Emery Trust awards $350,000 in rail preservation grants

Emery Rail Heritage Trust logo

The John Emery Rail Heritage Trust has will award 22 grants totaling $350,000, for rail preservation projects in 2022. The list of grants selected comes from 34 applications requesting more than $1 million. The trust, the largest in the U.S. that makes 100% of its awards solely for rail restoration projects, was founded by long-time […]

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BART to award eight retired cars for reuse

Illustration of BART car in museum

OAKLAND, Calif. — Bay Area Rapid Transit has selected eight finalists to receive and repurpose retired BART railcars for uses ranging from a beer garden to firefighter training. While those selected will not pay for the cars, they will have to pay for transporting and installing them at their new locations, which the transit agency estimates […]

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Former Ringling Bros. railcars burn in North Carolina

Logo of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

SPRING HOPE, N.C. — Several former Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus railcars now owned by the state of North Carolina have been badly damaged or destroyed in a fire. WRAL-TV reports the cars, stored on an isolated rail line just outside the city limits of the community of Spring Hope, caught fire this […]

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The Lionel no. 3429 helicopter car

Lionel's no. 3429 helicopter car

The Lionel no. 3429 helicopter car was the company’s answer to get more kids to buy its products in the late 1950s. It was an attempt to get away from a product line the public regarded as old-fashioned. The company’s creative minds decided to make items Lionel could link the trains to popular military and […]

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RDC’s Vivarail to supply all-battery trains for London route

White passenger train of multiple-unit cars with yellow noise and black doors

LONDON — Vivarail, the British passenger train re-manufacturing company owned by the Pittsburgh-based Railroad Development Corp., has won a contract to provide battery trains for passenger service in the suburbs west of London. Vivarail has developed a range of passenger trains using electric, diesel, and battery power which are now in regional service in England […]

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Asplund joins Rail Development Corp. as executive vice president

Smiling man in suit

PITTSBURGH — Railroad Development Corp. has named Nathan M. (Nate) Asplund as executive vice president. In his new role, Asplund will be responsible for support and business development for RDC operations worldwide. Asplund will join RDC on March 1. Most recently, he was partner and president of Columbia Strategic Consulting Group, a Fort Worth, Texas-based […]

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How the ‘Golden Spike Centennial Limited’ came to be

End of blue passenger train with sign highlighting railroad spikes

The Golden Spike Centennial Limited was born, in promoter Ross Rowland Jr.’s mind, as a reaction to the Association of American Railroads’ not planning anything special to mark the 100th anniversary of the nation-uniting event on the new transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. The apathy was perhaps typical of the Class I railroads […]

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BART again accepting delivery of new railcars

Rapid-transit railcar on truck for delivery

OAKLAND, Calif. — After a pause of more than a year, Bay Area Rapid Transit has resumed accepting delivery of its “Fleet of the Future” railcars, saying the manufacturer has sufficiently resolved reliability issues. BART stopped receiving new railcars on Jan. 8, 2021 [see “Digest: BART, citing reliability issues, says it will stop accepting delivery […]

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