To launch our all-new operation-oriented series, Charlie Conway captures a day in the life of a hardworking SMS Rail Lines crew in New Jersey. In this narrated show, you’ll discover useful modeling insights and prototype railroad information you can apply to your own layout operating sessions. You won’t want to miss any of the shortline […]
Passenger frustration and confusion reigned in early April after emergency track repairs at Penn Station snarled commuter train schedules for five days. Joseph M. Calisi New York Penn Station track diagram Trains Magazine: Rick Johnson NEW YORK — Amtrak CEO Wick Moorman’s April 6 mea culpa laid bare what went wrong in two relatively minor […]
Baltimore’s current rail tunnel alignment Federal Railroad Administration Baltimore tunnel project overview Federal Railroad Administration BALTIMORE — For Amtrak passengers in Baltimore, the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel is like a jump back to medieval times. The train slows, tunnel walls close in, and take on the appearance of a dungeon, illuminated by occasional lights and […]
PHILADELPHIA – The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority has awarded a $185 million contract for 45 new double-deck commuter cars to CRRC MA Corp., a Chinese-owned company with a new plant in Springfield, Mass., at a board meeting on March 23. Delivery of the cars will begin in 2019. The Chinese company underbid Bombardier, the other […]
A southbound VRE commuter train arrives at Alexandria, Va., in August 2013. Alex Mayes ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Managers at Virginia Railway Express have decided to table further studies on extending commuter rail service to Gainesville or Haymarket in northern Virginia, Inside Nova reports. Instead, the agency is shifting its efforts on a rehabilitation of its […]
MTH HO scale New York City subway cars The MTH model includes working headlight, marker lights, and local and express indicators. The lead car in the four-car set is powered and houses the Digital Command System and Proto-Sound 3.0 electronics. The unpowered cars have a rudimentary interior and overhead lighting. Next stop, Dyer Avenue! You […]
Amtrak ACS64 No. 627 shortly after it crashed into a maintenance-of-way backhoe that was fouling a track on the Northeast Corridor near Chester, Pa., in April 2016. National Transportation Safety Board WASHINGTON — Faulty communication between maintenance workers appear to have played a significant part in last year’s fatal collision between an Amtrak train and […]
Work progresses on Steve Tello’s Boston & Maine Lowell NH Line. Middlesex Junction was a service yard for B&M passenger cars and locomotive up through the early 1960s. Steve is modeling a compressed version of Middlesex, including 4 arrival/departure tracks, a buggy track, coal conveyor (B&M tore down the Coal Tower in the early ’50s), […]
Work progresses on Steve Tello’s Boston & Maine Lowell NH Line. Middlesex Junction was a service yard for B&M passenger cars and locomotive up through the early 1960s. Steve is modeling a compressed version of Middlesex, including 4 arrival/departure tracks, a buggy track, coal conveyor (B&M tore down the Coal Tower in the early ’50s), […]
Erie RS2 904 clatters into the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal with a Main Line local in 1956. Richard H. Young Youth is wasted on young people, so the saying goes. Kids don’t have the … well … maturity to know what’s special in their world. Watch the crowds at Disneyland. It’s the adults who are agog […]
Extra tall fences (seen on the overpass in the background) often protect electrified lines from road debris. Michael S. Murray Q I have driven over the Northeast Corridor and have seen guardrails on the bridge get higher over the tracks themselves. Why is that? – Dan Wescott, Louisburg, N.C. A The primary reason higher barriers […]
Three FT diesels bring eastbound freight BH-2 past the Lackawanna Railroad’s station at Lake Hopatcong, N.J., in May 1946. Theo. A. Gay photo […]
