SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — The Orange County Transportation Authority will build a wall to protect Surf Line tracks at the site of the landslide that has halted passenger rail operations since Jan. 24, OCTA and Metrolink announced on Friday. The decision comes a day after a state emergency declaration made $10 million in funding available […]
General Electric’s U30C Up in the north woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sits the last serviceable U30C — LSI No. 3009, dead and drained outside Lake Superior & Ishpeming’s diesel shop in Eagle Mills. This locomotive and its cousin, LS&I C30-7 No. 3073, had been filling in on ore trains when not enough LS&I AC4400CWs […]
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah counties backing the proposed Uinta Basin Railway have asked the state to help fund an appeal of recent court decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition has asked for $750,000 from the state’s general fund, with Keith Heaton, the coalition’s […]
LINCOLN, Neb. — A filibuster has halted the Nebraska Legislature’s consideration of a proposal requiring two-person train crews within the state, the news site Nebraska Examiner reports. The filibuster, carried out over parts of three days, stalled the bill when a Friday vote was unable to obtain the 33 votes needed to invoke cloture, the […]
CLEVELAND — The American Steam Railroad Preservation Association has reached a milestone in restoration of Reading Co. T-1 4-8-4 No. 2100, conducting the first hydrostatic test on the locomotive, the 501c3 non-profit organization reports. The locomotive is also known as AFT 250 because of plans for it to wear an American Freedom Train paint scheme […]
WASHINGTON — The parties involved in the agreement to allow the launch of Amtrak Gulf Coast service have filed a joint update on that agreement requested by the Surface Transportation Board, asking that the board scrap a hearing planned for Feb. 14 “as the Parties have no further information to offer.” The STB last month […]
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — With heavy rains forecast over the next several days and no long-term solution for the latest landslide in the San Clemente area, Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner has extended its revised schedule of cancellations and bus-bridge service through at least Friday, Feb. 9. Meanwhile, the state of California issued an emergency declaration Thursday […]
BOISE, Idaho — Idaho rail advocates were disappointed when a route linking Boise and Salt Lake City wasn’t included in the Federal Railroad Adminstration’s Corridor Identification and Development Program announced in December. But it turns out that effort to revive part of the route of Amtrak’s discontinued Pioneer was never even considered for the eventual […]
WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a Norfolk Southern employee fatality that occurred Wednesday in Decatur, Ala., the agency announced today. An NTSB spokesman said in an email that the incident occurred about 5:15 p.m. when a locomotive engineer was struck by freight cars. Additional information about the exact circumstances of the […]
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation today (Thursday, Feb. 1) announced it had reached agreement with four additional unions to provide paid sick leave to employees, extending that coverage to an additional 600 workers. Unions involved are SMART-TD conductors/trainmen (C&O); SMART-TD yardmasters; the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and Carrolton Road-Transportation Communications Union-represented engineers, yardmen, and maintenance […]
BOYERTOWN, Pa. — The former private car of steel magnate Charles Schwab, the 1917 Pullman-built solarium-sleeper Loretto, arrived Wednesday, Jan. 31, at its new home, the Colebrookdale Railroad in southeastern Pennsylvania. It concluded a circuitous 2-day, 250-mile highway journey from the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona, Pa., which had owned it for 48 years. The […]
WASHINGTON – Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the leaders of all 13 railroad labor unions today urged Congress to tighten rail safety regulations as the one-year anniversary of the disastrous derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, approaches. The Railway Safety Act, introduced in the Senate last spring in the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern hazardous materials […]
