlier this month.

The Atlanta-Georgia-based freight railroad also saw off an activist investor campaign led by hedge fund Ancora Holdings at the same shareholder meeting earlier in May, winning 10 of 13 seats on the board.

Mongeau has previously served in various executive positions at Canadian National, where he drove a customer-centric PSR (precision scheduled railroading) approach.

There is an "urgency around enhancing service, improving network operations, and broad-based productivity gains to close the gap with our peers," he said in statement.

The company last week agreed to pay $15 million in civil penalties and $57.1 million in past government cleanup costs, related to its derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, in February last year, taking the total charges around derailment to $1.7 billion.

(Reporting by Abhinav Parmar in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Tasim Zahid)