GATINEAU, Quebec — Rail accidents and incidents in Canada were down in 2023, although fatalities were up slightly, according to final statistics released last week by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. The board received 1,235 reports of rail “occurrences” — 914 accidents (which involve a fatality or serious injury, or a derailment, collision, or […]
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad has received approval for a rezoning request allowing it to build a new freight terminal near New Carlisle, Ind., the South Bend Tribune reports. At a meeting last week, the St. Joseph County Council voted 9-0 to rezone four parcels of land from […]
Q: In your Ask MR question “Is there a way to automatically slow DCC locomotives?” you mentioned Arduino, a DCC-connected programmable system. Is that like Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI) software, and if so, how do the two compare? — Bruce Fogwell A: Hi, Bruce. Arduino isn’t software — it’s hardware. An Arduino is a tiny computer, […]
My early “trainhood” was 1955 to 1968. I had an uncle who gave me a train the year I was born, and he added to the Lionel fleet on birthdays and Christmas for many years. All the trains were Lionel, but when I unboxed them in the early 1990s, I discovered the track, switches, and […]
Them’s the breaks Late afternoon on Jan. 30, 2007, my conductor and I were called for the SSEALPC — a stack train from Seattle to Logistics Park, Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Our train that day was FURX No. 8117 as the lead unit of six, trailing us were 63 loads, zero empties, 5,924 […]
Chicago & Eastern Illinois locomotives served the road well through many decades of operation. C&EI was a coal-hauling railroad and, other than some early switchers, stuck with steam through World War II. Three E7s and a bunch of F3s made quick work of dieselizing the line from 1946 onward, with the last steam […]
Amtrak GP40 diesel locomotives came in two flavors: eight former GO Transit GP40TCs acquired in October 1988 and 15 straight GP40s leased between May 1991 and June 1993. The 3,000 hp GP40 is a standard bearer of freight motive power in the second half of the 20th century. Introduced by EMD in 1968, the model […]
With larger railroads, you seldom see the big picture. You see trains passing a given location, but unless you have access to loading manifests, you seldom know the origin and destination of any single car or even what it is carrying. That can never be said about the Palmetto Brick Company Railroad, however. Its entire […]
The California Air Resources Board pitted a standard diesel-electric locomotive consist against zero-emissions alternatives – including battery-electric models from Wabtec and ProgressRail as well as Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s hydrogen fuel cell locomotive – in a hypothetical test run from the Port of Los Angeles to Barstow, Calif. The analysis concludes that the current zero-emissions […]
WASHINGTON — Amtrak has announced it expects ridership to top 2019 — pre-COVID — levels this year and reach a new all-time record high even though it currently has less capacity. Ridership is reported 20% higher in the first 8 months of Amtrak’s budget year that began Oct. 1, 2023. Ticket revenue is showing a […]
COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The George H.W. Bush Presidential Center officially opened the new pavilion that houses Union Pacific SD70Ace No. 4141 on Thursday, which would have been the president’s 100th birthday. The 29,000-square-foot pavilion on the Texas A&M campus also includes a helicopter that was frequently used as Marine One to carry the president […]
DENVER – OmniTRAX, a supply-chain and logistics provider that operates 26 short line railroads, has promoted John Bradley to executive vice president of operations. The 30-year rail veteran leads an operational team that posted multiple company records in service, safety, and productivity while adding three new railroads to the OmniTRAX network. Under Bradley’s tenure, the […]
