Don Colangelo, Genesee Valley’s ‘Alco doc,’ retires

Man with hard hat in blue shirt, standing in front of shop building

SCRANTON, Pa. — Don Colangelo, the Genesee Valley Transportation vice president, mechanical, who gained renown as the “Alco doc” for keeping the company’s fleet of American Locomotive Co. diesels healthy, is retiring this month. Colangelo spent some four decades in railroad, more than 25 of those with Genesee Valley, which saw its fleet of Alco […]

Read More…

MBTA light rail collision injures 25

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority logo

BOSTON — The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate after one Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority light rail train rear-ended another Friday, July 30, injuring 25, including operators on both vehicles. The Boston Globe reports the accident occurred on the Green Line B Branch, on Commonwealth Avenue in front of the Boston University campus. The injured […]

Read More…

Santa Clara VTA to resume bus service on light rail route

Map showing route of temporary bus service

SAN JOSE, Calif. — With a date still to be determined for the restoration of light rail service, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is resuming alternative bus service along the light rail line as of today (Monday, Aug. 2). In a press release, the VTA said buses will operate at 30-minute intervals weekdays from […]

Read More…

Rolling fortress

Rear of passenger train on curve

Rolling fortress With two big engines leading a dozen heavyweight cars into the desert, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited looks like a rolling fortress at Palm Springs, Calif., sometime in the mid-1940s. Walter H. Thrall Jr. photo […]

Read More…

Western Pacific Railroad: A railroader’s history

Streamlined orange and black diesel locomotive meeting passenger train with traits of the Western Pacific Railroad

Western Pacific Railroad history The Western Pacific Railroad almost “had it all.” It ran passenger and freight trains, in mountain and desert scenery, behind vintage steam engines that survived World War II and hauled excursions, and then colorful diesels, from early green-and-yellow FTs through orange-and-silver Fs and Geeps to dark-green second-generation EMDs and GEs. It […]

Read More…

STB accepts CSX Transportation’s Pan Am merger application

Front of a train

WASHINGTON – The Surface Transportation Board has accepted CSX Transportation’s beefed up Pan Am Railways merger application and established a schedule for reviewing the deal that would expand CSX’s presence in New England. If the board approves the deal, Pan Am would become a fallen flag on May 1, 2022. Comments on the merger are due […]

Read More…

Veteran journalist Dan Machalaba, Trains author, dies at 72

Head and shoulders of man with white hair and glasses

For veteran business writer and Trains author Dan Machalaba, there was virtually nothing about transportation that wasn’t fascinating. Big-rig trucks, coal-hauling unit trains, bush planes, container ships — all of them drew his scrutiny at one time or another in a journalism career that spanned more than four decades, including 33 years at the Wall […]

Read More…

Canadian Pacific asks KCS stockholders to vote against merger with CN

Logos for Canadian National, Canadian Pacific, and Kansas City Southern

CALGARY, Alberta — Canadian Pacific is asking Kansas City Southern stockholders to vote against the railroad’s proposed merger with Canadian National. The railroad filed a proxy statement to that effect on Thursday, with Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel saying his railroad would have preferred not to appeal to the KCS shareholders, but that with a meeting […]

Read More…