Menards Santa Fe O gauge locomotive

Menards O gauge Santa Fe F3 model ¾ view top and side

Menards Santa Fe O gauge locomotive program is underway. Asking some 200 people to take a chance on this new product is bold. To request they test it on their layouts and report what the maker got right — and more importantly, wrong — takes even more guts. It is something I’ve never heard of […]

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BNSF Railway details international intermodal congestion issues

Aerial view of intermodal facility

WASHINGTON — On a typical day, BNSF Railway has about 30 international stack trains staged along its main lines, waiting for space to open up at intermodal terminals in Chicago, Memphis, and Alliance, Texas. The terminals are clogged due to an unprecedented combination of record volume and shippers and receivers being slow to pick up […]

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Norfolk Southern train derails in Missouri (updated)

Derailed auto racks

HUNTINGTON, Mo. — An estimated 33 cars of a Norfolk Southern train, many of them carrying new automobiles, derailed Monday afternoon in northern Ralls County, Mo. No injuries or hazardous material spills were reported. KHQA-TV reports the Missouri State Highway Patrol and other first responders were notified of the derailment about 12:15 p.m. The accident […]

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News photos: Indiana city saves, relocates interlocking tower

Brick building being moved down street

UNION CITY, Ind. — The former CSX interlocking tower in Union City was successfully moved Tuesday from its long-time location to a city park one block away. The tower, closed since 1968, will be turned into public restrooms and a visitor’s center at Union City’s Artisan Crossing, a gathering space for community and artistic events. […]

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Man at work

Man sits in front of dispatchers’ panel making notation on paper

Man at work Baltimore & Ohio Dispatcher Carl Donald makes an entry on his trainsheet in DR Tower in Deshler, Ohio, in the early 1950s. Deshler lies at the crossing of the B&O’s Pittsburgh to Chicago and Toledo to Cincinnati main lines. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

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NS Sandusky drawbridge fails, stalls rail and marine traffic

In view from small boat, train crosses bridge

SANDUSKY, Ohio – A 3-hour-plus drawbridge failure on Sunday afternoon (July 25) halted movements on Norfolk Southern’s busy Chicago Line and stranded marine traffic on Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay. The bridge, a 1929 double-track rolling Scherzer-type drawbridge at MP 248 between Toledo and Sandusky, Ohio, was initially stuck in an up position, observers reported. But […]

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Union Pacific plans to end container embargo after one week

LOS ANGELES — Union Pacific will resume international container shipments to Chicago from the West Coast at the end of its current seven-day suspension of such service, CEO Lance Fritz told Reuters on Thursday. “We’re starting to see containers clear, so I anticipate in the seven-day period … we should get back down to a […]

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