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Fred Frailey

22

Fred's lesson in humility

Posted 9 years ago by Fred Frailey

Let this be a lesson to all: When you visit a short line railroad, in particular a really short line railroad, go to the front door and knock to be let in. Tom Hoback and I learned this the hard way today in Woodward, Okla. I wager that few of you ever knew or now remember that Woodward, astride BNSF Railway's Chicago-Los Angeles Transcon in northwest Oklahoma, was also once trod by the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, or Katy. Katy was primarily a railroad running from Kansas City and St. Louis...

23

Engine with a whole lotta hurt

Posted 9 years ago by Fred Frailey

Never a dull moment at Ellinor, Kan. Ellinor is the place, population zero, west of Emporia where BNSF Railway's Transcon to California separates from the route to Colorado and then down to Albuquerque, N.M. Several decades ago I stood in a farmer's field at Ellinor, watching freights whiz by, and was invaded by 250 chiggers. Well, at least I counted that many before I gave up. The itches they caused made my life hell for four days. Finally, in Perry, Okla., the check-in lady at the Holiday Inn ...

29

Amtrak up and down and up and down

Posted 9 years ago by Fred Frailey

One of the benefits of not punching a clock but instead being a gentlemanly freelance writer is the ability to just get away for a day. I’ve wanted to do a circle trip from Washington to Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and back to Washington. You go up and over the Alleghenies going west via Sand Patch and up and over again in the other direction via Horse Shoe Curve. It's a visit to three busy railroads that barrel you along at 70 mph to 100 mph on the first legs and 135 mph on another. ...

41

Writing about railroads

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

How do you become a good writer? That’s easy. The same way you become a good locomotive engineer or train dispatcher: Do it so many times, always careful to learn from your experiences and mistakes, that you begin to unconsciously develop your own style. Then it gets easier. For those of you reading this blog, writing about railroads is a noble and achievable ambition, because you’re already fascinated by the subject matter. So here is some practical advice from the old man. Never b...

21

The Ed Ellis Story (continued)

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

In case you missed the news, things are happening over at Iowa Pacific Holdings in Chicago. IPH, founded in 2001 by Ed Ellis and a group of his friends and railroad colleagues, operates the Chicago-New Orleans Pullman Rail Journeys and owns 10 short line railroads. What has made Iowa Pacific so fascinating to many of us is that wherever it goes, passenger trains seem to follow. The news is that Ellis and the other owners of IPH have sold an 80 percent interest in the company to Sam Zell’s...

18

Winter's parting insult

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

For BNSF Railway, the winter just now fitfully fading away in the upper Midwest was one for the record books, or at least the recent record books. I was in North Dakota this week, curious to see if any of the congestion remained. I found very little of that, other than loaded oil trains staged between Minot, N.D., and the Twin Cities because eastern connections weren’t able to take them. But about 10 miles west of Minot I came upon one of the calling cards left behind by the bitter cold: ...

52

North America's finest passenger train

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

In a blog titled Amtrak’s Best Train? We’ve Got a Winner, I wrote that the Coast Starlight between Los Angeles and Seattle has become the premier U.S. passenger train. And I promised, in the due course of time, a bake-off between it and VIA Rail Canada’s Canadian, which operates between Toronto and Vancouver, B.C. And I cautioned you not to presume which train would emerge on top. Journeys on both trains are fresh on my mind, so here goes. I am going to divide the competition ...

22

(Almost) Home at last

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Well, finally! It's 6:10 p.m., we are still 200-plus miles from Toronto and 16-17 hours late on VIA Rail's Canadian. But at last it looks like winter outside. This is as good as it gets on a train. Outside, the snow is falling pell-mell. The sight is so evocative of Canada that tears well up. A couple of blogs ago I called this trip an adventure. This isn't the first time aboard the Canadian that I've had to make massive changes in my travel plans (massive because they are expensive). But in a ...

8

The news from Somewhere

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

"I have a best case scenario." It's Mickey Keating, the Park car attendant, who has bounded up the steps into the dome. "If we keep moving along nicely, we can make Toronto by 10 tonight." Okay, that's twelve and a half hours late. But Mickey continues: "I'm thinking more like 11 or 11:30. And if we keep waiting half an hour at a time for trains . . ." He leaves that thought hanging. You last heard from me as the Canadian left Winnipeg, on its way east. We were almost ten hours late. As I write...

11

SOS from Canada

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Had breakfast in the dining car this morning with Susan. She boarded VIA Rail's Canadian at Rivers, Man. Hmmm, I said, we were due there about 5 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Four-thirty, Susan replied. What time did we get there, because I must have been asleep? Midnight, Susan said. So you waited at home, I asked? No, she said, in the car; VIA didn't know where its train was. Eight hours in a car, waiting for a train . . . . It's been an adventure. When last you heard from me, the Canadian was...

24

Postcard from Canada

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Backing out of McGregor, Sask. UPDATED 5:30 PM CST I dreamed last night that the ground was uneven when I tried to walk. Then I was in an airplane and discovered we were flying below the level of buildings we approached. We'll crash for sure, I tried to yell. You have the strangest dreams on a train rattling through the night. I'm on day three of a five-day trip aboard VIA Rail's Canadian. I thought some of you might want to live vicariously, so here's an update. The trip is going splendidly...

18

With respect to Matt

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

The relationship between a writer and an editor is an intimate one, almost as intimate sometimes as between a man and a woman. But it’s a different sort of intimacy. We writers and editors argue and fight, yes, but to succeed, we must share the same goal, which is to produce something publishable that stands on its own and achieves its objectives. In my 55 years in this business, I’ve occupied both sides of this relationship, and never have I come across an editor with the profession...

32

Amtrak's best train? We have a winner

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

And it is the Coast Starlight. Simply put, it has everything. The Empire Builder, California Zephyr and Auto Train, my runners-up, each have much to commend them. But the Coast Starlight just overwhelms the opposition and wins on points. Let's start with what's outside the window. On day one going north you leave Los Angeles through the San Fernando Valley and cut through the coastal mountains at Santa Susana, then at Oxnard join the Pacific Ocean for roughly three hours. One of those hours you ...

63

Is this the new 1997?

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

When a railroad makes the front page of the Wall Street Journal, it’s almost never the cause for celebration at corporate headquarters. It means you have screwed up big time. Now it is the turn of BNSF Railway to do the front-page perp walk. For 55 of my 70 years, the problem facing BNSF, namely more business than it can handle, was not on the table for American railroads. It was the other way around. There was way too much capacity, and railroads fought like feral dogs for the scraps the...

53

Confessions of a mall walker

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

I’ll be frank with you: I am one of those people I used to despise. But it’s cold outside, I need to exercise to keep the pounds I took off last summer from coming back on this winter, and so I go to Tysons Corner Mall in Virginia for 90 minutes every morning before the stores open. So far it is working beautifully. But let’s keep this to ourselves, okay? I told my daughter Liz, the Manhattan sophisticate, who told her friend Lele, who whispered back, “Liz, I don’t ...

77

More on the camera caper

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Those of you who read Trains Magazine may have run across my column in the April issue, wherein I ridicule the moves afoot to put inward-facing cameras in locomotive cabs. Actually, that’s not really correct. I sought to beat the living hell out of the notion that such cameras will prevent accidents, as several camera-hogging U.S. senators claim in the aftermath of Metro-North Railroad’s high-speed accident. What they will do, I said, is help assign blame in the aftermath. But don&rs...

44

Don't fight God

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

The situation facing Canadian grain farmers is almost Biblical. Their 2013 crops of wheat, canola, barley, and other grains was 40 percent greater than that of 2012 and far above average. Moreover, the harvest was a bountiful surprise forecast by almost no one. Now a new year is underway and it seems that the greater part of that harvest remains trapped in grain elevators or, worse yet, unsold and sitting in the granaries of prairie farmers. Canadian farmers and its two major railways, it seems...

36

The railroad that cannot be bought

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

In journalism we call it a slow news day, and at such times we try to think of anything we can write about. I don’t know the term securities analysts use on these occasions, but it obviously was such a day last week for two Canadian analysts, who suggested in separate notes to clients that Canadian Pacific or Canadian National should buy Kansas City Southern. I’m here to tell you it ain’t gonna happen. According to Canada’s Financial Post, one of the sinners is Walter S...

48

Oil by rail dodges all bullets

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Fireball explosions, dozens of deaths, congressional hearings, emergency orders by regulators, potentially unsafe tank cars, incendiary stories by the score in newspapers . . . none of this has seemed to affect the ardor of crude oil producers and refiners for shipping their product by rail. I'm just back from attending a crude-by-rail meeting in Glendale, Calif., put on by American Business Conferences. I arrived curious how much the negative events of recent months had affected the new-found c...

80

Auto Train changes: For better or worse?

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

There was quite a dustup Thursday on Trainorders.com when webmaster Todd Clark published what he believed to be an internal Amtrak memo about changes coming to the Auto Train in about two weeks. I asked Amtrak for comment and thus far gotten no response. The memo appears authentic, so I'll share its contents. What's afoot is a combination of cost cuts and revenue additions. Gone will be complimentary wine and cheese tasting for sleeping car passengers (saving: $188,000 per year). Removed from t...

28

The Zephyr stalks a freight train

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Interesting experience on the eastbound California Zephyr today, as I head from Sacramento to Salt Lake City. We leave Sacramento at 11:28 a.m., 19 minutes late, then Roseville 22 minutes late and Colfax (at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountain range) 24 minutes late. We aren't far from Colfax when we begin to noticeably slow. The conductor comes on the PA to say we're following a freight train for at least a bit. I look at the Union Pacific Roseville Area employee timetable and figure it wil...

38

The end of the line

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Late this afternoon, photographer Bob Eisthen and I stand on a dirt levee in the Texas border town of Presidio. To our south sits Presidio's larger sister town of Ojinaga in Mexico. To our north, literally beneath our feet, a pair of rails is smothered by the recently built levee, and a few hundred feet further north a timber railroad bridge lies buckled and destroyed by a fire. This is the end, in the U.S., of Arthur Stilwell's dream to build a railroad with the shortest distance between Kansas...

26

A night on the Auto Train

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

I'm coming to you from the Auto Train, a truly unique train on Amtrak or anywhere else, for that matter. It is passenger railroading on a grand scale. Consider tonight's stats: 2 P40 locomotives, 17 bilevel passenger cars, 29 auto carrier cars (all told 4,035 feet long), 458 passengers with 225 vehicles (which include a few motorcycles), 26 on-board service employees, and an operating crew of four (two engineers, conductor, and assistant conductor). The operating crew will change at Florence, S....

19

What shall be the new normal?

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

I've had bad luck riding Amtrak recently, but in the process I have come to realize a few things and feel like sharing them with you. Two weeks ago, I was in Chicago. The weather was bitter, below or barely above zero, with gusty winds. Conditions at Fourteenth Street Coach Yard were obviously bad, because nine out of every ten departing trains those two days loaded and left late from Chicago Union Station, sometimes by three to five hours. Let's set aside the reasons this happened. It's fair ...

23

A man in full

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Jim Young, the retired chairman and former chief executive of Union Pacific, is dead at 61 of pancreatic cancer. It's a vicious disease that is rarely detected before it spreads to other organs; then it is incurable. Through good care and stout heart, Jim was lucky (if you call it that) to live almost two years after his diagnosis. He had given up the CEO job immediately after learning of his illness and retired as chairman of the board nine days before his death. Raised in Omaha and educated a...

48

The locomotive of my lifetime

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Wish me happy birthday. I begin my eighth decade Wednesday, hopefully aboard the Auto Train. As appropriate for someone of my teetering gait, I sometimes enjoy thinking of the past. I try to sift the few meaningful memories from the far larger ocean of meaningless ones, and some of the former have to do with railroads, such as: In the diesel era, which locomotive class had the most staying power? Which one didn’t let go? Which one will some day start its own eighth decade in measurable num...

93

The 'city of broad shoulders' gets a whippin'

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Okay, where was I? In A traveling man’s further adventures, I wrote that I flew from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to ride the Pullman Rail Journey train, attached once a week or so to the rear of Amtrak’s City of New Orleans. Pullman is the brainchild of Iowa Pacific Holdings president Ed Ellis, who says its purpose is to recreate the first-class travel experience that the Pullman Company once provided every night of the year. But when I reach Chicago Union Station, all is not well. ...

53

A traveling man's further adventures

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Amtrak in Chicago is on life support. Did I just say that? Actually you could say the same of the entire railroad industry east of the Rockies and north of the Ohio. Trains are moving, but just barely. Today I don't give a hoot about the rest of the railroad industry. I care about getting to New Orleans on Pullman Rail Journey's cars, which will be attached tonight to the back of Amtrak's City of New Orleans, and I arrive at Chicago Union Station supremely confident this is going to be a great d...

82

We don't need the Keystone XL

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

The U.S. Department of State’s Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement tells us what a lot of people already suspected: TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline is largely irrelevant to the future of the oil business in the U.S. and Canada. And maybe to the railroad business as well. It did surprise many people, myself included, by concluding that the pipeline would not substantially worsen carbon pollution. But the main point of the report, to me at least, is that whether or n...

24

Amtrak 29, stop. Right now. Sorry. Stop

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

I don’t usually write about my train travels, but every now and then things happen that are so interesting or unusual that I beg your indulgence. This is one such time. It begins barely a week ago with an email from my buddy Al DiCenso: Would I consider a quick round trip between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, out on the westbound Capitol Limited and back on the eastbound Cardinal? Absolutely. In the space of 15 minutes from receipt of that email, we book space, leaving Monday, January 27...

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