OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific will start metering traffic on Monday if shippers don’t voluntarily reduce their active freight-car inventories on the railroad, which is bogging down due to a combination of crew and locomotive shortages. “Over the last few weeks, our network has experienced some setbacks – including numerous service interruptions, crew shortages in […]
WASHINGTON — Last week’s fourth day of testimony at the Surface Transportation Board’s hearing on Amtrak Gulf Coast service focused on two questions: — “Where did the data used for traffic modeling come from?” — “What constitutes a train that can cause ‘unreasonable impairment’ to freight operations” if two passenger round trips are introduced between […]
The Ontario Southland Railway helped keep General Motors plants humming when a bridge clearance issue arose after a track project on Canadian National. CN, which handles the majority of traffic in St. Thomas, Ontario, suffered a line outage on the Talbot Spur when a program to fix track in the St. Thomas yard resulted in […]
BALTIMORE – If you buy a Florida-grown watermelon in the New York City area, there’s a good chance that it rode a CSX Transportation intermodal train from the Sunshine State to the Northeast. CSX has become the largest hauler of Florida watermelons to the Northeast thanks to a year-old experiment dubbed CSX Greenway, a premium […]
BALTIMORE — Autonomous trucks are beginning to roam highways with the blessing of the Department of Transportation, yet the Federal Railroad Administration wants to mandate two-person train crews. Why is the regulatory playing field different for trucks and trains, FRA Administrator Amit Bose was asked at a shippers’ conference on Thursday. “We think having a […]
BALTIMORE – CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern are working to improve their service amid ongoing crew shortages and supply chain disruptions, executives told shippers on Thursday. “We’re aware that it’s been a tough two years. Clearly we haven’t shown our best self,” Farrukh Bezar, CSX’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer, told the North […]
RICHMOND HILL, Ontario — A complex series of factors led to a string-line derailment that killed a Canadian National crew member in an August 15, 2019, derailment at MacMillan Yard in Vaughan, Ontario, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said in an accident report released this week. The worker, who was operating a remote-control locomotive […]
CHICAGO — Commuter rail operator Metra will make significant additions to its weekday Union Pacific Northwest schedule and minor changes to its UP North line, effective April 25. On the Northwest line, to McHenry and Harvard, Ill., weekday trains will increase from 45 to 66 trains. The new schedule increases service for those with early […]
WASHINGTON – Federal regulators have ordered officials from BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific to appear a two-day hearing this month regarding ongoing rail service problems. The Surface Transportation Board announced on Thursday that it will hold the public hearings on April 26 and 27. The announcement comes in the wake of […]
WASHINGTON — Overall U.S. rail traffic in March was down 3% from 2021 levels, with reduced intermodal traffic accounting for the decline. Statistics from the Association of American Railroads show the month’s carload traffic was up 1.2%, a total of 13,456 carloads, while intermodal traffic decreased by 6.4%, or 92,170 containers and trailers. The overall […]
WASHINGTON — Norfolk Southern’s view of the impact of potential Amtrak service was a focal point of Wednesday’s third day of hearings on the passenger carrier’s effort to launch two daily round trips between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala. Testifying in the Surface Transportation Board’s online hearing, Randall Hunt, the railroad’s senior director of interline […]
OAKLAND, Calif. — The Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority, the agency overseeing state-supported Amtrak service between San Jose and Auburn, Calif., has filed its own suit over the plans for a new Oakland Athletics ballpark. The suit joins one previously filed by Union Pacific [see “Union Pacific files suit over Oakland ballpark plan,” Trains News […]
