WASHINGTON — Prospective Amtrak board of directors nominee Robert Gleason made clear in his opening statement at a U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing today (May 13, 2025) that he is committed “to bringing better passenger rail service to small towns across America.” At the same hearing, former Pan Am Railways president David Fink stressed his […]
MINNEAPOLIS – Amtrak and Trinity Railway Express want to lease spare locomotives and coaches from Minnesota’s beleaguered Northstar commuter operation. Amtrak would like to use a Northstar MP36PH-3C locomotive, three coaches, and a cab car in Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha service. The equipment would help replace capacity lost when Amtrak sidelined its Horizon fleet due to safety […]
SEATTLE – Starting today, the Mount Bachelor, the Talgo Series 8 trainset that has been out of service since its cab car was impaled by a tree in a November storm, is back in service with the other Talgo, the Mount Jefferson, on Cascades service linking Vancouver, British Columbia, and Eugene, Ore. The move will […]
WASHINGTON – Amtrak has wrapped a pair of ACS-64 locomotives in Crayola-inspired “Creativity on the Go” schemes in a nod to the iconic crayon manufacturer. ACS-64 No. 621 wears a violet blue livery that features eight crayon colors that Crayola recently brought out of retirement. No. 620 is wrapped in Crayola’s dandelion, a golden yellow […]
WASHINGTON – Amtrak said today that it has eliminated 450 management positions as it looks to cut costs and reach operational profitability by 2028. The cutback equals just over 10% of Amtrak’s management jobs, the railroad said in a memo to employees. “We took the difficult step of informing about 250 people that their positions […]
WASHINGTON – Amtrak’s Office of Inspector General issued an investigative report to Amtrak on Tuesday that detailed the widespread scheme in which at least 119 employees conspired with New York health care providers to bilk the railroad’s health care plan of more than $12 million from 2019 to 2022. Of the 119 employees implicated, 28 […]
Amtrak will delay the start of the construction on the East River Tunnel Rehabilitation project by two weeks after learning the Long Island Rail Road’s (LIRR) East-Bound reroute project is delayed. The three-year project calls for repairing two of the tunnel’s four tubes, which were damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, with one tube removed […]
WASHINGTON — The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing on nominees for Federal Railroad Administration administrator and the last remaining open seat on Amtrak’s board of directors. The hearing for FRA nominee David Fink, Amtrak nominee Robert Gleason, and two other officials — David Fogael, assistant secretary of commerce, and Pierre Gentin, general counsel […]
WASHINGTON — Details have yet to emerge regarding how much money the Trump Administration and Congress might be willing to appropriate for Amtrak in Fiscal 2026, beginning on Oct. 1, 2025. Amtrak is not mentioned in the $163 billion of “non-defense discretionary spending” budget cuts in the spending plan released today (May 2, 2025) — […]
PHILADELPHIA — A former Amtrak information technology official and two vendors have been indicted in a bribery case involving millions of dollars of Amtrak IT work. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Richard Thompson, 47, of Falls Church, Va., was Amtrak’s former director of network planning and engineering. He […]
PHILADELPHIA — The owner of an Indiana masonry contractor has pleaded guilty to two federal charges in connection with a bribery case involving renovations at Amtrak’s 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Mark Snedden, 69, of Munster, Ind., on Wednesday (April 30) entered a plea of guilty to conspiracy to commit federal program bribery and making […]
SALEM, Ore. — Oregon’s legislature has passed a bill seeking to expand the state’s collaboration with Washington state and other entities to improve passenger and freight rail operations in the Cascades Corridor. HB3233 was passed by a 16-12 vote of the state Senate on Tuesday, April 29, after the House passed it by a 44-12 […]
