Seatrain Georgia Seatrain Georgia, built in 1951 as one of the last two 1928-style rail car ships, is on the Hudson River at the start of a voyage. The vessels carried mostly boxcars, with tank cars and gondolas a distant second and third. Her colors are gray and white, with red funnel markings. U. S. […]
Throughout the 1960s, my grandfather owned a filling station in the tiny town of Lanagan, south of Joplin in the southwestern corner of Missouri on the Kansas City Southern main line. Every weekend I would be at the station, and once my chores were done, I was free to wander about the area. The KCS […]
WASHINGTON — CSX Transportation will gradually rebuild Pan Am Railways’ slow main line track, pare its aging locomotive roster, and extend positive train control over the full route of Amtrak’s Downeaster service that links Boston and Maine. CSX detailed its plans for the New England regional in a more detailed merger application filed this week with […]
Dutchtown Southern, the smallest railroad you’ve never heard of, just might be the biggest story in railroading. The Watco short line began operations in January on 1.76 miles of track leased from Canadian National in Geismar, La. Located some 20 miles south of Baton Rouge along a bend in the Mississippi River, the Dutchtown Southern […]
West Virginia fails to fund MARC service, placing future in doubt The future of MARC commuter rail service to West Virginia is again in doubt after the state legislature failed to include service for the funding in its 2021-22 budget. The Martinsburg Journal-News reports state Senate President Craig Blair said he struck the commuter train […]
Canadian Pacific CEO Keith Creel yesterday told a shipper group that his railroad can’t win a bidding war for Kansas City Southern. Creel also wouldn’t rule out cooperating with Canadian National and KCS on some level, and said that if CN and KCS were to merge, leaving CP as the smallest Class I railroad, CP […]
WASHINGTON —The latest salvo in Amtrak’s attempt to launch two daily round trips between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., has landed at the Surface Transportation Board in the passenger railroad’s 80-page “Response in Opposition to the Motion to Dismiss.” Responding to a 284-page filing by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern on April 5, the passenger […]
Selected comments of politicians, organizations, and communities on the fight over Gulf Coast passenger service, as expressed in letters to the Surface Transportation Board [see “Analysis: Amtrak defends its Gulf Coast access request in new STB filing,” Trains News Wire, April 29, 2021]: Calling for completion of traffic modeling Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R): “For […]
WASHINGTON — While U.S. rail freight traffic continues to far outdistance 2020 volume, which was depressed at this time a year ago because of shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it also continues to show week-to-week improvement in 2021. The latest statistics from the Association of American Railroads show U.S. railroads moved 240,075 carloads in […]
Grain train on the prairie A Canadian Pacific GP9 switches the grain elevator at Headingley, Manitoba, in August 1980. In this time of transition, the cars to be loaded are a mix of cylindrical covered hoppers and boxcars. John Uckley […]
CHICAGO – Canadian National has asked a federal court to set aside a U.S. Surface Transportation Board decision that has stymied CN’s acquisition of CSX Transportation’s Massena Line linking Montreal with Syracuse, N.Y. CN subsidiary Bessemer & Lake Erie filed the suit last week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The STB […]
CICERO, Ill. — Wabtec’s FLXdrive battery-electric locomotive No. 3000 made an appearance in the Chicago area on Tuesday, showing up as the trailing unit in a three-unit set of locomotives on an eastbound train of hopper cars. The train arrived at Cicero Yard shortly before noon, and departed a little more than two hours later, […]
