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

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My wacko day (and night)

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

I write in my column in the December issue of Trains (soon to arrive in your mailbox) that I look upon every trip by train as an adventure. I’ve just had another adventure, one worth sharing. It began when I booked a trip from New York City to Jacksonville, Fla., on the Silver Star. As you know, any extended trip on the Star is by definition an adventure, because it now lacks a dining car and therefore fresh food. My strategy on food became twofold. First, I didn’t really leave Goth...

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The lowdown on Prestige

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

Half a dozen years ago, the folks at Via Rail Canada asked what was needed to attract the 1 percent crowd to their flagship, the Toronto-to-Vancouver Canadian. That is, the 1 percent of us with the most money, who can have about any travel experience they want. Back then, they weren’t getting these people. Well then, they decided, let’s create something that will cost the big bucks but will leave people thinking they got something really impressive in exchange. Thus was born, in 2014...

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Jim McClellan, in his own words

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

“Frailey? McClellan here!” Those words, spoken over a telephone every couple of weeks, were my signal to put aside whatever I was doing and indulge myself for 20 or 30 minutes in the wit and wisdom of Jim McClellan. Of this man, Rush Loving wrote in The Men Who Loved Trains: “Ambling from job to job, often by misadventure and sometimes even by getting fired, McClellan had happened into the center of every major event in the railroad industry. ‘I call myself the Forrest Gu...

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For God so loved cows

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

In my youth in Hopkins County, Texas, which proclaimed itself then the dairy capital of America, cattle were sacred. Ever so often a farmer’s fence would go down and milk cows would placidly chew grass on the Cotton Belt’s right of way, until struck by a passing train. In the inevitable lawsuit, those aging milk providers would be mysteriously transformed into prize breeding cattle that would still be working for the benefit of the children of Texas but for Cotton Belt’s neglig...

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PTC or meds for Grandma?

Posted 9 months ago by Fred Frailey

If it’s a safer railroad environment you want—as we do—the signs are not good. Let’s start with Positive Train Control (PTC). Not so long after Congress voted in 2008 to mandate it, I admit I was skeptical. I questioned the huge amount of private capital required per life saved and I criticized Congress for not giving railroads a life preserver of their own in the form of tax credits. Well, I’m entitled to change my mind, and I have. We have witnessed terrible trag...

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About Amtrak's new leader

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

It’s safe to say that everyone who cares about the future of the American passenger train breathed a sigh of relief today. Welcome to Amtrak, Wick Moorman. When he and I spoke months ago, the just-retired chief executive of Norfolk Southern said the challenge of running (and changing) Amtrak attracted him, but that he had promised his wife he would devote his time to her and their family. So maybe the hero of the day is really Bonnie Moorman. Charles (Wick) Moorman brings some big strengt...

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On crew size, I smell a rat

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

I fully realize that it’s an article of faith among the readers of this blog who operate trains that the Federal Railroad Administration’s proposed rule mandating two people on all trains is an urgent safety issue. And maybe it is. The problem I’ve had all along is that the two-person rule is being treated by FRA in such a political manner as to cause me to question the agency’s sincerity. Now the Association of American Railroads, which of course represents the employers...

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Amtrak's acting president?

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

An acquaintance of long standing, with a reputation for seldom being wrong, passed on an interesting tidbit just now that I’ll pass on to you. I’ve blogged a couple of times about people who might become (or ought to become) Amtrak’s next president. My colleague Don Phillips wrote a Trains Magazine column on this same subject. The months go by and still no decision, however. The incumbent CEO, Joe Boardman, plans to retire in September. So this is the tidbit whispered in my ea...

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What happened to the Sprints?

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

It’s my turn to ask questions. Those of us of a certain age, survivors of the era of full crews, surely recall the spate of trains that blossomed in roughly the early to mid 1980s. Sprints. Slingshots, Texas Special North/South and what-have-you. Santa Fe had a small network of Q-type trains. What bound them together was that they mostly trailer-on-flatcar intermodal trains operated over fairly short distances on extended crew districts with only an engineer and conductor and without the t...

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