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

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Shrink or grow? The answer . . .

Posted 10 months ago by Fred Frailey

The TV audience for NFL games was down noticeably this season. Nobody really professes to know why, but the television networks are worried, the National Football League less so. The NFL’s attitude is let’s wait and see what happens—in other words, do nothing. I’m telling you this because it’s an apt analogy for what’s happening in the railroad business these days. Business has been down pretty much across the board, including intermodal, the past year. But th...

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Passports on the Cal Zephyr

Posted 10 months ago by Fred Frailey

I am a news junkie, and salute Bloomberg News for a great beat this morning: The grand poobahs of Silicon Valley—the founders and CEOs and CFOs and financiers of the tech businesses centered near Palo Alto—are so upset at the result of the presidential election that they are plotting a secessionist movement. That’s right, create the Republic of California. I’m all for it. Oregon, too (citizens of Portland are seeking a vote on succession). Been good to know you and all th...

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Rail Pundit, we'll not forget you

Posted 10 months ago by Fred Frailey

Edited 9:30 pm, November 11 For several years, it’s been a poorly kept secret that a frequent responder to my blogs was my friend and fellow journalist Larry Kaufman. His handle was Rail Pundit. OMG, but he could raise hell! I would read his posts taking one after another of you to task for your alleged stupidities and think, geez, should I step in? One time I did intervene after Larry and another participant got really hot and personal with each other. Off list, I emailed them and ...

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A busy day at Rigby Yard, 1981

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

Stories of Dave Fink in the days when he ran the former Boston & Maine and Maine Central for majority owner Tim Mellon could fill a book, and probably should. Let’s just say the man was direct, in your face, and unafraid of a fight—you punch him, expect to be flattened in the counterattack. A bit like Donald Trump, maybe, and Dave made a lot of enemies. I’ve always thought you had to have a certain amount of those characteristics to survive in running a big New England rail...

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A Canadian diary, in a nutshell

Posted 11 months ago by Fred Frailey

In my blog describing VIA Rail Canada’s new Prestige service on its Canadian between Toronto and Montreal, I told you everything about Prestige-class service and nothing about the trip itself. So here it is, fast and dirty. We got the usual handling on VIA #2, the eastbound Canadian. That is, we took the siding for 95 percent of the opposing freight trains we met. This has always been standard practice. So the variable becomes this: Is Canadian National having a relatively good day, its f...

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My wacko day (and night)

Posted 11 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 11 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 11 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 11 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 11 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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