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RailAmerica, the conglomeration of 45 short line and regional railroads, is for sale. Fortress Investment Group, which took RA private in 2007, has employed Deutsche Bank to find a buyer for its majority (56 percent) interest in the company, several sources...
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“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...
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When you leave Fort Sumner, N.M., on U.S. 60, there's a turnoff to an unnamed, unmarked, unsigned road that hugs BNSF Railway’s Transcon toward the west coast for 61 miles, to Vaughn, N.M. I am not recommending you take it, because it is a rough...
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There is a beautiful hillside overlook near Curtis, Okla., where westbound freights on BNSF Railway’s Transcon must labor mightily to overcome a long 1 percent grade. I was standing there this morning with my fellow traveler, Tom Hoback, president...
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Pressure is mounting on the warring parties battling over the leadership of Canadian Pacific to negotiate a truce prior to the scheduled May 17 annual meeting and shareholder vote for directors. That pressure is greatest on the board of directors of CP...
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As we drive through the Kansas Flint Hills, toward Emporia, I turn to Tom Hoback and say, “Wouldn’t it be cool to encounter some really bad thunderstorms tomorrow — maybe see a tornado?” Tom gives me a look that says, why do I...
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I lived on
the Atlantic Coast for a quarter century before I admitted that eastern
railroads really are railroads and actually deserving of some affectionating.
Today my wife says the CSX North End Subdivision in southern Virginia is “Fred’s
second home” and suspects me of supporting a second family there. Still, after all these years, there’s
something about a western railroad that quickens my pulse.
Two-thirds
of the way across Missouri yesterday, I steer my Dodge off Interstate 70 and
head north on 40 miles of state highway to the little town of Carrollton. One reason
is to pay homage to the little house on West Benton Street, where my father was
born 102 years ago. The other attraction
of Carrollton is that it’s the first place I can intersect BNSF Railway’s Transcon
and begin to inhale the fast pace of big time railroading in the west.
I am not let
down by Mother BNSF, either. No sooner do I point the car west beside the
tracks than four big GE motors swoop past with an eastbound Z train — a bunch
of 53-foot double stack containers followed by an endless line of UPS and LTL
truck trailers.
I make my
way west, across the flood plain of the Missouri River, through Norborne and
Hardin, where a tie and surfacing gang has an endless line of equipment on the
north track. The dispatcher in Kansas City is herding first eastbound, then
westbound trains around the gang on the south track. Passing Henrietta and
Camden I see parked eastbound trains waiting their turn through the gauntlet.
Even on a Monday, this is a busy railroad.
***, it’s
good to be back and see this railroad.—Fred
W. Frailey ...
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I had been interviewing D.J. Stadtler for about 15 minutes several weeks ago when a thought crossed my mind. So I asked: Would he consider throwing his hat into the ring to become vice president of operations of Amtrak, rather than the acting VP? At the...
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In the forthcoming July issue of Trains, Ross Capon of the National Association of Railroad Passengers describes Amtrak’s long-distance trains as “meat waiting to be roasted” by fiscal conservatives and insists there is no guarantee...
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I’ve been called to account for my column in the April issue of Trains Magazine that argues Hunter Harrison would make a better chief executive officer of Canadian Pacific than the incumbent, Fred Green. The arguments against my opinion piece are...
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But only upon the third conviction. After all, I am not a vindictive man. On the first conviction, those who spray paint on railroad equipment would only have their first two fingers of each hand amputated, making it more difficult to press the button...
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By the time I was 12 I had narrowed my occupational choices to a mere two. One was to be, like my father, a newspaperman. The other option was train dispatching. I chose the former, but my, I have always admired the men and women who direct the trains...
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Yesterday morning near St. Augustine I watched two of Florida East Coast’s blue GP40-2s wheel 177 containers and trailers (yes, I counted) northward at a brisk 55 mph. Two smallish diesels can do that because the vast majority of those boxes are...
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Well, CSX sure made a mess of things in Emporia, Va. The town of almost 6,000 people, some 10 miles north of the North Carolina border, was invaded yesterday morning by System Tie and Surfacing Gang T-2. T-2 and its allied contractors proceeded to tear...
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