Oil remains the stand-alone star for railcar loadings, according to monthly figures released Friday by the Association of American Railroads. At 54,755 total U.S. carloads in August, shipments of “petroleum & petroleum products” represent...

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...

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 has been (hmm) maybe a quarter of a century since Amtrak has operated a substantial New York-Florida train worthy of the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line streamliners. I was fortunate to ride those trains during the winters of 1969-71, after...

Once in a while, an incident gets your attention in unsettling ways. That happened the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 21, when a CSX coal train derailed in Ellicott City, Md. Two young women lost their lives. They were just days from returning to college, one...

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...

Does Minturn, Colo., mean anything to you? To some it raises goosebumps. Others of us get teary thinking of what used to be. Minturn (pronounced “Min’urn”) was until 1997 a gritty railroad town situated between ritzy Vail and Beaver...

It has been 42 years since the Denver & Rio Grande Western sold its magnificent, 64-mile line over Cumbres Pass to the states of Colorado and New Mexico and gotten out of narrow-gauge railroading. And yes, it has taken me that long to get to Antonito...

How’s your week going folks? Don’t ask that of your friends toiling for Amtrak. I’m accustomed to reading about bad things that happen to good trains. But events on Monday, August 6, constitute a lulu, and for the most part are not...

My dispatch titled “Hunter Hits the Ground Running” generated a slew of responses, to the point that I felt that I was attending a Safety Committee meeting and was about to ask if Canadian Pacific ball caps were being passed out to attendees...

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 AWOL lately, wrapping up work on one feature story for Trains and starting work on the next. That first story you’ll see when the October issue gets delivered in late August (yes, it is amusing that an October issue comes in August...

Believe me, I get so many emails on even a slow day that I never go around looking for new sources of bedevilment. Still, I never regret the day I got that first note from Bill Baird. Bill is a BNSF Railway train dispatcher assigned to its San Bernardino...

This just in: The Deccan Herald in India reports that a passenger train bound for Bahareich on the North-Eastern Railway left 500 passengers stranded in seven of its eight coaches because the engineer was blissfully unaware the train had separated...

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 (Revised July 6, 2012) After months of wrangling, Congress recently passed a law reauthorizing spending on the nation’s roads and...

When I was decades younger, I regarded most people over the age of 60 as dangerously daft. They didn’t get it. As I have gotten older, my attitude has softened (surprise!). To use a newspaper metaphor, it’s about legs. Young reporters have...

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’ve been on the gossip circuit lately, asking people what’s holding up Hunter Harrison’s appointment as chief executive officer of Canadian Pacific. The hotly contested election of CP directors was five weeks ago, and the faction...

According to several sources, Deutsche Bank Securities has opened the first round of bids to buy RailAmerica, the short line conglomerate that runs 45 railroads totaling about 7,500 miles of track in 28 states and three Canadian provinces, along with...

For weeks it has been common knowledge that VIA Rail would announce reduced frequencies of its two flagship trains (and some other services as well) as soon as Canada’s parliament adjourned, lessening the chances of political blowback. The cuts...

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...

Congress this week continues to wrestle with the highway reauthorization bill, which largely finances road and public transit spending. It’s like a Chrismas tree, with something for everyone. Railroads are a flea on the tail of this big dog,...

Nobody called it the Transcon then. It was just Santa Fe’s freight main line across Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, on its way to California. But almost 60 years ago, what was this corridor like? Let’s forget Hunter Harrison and...

The Financial Times today reports that Phillips 66, a refining spinoff from ConocoPhillips, is ordering 2,000 tank cars able to carry some 120,000 barrels of crude oil a day out of the Bakken Shale oil fields in North Dakota. This is just the latest...

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...