The one thing we can all agree on is that Fred is not perfect. I have been persuaded by you that I could have cast “CSX fillets the Auto Train for supper” in a less-combative tone that would have engendered a more civilized discussion. So...

Developments last week deepened Amtrak’s dilemma about how to sustain its Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief. The states of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico told the passenger train company they won’t ante up the $10 million of so needed...

Rust marks the curve in Vaughan, Miss., where Casey plowed into a freight train on April 30, 1900. Photo by Kevin P. Keefe The plan for the end of a recent vacation was simple. After a few days in the Florida Panhandle, my wife, Alison, and I would overnight...

I’m sitting in the courtyard of a hotel built from the ruins of a 16 th -century convent in the Mexican city of Puebla. The evening’s rainstorm is washing through, and I’m wondering why we gringos have so often ignored Mexican railroading...

Eastbound Norfolk Southern train 38Q passes through serene countryside at Atkins, Va., on March 23, 2012 with Southern Railway heritage unit No. 8099 on its maiden run in revenue service leading the train. Jonathan McCoy photo OK, first a confession...

Norfolk Southern’s first heritage unit, ES44AC No. 8098, proudly wears Conrail’s blue paint and trademark “wheels-on rails” logo. Photo by Norfolk Southern It’s June 1, 2012, and 13 years ago to this day, Conrail was dissolved...

I spent much of this week watching trains on the CSX North End Subdivision, between Richmond, Va., and Rocky Mount, N.C. Usually, you can count on spotting on this heavily trafficked, mostly single-track line the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their...

A Southwest Airlines 737 takes off from Chicago's Midway Airport, flying over the remains of the Pullman plant. Jim Wrinn photo CHICAGO – I visited the fabled Pullman Palace Car plant on the south side of Chicago on a recent weekend. It was the...

Since Norfolk Southern made a big splash with the announcement of heritage paint schemes, I thought it might be time for BNSF to do the same. Norfolk Southern joined the ranks of railroads like Union Pacific, Amtrak, Iowa Interstate, and others who are...

Updated March 1, 2013 I am just back from two transcontinental train trips, one after the other, from Chicago to Seattle on Amtrak’s Empire Builder and from Vancouver, B.C., to Toronto on VIA Rail Canada’s Canadian. I enjoyed both experiences...

The town of Missouri Valley, Iowa, is 40 miles north of Omaha, Neb., on I-29. It's the site of some of the most concentrated and intense mainline freight action you'll ever see. And I make it a point to get out there whenever business takes me to Omaha...

Wow, I’m never leaving on vacation again. You folks really kicked up the dust in response to my blog two weeks ago (see “Where Is The Southwest Chief Headed?” Sept. 3). The back and forth dialogue was furious and sometimes ferocious...

CSX Transportation dispatchers may not realize that less than five years ago they played a role in changing national transportation policy, but not the kind of change their employer likes to talk about. They and dispatchers of Union Pacific handled Amtrak...

Most of you have never heard of Avard. It’s in northwest Oklahoma, just shy of that state’s panhandle. I’ve been there many times. Worst of all is to arrive by dirt road to discover, as I always seem to do, that your fuel tank is on...

There is nothing I hate worse than to say a fellow journalist is full of it. But that is the fillup I offer Alexis Flippin of Frommer’s Travel. Lady, do your homework, or leave us alone. On AARP’s web site, Frommer’s offers up “Outside...

Hunter Harrison has wasted no time putting his imprint on Canadian Pacific. My friends at that railroad say he is already a making changes large and small. To my knowledge no one has been dismissed. That will come later. Harrison has been making his way...

I’ve been wrapping my arms around the announcement this week that BNSF Railway will test-fuel locomotives with liquefied natural gas (LNG), with a view toward starting large-scale conversions away from diesel fuel as soon as 2014. This is a game...

Editor Jim Wrinn interviews photographer Olaf Haensch in Wernigerode, Germany in September 2012. Olaf Haensch photo. Harz train steams by the Quedlinburg, Germany, railway station. Olaf Haensch photo. A Harz 2-10-2T steams at the summit of Brocken...

The Southern Pacific Brooklyn Roundhouse in its last days in May 2012. Jim Wrinn photo PORTLAND, Ore. – Few historic locomotive shops in American railway preservation have earned icon status. The Brooklyn Roundhouse in Portland, Ore., is one...

I’ve written before about Norfolk Southern’s Funnel of Fun, its busy line into Chicago from Cleveland, Toledo, and Elkhart, Ind. It has always been a minefield of potential problems. Sixty years ago, New York Central ran 48 passenger trains...

Photo by Jim Wrinn. ROANOKE, Va. – Let the record show that on June 24, 2012, at approximately 4:03 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings time, an operating mainline steam locomotive rolled into the city once known as the Alamo of Steam. Over a radio...

The other day I de-boarded Amtrak’s Auto Train in Lorton, Va. But instead of proceeding to the station for the long wait to get my car, I hung back and watched. Soon enough, my hunch was confirmed. Pumped up with self-satisfaction, I sauntered up...

“It’s sealed,” a securities analyst emailed me today about the fight to control the future of Canadian Pacific. Institutional Shareholder Services had condemned the stewardship of CP by its present board of directors and recommended...

An X2000 train operated by SJ (Statens Järnvägar [Swedish State Railways]) crosses the Northern railway bridge as it departs Stockholm Central Station. During the summer of 2011, my wife Marcia and I spent ten weeks in Europe. In three...

The railroad career of Edwin Earl Ellis has been anything but common and ordinary. He started two short-line conglomerates (and was fired by the first one). He bootstrapped Amtrak’s mail and express business into a $150 million-a-year behemoth that...