Fred Frailey - Trains Magazine - Trains News Wire, Railroad News, Railroad Industry News, Web Cams, and Forms

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Whatever happened to UP?

Posted 4 months ago by Fred Frailey

Union Pacific is a profoundly different railroad on many parts of its far-flung system than it was just two decades ago. To show you what I mean, let's look at the numbers--the numbers of trains it operates, to be specific. What you'll see is that the part of Union Pacific that is linked loosely to Texas is doing fine. These would include the three spokes of the LA-El Paso Sunset Route that divide in West Texas and the former Cotton Belt and Missouri Pacific corridors coming from Chicago and pla...

31

The Wreck of Old Number 2

Posted 5 months ago by Fred Frailey

In my dispatch to you yesterday, I wrote that Canadian National Railway is trundling heroic amounts of containers, grain, crude oil, forest products, autos and what-have-you across the prairies, between Edmonton, Alta., and Winnipeg, Man., and that as a result nothing seems to get anywhere in a hurry. It’s like herding rhinoceroses, except that rhinos are more easily herded. Today I intercepted VIA Rail’s eastbound Canadian, and shadowed it for more than 250 miles, from near Watrous,...

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Who is screwing whom on CN?

Posted 5 months ago by Fred Frailey

You are perhaps used to my tales of riding the Canadian across the mountains, prairies and forests, and all the indignities that Canadian National Railway inflicts upon VIA Rail’s flagship. This time I decided upon a different approach. I flew to Winnipeg, rented a car and drove west 500-plus miles across Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Aboard the Canadian, it seems like chaos out there. Is this really the case? What I discovered may surprise you. But first, the highlight of my day today. I be...

157

Rail Renaissance, RIP

Posted 6 months ago by Fred Frailey

Railroad analyst Anthony Hatch coined the term “Railroad Renaissance” to commemorate the industry’s rebirth. How right he was! By 2004 railroads had become red hot, gobbling up market share and expanding capital budgets to increase capacity. Today it’s obvious we’ve come to a turning point. Fully half the Big Six railroads (CSX, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific) appear to have thrown in the towel and no longer pursue business growth. Oh yes, they all talk the talk...

51

History come alive

Posted 7 months ago by Fred Frailey

A couple of decades ago, a friend of mine named John William Schultz set out to chronicle the Burlington Route’s lengthy list of Zephyr streamliners. And chronicle them he did, in a manuscript so massive that no book publisher he approached would undertake the challenge of printing it. This has bothered me over the years, because Bill, as I called him, had written a masterpiece. You can forget the books you own about the Hiawathas, the 400s, the Century, the Chiefs and everything else. Bur...

94

You say potAto, I say potOto

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

The voice on the other end of the phone was that of the editor of my column in Trains, and she was incredulous. “Fred, how could you do this?” she asked. “Don’t you know what this man did to Wisconsin Central?” The man in question was Hunter Harrison, who had retired several years earlier after a decade at Canadian National, which he had profoundly changed (for the better, I thought). Now he was the hired gun of a hedge fund trying to seize control of Canadian Pacif...

56

How a failed railroad lives on

Posted 10 months ago by Fred Frailey

Here is what has changed in the past generation: No Class I railroad today would tolerate a route like the path that Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad trod through Missouri—386 miles of rotting ties beneath 90-pound rail, with little business to show for it. But once upon a time such sights were common. I’m recalling Rock Island through Nebraska and into Colorado, the Milwaukee Road’s entire western extension, Chicago & North Western’s Cowboy Line across Nebraska and eve...

128

Let's save Amtrak!

Posted 10 months ago by Fred Frailey

What follow is my column in the May issue of Trains. But it occurred to me it also belongs online, and not just for the benefit of non-subscribers. The piece cries for discussion, punch and counter-punch. Already I've gotten some feedback, not all of it warm and cuddly (Oh Fred, one friend writes, how could you mention Rocky Mountaineer, because Peter Armstrong and his people are so immoral?) Stuff like that. What I realized is that I had just done what I like best, which is get people excited/m...

100

Fred twitches, Durham sizzles

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

I sometimes twitch. Maybe you do, too, so let me explain my twitch. I open the New York Times to this headline: “Durham Dreamed of a Transit Line. Duke University All but Killed It.” Okay, transit line means train, and a daughter of mine went to Duke. Sounds good, let’s read it. The piece begins: “Political leaders in one of the most progressive parts of the South [twitch] have dreamed for two decades about an ambitious plan for a transit line connecting Durham, the home ...

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