When VIA Rail Canada added eight hours to the schedule of its Toronto-Vancouver Canadian almost three years ago, making it a four-nights-out adventure, I was among the incredulous folks who wondered at the audacity of slowing down an already slow...

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 In and of itself, VIA Rail Canada’s Canadian is not an extraordinary train. Come on, the equipment is 56 years old, soon to...

Born in Staten Island, N.Y., the great-grandson of an indentured servant from the Netherlands, Cornelius Vanderbilt earned many fortunes in ferries and steam shipping before coming to railroads late in his long life. In 1863, at age 69, he bought...

President Obama the other day issued an executive order mandating “a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.” Go here ...

My little piece on coal the other week (go here ) generated a flood of responses. I’ve enjoyed the dialogue it fostered. Let me throw a few more shovels of incendiary into the discussion. Several of you, in company with BNSF Railway chief...

Any time now, I expect the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives to schedule a vote on rescinding high speed rail appropriations that haven’t actually been disbursed by the U.S. Treasury. Of $10 billion in grants, less than...

The year 2011 has hardly begun, and already the news is bleak about coal, the No. 1 commodity that railroads carry. Last year, not a single new coal-fired power plant went online in the U.S. Now, what is soon to become the nation’s largest...

One of the last big holdouts against partnering with railroads in intermodal transportation is joining the team. I’m referring to none other than Federal Express, the giant global transportation company. Starting January 31, as it completes a reorganization...

Kudos to Union Pacific and its senior VP for corporate relations, Bob Turner, for a genuinely good and fun idea: Let the fans and others who enjoy steam locomotives decide where one of UP’s big brutes will travel this summer, the 50th anniversary...