The cab ride As the Production Editor for Trains Magazine, I got to participate in my very first cab ride, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway steam locomotive No. 1309, located at the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad this past fall. If I had to describe the experience in only one word, I’d have to say — […]
Sun Tan Special People in Santa Cruz, Calif., still talk about the Sun Tan Special, and not just as an artifact. The Sun Tan Special was Southern Pacific’s beach train in Northern California. It ran on summer weekends and holidays during the 1930s to the 1950s, from San Francisco and San Jose to the coastal […]
Railroad signs Railroads, like highway systems, use a variety of signs, signals, and identification markers to convey information to railroaders along a route. Railroads have established mileposts – identified by signs, markers, or displays – to give the crew and dispatcher a quick method for identifying their location on a railroad in all weather conditions […]
INTERLAKEN, Switzerland — A concept the Swiss rail industry (and its passengers) has dreamed of for years became reality in mid-December with the debut of through trains from Montreux on Lake Geneva to Interlaken in the heart of the Alps. No new rail lines were needed but some modern railway technology was. The route includes […]
INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineer and Trainmen President Dennis Pierce said today he will retire, avoiding a rerun of the union’s presidential election and clearing the way for Eddie Hall to become the union’s new president. In a statement on the BLET website, Pierce said the union’s Elections Protest Committee had determined that […]
ATLANTA — The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority unveiled its newest railcars on Friday, representing a $646 million investment to replace its aging fleet of 340 cars. The new CQ400 railcars will replace MARTA’s existing fleet of CQ310, CQ311 and CQ312 cars. In November 2019, MARTA’s board of directors approved the $646 million deal with […]
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has paused its use of new embargoes to limit congestion. The move, announced today (Friday, Dec. 16), comes after two days of Surface Transportation Board hearings where shippers, rail labor, and regulators were critical of the railroad’s increasing reliance on embargoes since 2018, the year it adopted a Precision Scheduled […]
RIDGELAND, Miss. — A federal grant seeks almost $179 million to fund improvements for Amtrak Gulf Coast service between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., while CSX Transportation will pay almost $10 million toward the matching funds for those improvements, according to a news report. The non-profit news site Mississippi Today reports the Alabama State Port […]
ESSEX, Mont. — The Izaak Walton Inn, the trackside property along BNSF main line adjacent to Glacier National Park that is a longtime railfan destination, is under new ownership. The Daily Inter Lake reports that Brian Kelly, who has owned the property since 2006, has sold it to Loge Camps, a hotel marketed toward outdoors […]
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — BNSF Railway and multimodal transportation company J.B. Hunt are transporting more than 6,400 wreaths to Riverside National Cemetery as part of their annual participation in the Wreaths Across America program. Today (Friday, Dec. 16), at 7 a.m. PST, a J.B. Hunt truck accompanied by a Patriot Guard motorcycle escort will move the […]
The big six Class I railroads are not of one mind regarding taking conductors out of the locomotive cab and redeploying them to pickup trucks. Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern told the Federal Railroad Administration this week that they are negotiating with unions about testing the concept, which would involve having conductors assist trains in […]
MONTREAL — A Quebec judge has found that Canadian Pacific is not liable in the 2013 runaway-train disaster that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The Canadian Press reports that Justice Martin Bureau ruled Wednesday that the actions of which Canadian Pacific was accused were not the “direct, immediate and logical cause” of the July […]
