KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The two infrastructure funds that are reportedly teaming up to acquire Kansas City Southern are no strangers to the railroad industry. Blackstone Group owned Chicago & North Western in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It also owned Great Lakes Transportation, a collection of former U.S. Steel transportation companies that included […]
Thursday morning rail news: Kansas DOT proposes two-person crew requirement The Kansas Department of Transportation has proposed requiring two-person crews for trains operating in the state. The regulation proposed earlier this week would require two people in the cab of a train’s lead locomotive, with exceptions for switching, brake tests, safety inspections, and setouts. In […]
Wednesday afternoon rail news in brief: Severe weather leads to UP derailment in Texas (updated) Union Pacific has informed customers that its route between Fort Worth, Texas, and El Paso has been disrupted by a derailment near Colorado City, Texas, caused by “a severe-wind weather event.” It is warning that shipments through the area could […]
Thursday morning rail news in brief: Austin approves ‘Project Connect’ transit plan The Austin, Texas, city council and board of transit agency Capital Metro on Wednesday approved the Project Connect transit plan, a major expansion of the city’s public transportation that will include three new light rail lines — with a subway section in downtown […]
History of the Texas & Pacific What grew to become the 20th century’s Texas & Pacific Railway sprouted from some of Texas’s earliest railroads. The Lone Star State’s pre-Civil War network included 11 operating companies. One of the earliest was the Texas Western Railroad, chartered in 1850 and soon renamed Vicksburg & El Paso. In […]
Friday morning rail news: — Texas Central Railway won a significant court ruling Thursday when a state appeals court said the company is a railroad in legal terms, even though it does not yet operate any trains. The decision by Judge Nora Longoria for the Thirteenth Appeals Court of Texas overturns a lower court ruling […]
Monday morning rail news: — Today through Wednesday, the Federal Railroad Administration will conduct public hearings by phone on its proposed safety and operating standards — the “Notice of Particular Applicability” for the Texas Central high speed rail project [see “Passenger,” June 2020 Trains]. Those rules essentially would adopt the standards of the Japan Central […]
In August 1968, two years before author Dierks’ ride and when the Boise City mixed carried a combine instead of just a caboose, Santa Fe train 174 is at Elkhart, Kans. Joe McMillan This wasn’t my first rodeo, so to speak. I had ridden mixed trains in Utah and Idaho, and, just four days ago, one in Kansas. […]
Thursday afternoon rail news: — In the latest in a series of efforts to stop construction of a high speed rail line between Dallas and Houton, a group of Texas state legislators have written the U.S. Department of Transportation, asking it to halt work on the Texas Central Railway project. The Bryan-College Station Eagle reports […]
A Rocky Mountaineer train arrives in Kamloops, British Columbia, in October 2018. The passenger operator has delayed the start of its 2020 season. Bob Johnston More Tuesday morning rail news: — Rocky Mountaineer, the luxury rail operation from Vancouver, British Columbia, to the Canadian Rockies, will delay the start of its season until July 1. […]
The Milwaukee Road was one of the big players in Sioux Falls. One of its hottest trains in the late 1940s was the daily-except-Sunday meat train to Chicago, seen passing a diesel switcher as it departs Sioux Falls. Mikado 508 carries an extra tender to reduce water stops. Henry J. McCord Growing up in an […]
Tuesday morning rail news: — Union Pacific and the city of Palestine, Texas, have been ordered to go to mediation over UP’s efforts to do away with a 150-year-old agreement requiring the railroad to keep a set number of jobs in the community. The Palestine Herald-Press reports a federal court is requiring the sites to […]
