ROANOKE, Va. — A Norfolk Southern local train once heralded as the future of trash hauling is likely to suspend service this coming summer. Known as the “Waste Line Express,” the train has hauled trash from Roanoke along a 4.5-mile spur to the Smith Gap Landfill for the past 25 years. Now, though, the Roanoke […]
WASHINGTON — The Department of Transportation late on Dec. 4 made it official, and rescinded a rule that tank trains carrying flammable commodities must be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes. The decision seemed inevitable after the Federal Railroad and Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety administrations reported in mid-October that the added safety benefits of […]
In his On Operation column for the January 2018 issue of Model Railroader, Jerry Dziedzic describes dealing with train superiority and time-table-and-train-order (TT&TO) operation for model railroads. Jerry mentioned a train-superiority checklist developed by Mark Amfahr that greatly simplified TT&TO decision making for train crews during operating sessions on his railroad. Click on the link […]
Tesla Semi Tesla Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk says his company’s battery-powered big rig, unveiled last week, will be 20 percent cheaper to operate than diesel trucks and represents “economic suicide for rail.” But reports of rail’s impending death may be exaggerated. “Is this going to be a game-changer? No, not yet anyway,” says […]
Kathryn McQuade JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The management changes at CSX Transportation — which include the pending departures of Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn and Executive Vice President of Law Ellen Fitzsimmons – will leave just four women in top executive positions at Class I railroads. Both highly regarded women have been replaced by men, a […]
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation is increasingly relying on block-swapping intermodal traffic as it prepares to shut down its massive container-sorting hub in North Baltimore, Ohio, which last year handled more than a quarter of the railroad’s intermodal loads. The Northwest Ohio Intermodal Terminal was designed to support CSX’s hub-and-spoke approach to serving smaller intermodal […]
A 2011 CSX Transportation video touting North Baltimore’s place in intermodal strategy. Via YouTube. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The days of CSX Transportation’s hub-and-spoke intermodal strategy are drawing to a close. The railroad aims to end container sorting at its busy intermodal terminal in North Baltimore, Ohio, by Nov. 11. And CSX will not build the […]
WASHINGTON — Maryland’s entire congressional delegation has written to CSX Transportation CEO E. Hunter Harrison, asking him to explain the railroad’s decision to drop out of a partnership to raise clearances in the Howard Street Tunnel. On Nov. 1, in response to media inquiries, CSX confirmed that it no longer considered the long-sought tunnel project […]
Controls for measuring the length of a train (circled) are integrated into the touch screen Video Information Display on an EMD SD70ACe. Tom Danneman Q If an engineer has a train with 100 or more cars and he gets a signal to take the siding, how does he know when he and all the cars […]
WASHINGTON — CSX Transportation is now operating as well as or better than it did in 2016 thanks to improved terminal dwell and average train speeds holding steady, railroad executives told federal regulators this week. But a merchandise shipper told regulators that key performance metrics don’t show much that matters to them. On-time arrivals, re-crew […]
Willard, Ohio Google Maps JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation has shut down the hump at Willard Yard in Ohio, the latest terminal to be converted to a flat-switching facility under CEO E. Hunter Harrison and his Precision Scheduled Railroading operating plan. Last year, Willard was the fourth-busiest hump yard on the railroad, when it processed […]
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation is reducing the number of domestic and international intermodal destinations served from its terminal in Columbus, Ohio. CSX told customers on Oct. 12 that it would be dropping outbound service from Columbus to nearly two dozen locations. Only a handful of inbound lanes are being eliminated, the railroad said. The […]
