The U.S. Class I railroads’ recurring crew shortages, related bouts of service problems, and a lack of meaningful volume growth are intertwined. You can lay the blame for all three problems at just one place: Wall Street. BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific are in the midst of the mother of all […]
MONTREAL — Canadian National says it has “met or exceeded” the demands of striking Canadian signal and communications workers in negotiations, while the chief negotiator for those workers said that claim was technically correct but misleading. Some 750 workers represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers walked out across Canada on Saturday. The railroad […]
MONTREAL — Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers have gone on strike against Canadian National Railway in Canada. The 750 signal and communications workers walked out as of 11 a.m. local time on Saturday, a union official confirmed to the CBC. The union had previously given the railroad a 72-hour notification of its […]
LYTTON, British Columbia — An estimated 15 cars of a coal train derailed Saturday afternoon on Canadian National tracks near Lytton, the website Castanet reports. No injuries were reported; a minor fire was extinguished. The accident occurred about 10 miles east of Lytton along the Thompson River. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific lines in this […]
MONTREAL — Canadian National has received a 72-hour strike notice from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. CN said the union, which represents about 750 signals and communications employees in Canada, notified the railroad of its intent to strike as of 11 a.m. Eastern Time this Saturday, June 18. “CN has negotiated with the union […]
OTTAWA — Canada is lifting its COVID-19 vaccination requirement for travel and federally regulated forms of transportation as of June 20, meaning railroads will no longer be required to mandate vaccinations for workers and rail passengers are no longer required to have been vaccinated. Visitors to Canada will still have to be fully vaccinated or […]
CHICAGO — Canadian National’s proposed acquisition of CSX Transportation’s line linking Syracuse, N.Y., with Montreal is officially dead. The railroads informed a federal court last week that the purchase and sale agreement had expired and that the deal was off. As a result, the railroads asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit […]
CHICAGO — Amtrak is seeking more than $200 million in federal funding, along with money from state and local sources, in an attempt to fix a series of long-standing deficiencies, capacity limitations, and how trains from the south and east enter Chicago. The passenger operator is competing for a portion of $5 billion available between […]
Overall on-time performance for the big four U.S. Class I railroads has fallen from a pre-pandemic average of 85% to just 67% in the last week of May 2022, as crew shortages continue to plague rail service. The extent of the service decline was revealed in historic on-time performance data that BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, […]
SARNIA, Ontario — Canadian National has returned some GE Dash 8 locomotives to service after most had disappeared in early 2021. Ex-Chicago North Western C40-8 No. 2131 led Chicago-Toronto train 148 on Sunday, June 5, providing the first look at a standard-cab Dash 8 on the mainline in well over a year. This unit and […]
Canadian National is the first railway to order a new dispatching system that Wabtec says is a major building block toward network automation, the companies announced on June 6. The latest version of Wabtec’s Precision Dispatch System is scheduled to be operational at CN in late 2023. CN completed installation of an earlier version of […]
WAUKESHA, Wis. — Bruce Rogers says that when a hot air balloon with people in it was caught in his train Wednesday evening in southeastern Wisconsin, he felt helpless. “The worst thing is watching it unfold and not being able to do something about it,” Rogers tells Trains News Wire. What Rogers says he saw […]
