Flooding of the Platte River, south of Omaha, Neb., has destroyed spans of BNSF Railway’s Omaha Subdivision, along with the Union Pacific’s Fall City Subdivision. On Tuesday morning, a Union Pacific crane was working on removing a log jam on the upstream side of the bridge. Steve Smedley Three truckloads of rock are being dumped […]
SEATTLE — Positive train control is now fully operational on the route of the Amtrak Cascades, the Washington state Department of Transportation has announced. However, there is still no date for returning Cascades trains to the Point Defiance bypass south of Tacoma, Wash. Seattle TV station KIRO reports PTC equipment is now in place from […]
Union Pacific SD60 No. 2181 is on the point of a welded rail train tucked into the storage siding at Woodford, Calif., for the weekend in March 2002. TEH-12131-6 Howard Ande Question: Is Union Pacific the only U.S. rail carrier to use long rail? What exactly is long rail? Periodically, I see ocean bulk carriers bringing […]
Union Pacific Big Boy 4-8-8-4 No. 4014 as it slowly departs Pomona, Calif., in 2013. TRAINS: Jim Wrinn Question: Reportedly, Union Pacific had a name picked out for it’s 4-8-8-4 Big Boy steam locomotive but someone at American Locomotive Co. in Schenectady, N.Y., beat them to the punch by writing the name “Big Boy” on […]
BNSF Railway ES44DC No. 7765 leads an intermodal train through a curved main line at Siberia, Calif., in September 2008. 08357-7 Steve Schmollinger Question: In many photos taken on open land in the West and Midwest, you can see curvature in the tracks even though there are no visible obstacles such as rock cuts, rivers, […]
LOS ANGELES — The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California has filed a lawsuit it hopes will shed light on alleged operations conducted between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Union Pacific Railroad Police. According to a statement issued by the SoCal ACLU, the lawsuit is based upon alleged violations by ICE of the […]
WASHINGTON — While it is less than a definitive document, Amtrak has outlined its five-year plan for its equipment fleet, indicating the locomotives and cars it aims to replace or refurbish, as well as indications of how it would use that fleet. Amtrak’s “Five Year Equipment Asset Line Plan,” issued last week, is presented as […]
A northbound Canadian Pacific empty ethanol train passes through floodwaters of the Mississippi River in Davenport, Iowa, on Saturday, March 23, 2019. Steve Smedley DAVENPORT, Iowa — Canadian Pacific’s former Milwaukee Road lines in the Midwest have suffered damage from recent flooding. In Davenport on CP’s Davenport subdivision, floodwaters from the Mississippi River are over […]
BOSTON — The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has asked Amtrak about the possibility of leasing electric locomotives for testing on its commuter rail service, the Boston Globe reports. Joseph Aiello, chairman of the Fiscal and Management Control Board that oversees the MBTA, mentioned the request at recent event, but an MBTA spokesman said the discussion […]
ARCADE, N.Y. — Visitors to one of New York State’s few tourist railroads have one more shot at a rare mileage trip. On Saturday March 23, the Arcade & Attica ran its first trip to North Java, N.Y., with an excursion train in 30 years. This trip was part of the New York State Maple […]
Passengers board the southbound City of New Orleans at Greenwood, Miss., on Sept. 10, 2015. Rural and mid-sized communites could lose intercity passenger service under the corridor-focused plans put forward by the Trump administration and Amtrak. Bob Johnston WASHINGTON — More details have emerged from President Donald Trump’s proposed Amtrak cuts in the 2020 federal […]
The increased use of locally mined frac sand in America’s largest shale oil field, the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, is rapidly crowding out rail-hauled sand from the Midwest. On Union Pacific, for example, frac sand volume was down 45 percent this year through the first week of March, a trend the railroad […]
