If you’re planning a visit to Texas, make sure to include these tourist railroads, museums, and displays as part of the itinerary. They’ll be the highlights of your adventure in the Lone Star State, as recommended by Trains Magazine’s Tourist Trains Guidebook. Texas Tourist Railroads and Museums Central Texas Austin Steam Train Association – 401 […]
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WASHINGTON — Amtrak is working with Texas Central on efforts to determine the viability of the Texas company’s planned high-speed service between Dallas and Houston, and the two entities have submitted applications for federal grants for study and design work, Amtrak announced in a press release today. “If we are going to add more high-speed […]
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OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. – The Oklahoma Railway Museum has taken delivery of a historic alternative fuel testbed locomotive, donated by BNSF Railway after use as a hydrogen fuel cell switcher in Southern California. Built as Canadian Pacific GP9 No. 8637 in 1957, the unit was rebuilt by CP in the mid-1980s and utilized in regular […]
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CHICAGO — As Trains News Wire has been reporting, a dearth of serviceable Superliners on Amtrak’s long-distance trains has limited mobility options in a year that has seen a significant surge in travel demand. Sellouts in coaches and sleeping cars for at least one segment of a route have been the rule, not the exception. […]
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NEWTON, Kan. — Extending the Heartland Flyer 198 miles to connect with the Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief at Newton, Kan., has been a goal of passenger rail advocates ever since the state-funded train between Fort Worth, Texas, and Oklahoma City debuted in June 1999. In the meantime, passengers wishing to travel between these north-south and […]
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GUNTER, Texas — BNSF Railway is pulling back from plans to develop a 950-acre logistics center north of Dallas in light of community opposition. The railroad announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing an application to rezone and annex property in the community of 2,200 in Grayson County, about 45 miles from downtown Dallas, “based on […]
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MARSHALL, Texas — A wide variety of state and local officials, as well as current and former representatives of Amtrak and its host railroads, assembled last week to honor two people in large part responsible for keeping alive a proposed extension of Amtrak’s Crescent between Meridian, Miss., and Fort Worth, Texas. Retired Harrison County Judge […]
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FAIRMONT, Okla. — High winds are being blamed for the derailment of a BNSF train today (July 21) near the town of Fairmont. BNSF said 29 cars derailed while the train was stopped because of high winds, according to the Associated Press. The railroad said no one was injured and no hazardous materials were involved. […]
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CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 made its 2023 debut in June and July with the Home Run Express to the NCAA Men’s College World Series in Omaha, Neb. Though a tradition for the Class I railroad to showcase its various equipment at the 12th Street display site outside Charles Schwab Field, […]
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BISMARCK, N.D. — The group seeking to prevent BNSF Railway from demolishing a 141-year-old bridge over the Missouri River is taking its long-running effort to the North Dakota Supreme Court. The Bismarck Tribune reports that the Friends of the Rail Bridge preservation group, joined by the Downtown Business Association of Bismarck, is seeking to overturn […]
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Was the Blue Streak Merchandise the last Great American Freight Train? “You define a passenger train by its cars, its menu, its route — even its patrons,” says railroad historian Fred W. Frailey in his 1991 book on the Blue Streak. “But the Blue Streak defined the railroads over which it runs — seized […]
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BISMARCK, N.D. — A state judge in North Dakota has dismissed a permit appeal by the preservation group seeking to block demolition of BNSF Railway’s 140-year-old bridge over the Missouri River. The Bismarck Tribune reports that South Central Judicial District Court Judge Jackson Lofgren on Friday dismissed on technical grounds the appeal by the Friends […]
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