Joe Boardman, the president of Amtrak, penned a note to employees the other day that offers clues to what the company would do if Congress cuts its operating grant. He notes first that the best guess is that the Senate will appropriate $1.48 billion...

How do I begin this sorry tale? Maybe with a second question: Where would I be today without ATCS Monitor? I’d be flying blind, as I did most of my life, hoping to accidently come upon a train now and then. ATCS Monitor (go here for a fuller...

I am sympathetic with the fix railroads are in. The feds are all over them to find saboteurs under every rock. I am also sympathetic with the dilemma facing people who love trains and love to photograph them. Your right to do this is as unfettered...

Wednesday begins as just another day for Florida East Coast Railway engineer David Shelley. He and conductor Jim Bush leave Jacksonville, Fla., for Hialeah Yard near Miami at 1:30 p.m. with 9,160-foot train 101, pride of the fleet. On the point...

Amtrak President Joe Boardman was in St. Louis today to deliver the good news: a record year in ridership for Amtrak; the eighth record year, in fact, out of the past nine. This is especially noteworthy in light of declining gasoline prices in recent...

To hear the politicians in my adopted hometown of Washington talk, we need President Obama’s expensive jobs-creating legislation because the economy is possibly headed into the toilet (Democrats), or we cannot afford the legislation because the...

Yesterday was a killer. Up at 2:30 a.m. in Georgia and on the road until 6 p.m. that evening in Virginia. This is what you like to do: drive and watch trains. But it’s probably an instance of too much of a good thing. Just north of the North...

Six months ago, you set out to witness an interesting event: a northbound CSX intermodal train, Q104, running through Georgia against a wall of superior southbound trains, three of them belonging to Amtrak. This was between Folkston and Savannah, and...