Over time, I’ve probably read 10,001 railroad accident reports. Virtually all come down to mechanical failure, the elements, or one person’s poor judgment or incompetence. Very, very few involve the stupidity of an entire five-person train crew. This...

It's safe for me to say that Powder River Basin coal from eastern Wyoming changed the face of American railroading. The revenues from hauling this coal kept several Midwest railroads solvent. More important, that coal revenue financed the rebuilding...

I ran into Paul Kingma by serendipity, at Penny’s Diner in Bill, Wyo. Bill is where Union Pacific recrews its empty coal trains and sends them off to the Orin Subdivision mines to be loaded. Then the loaded trains are recrewed again before heading south...

Someone gave my wife a book called 1,001 Things You Must Do Before You Die . Come to think of it, maybe I gave it to her. But that’s too many things to do. I’d be lucky to finish ten of them. So I will make it easy for all of you. Here is the one thing...

At church last Sunday, the recessional hymn was a golden oldie: “The Church’s One Foundation.” I had sung it a hundred times growing up. I whispered to my wife, “This is really taking me back.” Indeed it did. By the time we were halfway into the first...

My column in the September issue about the calamities that befall trains on the North End Subdivision of CSX (“Where Bad Things Happen to Good Trains,” page 14) provoked a lot of responses. My favorite concerns the really bad night on BNSF Railway’s double...