New York Air Brake’s test train. New York Air Brake ATLANTA — One independent railroad professional sees New York Air Brake’s recent automation break through as an incremental step to fully automated railroading. Gary Wolf, principal at Wolf Railway Consulting, tells Trains that New York Air Brake’s Friday announcement that it started a stopped freight […]
LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. — Officials of truckload and intermodal carrier Schneider National believe Precision Scheduled Railroading can aid their intermodal growth, and are not worried about Walmart and Amazon interacting directly with railroads instead of using intermodal marketing companies like Schneider. Despite a relatively flat intermodal market, Schneider CEO Mark Rourke told the recent 7th […]
View of LEADER controls from engineer’s perspective. NYAB New York Air Brake demonstration train with computer control at Pueblo, Colo., test track. NYAB WATERTOWN, N.Y. — On a test track in Pueblo, Colo., a heavy-haul freight train started and stopped solely under the command of a computer. On Aug. 27, a Positive Train Control-compliant consist […]
Jim Foote, CSX Corp. CEO CSX Transportation DANA POINT, Calif. — CSX Transportation CEO Jim Foote says the sale of the railroad’s Massena Line to Canadian National will generate more traffic growth than if the route linking Syracuse, N.Y., and Montreal were sold to a short line operator. The deal, which was announced last month, […]
WASHINGTON – Hours after New York Air Brake announced that it had run a heavy freight train with no crew on board, union officials dismissed the test as nothing more than an unrealistic experiment. On Friday morning, the company announced that it had operated a 30-car freight train with its LEADER on-board train control and […]
Association of American Railroads WASHINGTON — The Association of American Railroads today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending Sept. 7, 2019. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 469,285 carloads and intermodal units, down 6.6% compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending Sept. 7 were […]
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has reversed itself on charging penalties to truckers for cancellations and no-shows for reserved intermodal slots. The controversial charges were part of the July rollout of UP’s Intermodal Terminal Reservations System. Cancellations of intermodal reservations later than 24 hours before gate cutoff brought a $25 fee; no-shows resulted in a […]
A portion of the cameras and sensors aimed at freight trains to detect freight car problems at the Transportation Technology Center near Pueblo, Colo. These sensors help comprise the most modern methods of freight car inspection. Trains staff Q: How do railroads determine which freight cars need repair before continuing their journeys? — Robert Rose, […]
A photo of a big boxy freight load, likely a wind turbine nacelle. Submitted by Mark Faust Q: Saw a whole CSX Transportation train of these in Sullivan, Ind. What are they? — Mark Faust, Carmel, Ind. A: The photo you submitted resembles a wind turbine gearbox nacelle, and is probably what the train was […]
MONTREAL — Canadian National has announced ongoing intermodal relationships with two ocean carriers, Evergreen Line and COSCO Shipping. CN and Evergreen’s new intermodal agreement extends a 27-year relationship between the companies and includes Evergreen’s usage of such CN-served ports as Vancouver, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. COSCO has chosen CN as its […]
BOSTON — Precision Scheduled Railroad remains a “mixed bag” for trucking giant and intermodal pioneer J.B. Hunt, according to Darren Field, the company’s executive vice president for intermodal. “I’m a supporter of PSR as long as we can continue to communicate well with those railroads implementing that plan,” Field told attendees at the recent Cowan […]
WASHINGTON — Congress returns from its long summer recess Monday with just three weeks to hammer out funding and avoid another government shutdown. Absent appropriations, the U.S. Department of Transportation and most other federal branches would largely shutter operations, as they did for 35 days starting last December. While Congress and the White House grabbed headlines […]
