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2

Cast in Concrete

Posted 19 hours ago by George Hamlin

I’d seen both sides of the bridge over Maryland Route 34, between Shepherdstown, West Virginia and Sharpsburg, Maryland (the location of the U.S. Civil War’s Battle Antietam) many times before I finally did something about it, photographically speaking. It obviously had been there a long while when I first viewed it about 30 years ago, and, based on numerous subsequent viewings since then, it didn’t look like it was going away any time soon. The interesting thing about t...

16

One chart shows how railroads adjusted to pandemic traffic levels

Posted 11 days ago by Bill Stephens

If anything encapsulates the wild ride railroads have been on since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it’s this slide from CSX Transportation’s second quarter earnings call. It’s definitely one of those times when a picture is worth a thousand words if you want to understand how railroads quickly adjusted their operations to dramatic swings in traffic volume. The chart shows, in navy blue, how traffic fell off a cliff in late March, bottomed out in May, and slowly climbed out of th...

9

CN's JJ Ruest skates toward the future of railroading

Posted 12 days ago by Bill Stephens

No chief executive lays out his railroad’s long-term strategy better than JJ Ruest of Canadian National. Ruest paraphrases hockey great Wayne Gretzky, saying that CN wants to head where the puck will be rather than where the puck is today. “Where the puck will be next is going to be increasingly toward the consumer economy,” Ruest told investors last month. So Ruest wants to tie CN’s future more closely to the consumer. And that means an increased emphasis on intermodal,...

14

Tale of Two Generations

Posted 18 days ago by George Hamlin

Once, they called it the “Little Giant”. Run by “Super Railroad” proponent John W. Barriger between 1956 and 1964, the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie benefited from the growth of the steel industry in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania region, and when its customers’ industry went tilt, the P&LE followed it on a downward trajectory. During the early post-World War II era, the P&LE, like most other railroads, began to dieselize in earnest. Oddly ...

36

Amtrak is not out to kill the long-distance train

Posted 28 days ago by Bill Stephens

Some of Amtrak’s most ardent supporters view the railroad’s plan to reduce nearly all long-distance trains to a triweekly schedule as a sign of impending doom. They contend that the cutbacks, effective at the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, are the latest attempt to kill the long-distance network. This is, in my view, an overreaction fed by recent Amtrak missteps. There’s no evidence the triweekly service plan is part of some diabolical plot to end the long distance train ...

29

Six Decades of TRAINS

Posted one month ago by George Hamlin

I’m well-aware that, as of November 2020, TRAINS will be celebrating its eightieth anniversary. So why the reference to only six decades? That’s because as of the July 2020 issue, I’ve been reading TRAINS every month for sixty years, continuously. A birthday gift subscription beginning with the July 1960 issue got things launched, and the process has continued, happily, from my standpoint, ever since then. In reality, since we were on a lengthy vacation t...

30

Observations about Opportunities and Regrets

Posted one month ago by George Hamlin

After surviving the “train-off” decade-of-decline in the 1960s, Amtrak’s arrival in 1971 was cause for both concern, and hope. The former related to the many “last runs” on April 30, 1971, several of which I was able to witness and photograph in Chicago; the latter took some heart from the National Railroad Passenger Corporation’s initial marketing slogan, “Making the Trains Worth Traveling Again”. Amtrak’s early years have c...

20

Union Pacific and CSX vie for operating ratio bragging rights

Posted one month ago by Bill Stephens

Lately Union Pacific executives have been touting the railroad’s industry-leading 59% first quarter operating ratio. CSX Transportation, meanwhile, noted that its 58.7% operating ratio set a Class I first quarter record. Wait, you say. How can UP’s operating ratio be an industry best when CSX’s is lower? Well it turns out that the Class I railroads don’t calculate their operating ratios in exactly the same way. So it’s an apples vs. oranges comparison. The operat...

31

"Look at Those High Cars Roll"

Posted 2 months ago by George Hamlin

I’m indebted to two people for the quote that is the title of this article: F.E. Williamson, former President of the New York Central, for uttering it, and railfan author/photographer Lucius Beebe, for recording and immortalizing it in his 1962 book 20th Century. I’ll let Mr. Beebe’s prose explain: Another New York Central president who rode The Century in preference to the fine business car No. 1 which was at his disposal was F.E. Williamson. …he took ...

7

Historic Preservation for the Greater Good

Posted 2 months ago by David Lester

Last week brought the sad news that Norfolk & Western Y6a 2156 would be returning to the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis sometime in the near future. The locomotive has been on loan to the Virginia Museum of Transportation for the past five years, bringing together the “big three” locomotives of the Roanoke Shops again after decades. While this decision is very disappointing, it is not unfair, underhanded, or disingenuous in any way. The NTM agreed to loan the ...

61

History suggests rail traffic won’t fully rebound after recession

Posted 2 months ago by Bill Stephens

Class I railroad executives say their aggressive cost-cutting moves today in the face of historically steep traffic declines will pay off in the post-pandemic world, when the economy picks back up and there’s more freight to move. Railroads will emerge from the crisis stronger, more efficient, and ready to grow – or so the thinking goes. I hope they’re right. But the lessons from the Great Recession tell a different story. Some of the traffic that stopped moving during the 200...

9

As Time Goes By

Posted 2 months ago by George Hamlin

A big anniversary is coming up in a year, which is probably why few people seem to have focused on Amtrak’s 49th birthday on May 1. For a relative newcomer to the railroad business, Amtrak seems to have developed a significant interest in its history, including the application of its own “heritage” paint schemes on several locomotives prior to the Norfolk Southern’s now more-prominent examples. Another indication is this “history wall”, in honor of ...

7

You can always spot a kindred spirit

Posted 3 months ago by Dave Lustig

Do you recall exactly when you knew trains were going to be part of your life? I figured it out when my parents and I would go for our Sunday afternoon family rides. I recall one trip in the late 1950’s from our Los Angeles home north to Saugus, Palmdale, Lancaster, and ultimately Mojave. I remember looking out the window with my notebook and pencil – I was maybe nine or ten - and watching the tracks whiz by wondering if I would see a train. And I did; a mixture of Southern Pacific ...

16

Anticipation

Posted 3 months ago by George Hamlin

Travel often involves waiting for something. For one thing, it’s often difficult to schedule things precisely; there often are unknowns in the equation, so that most knowledgeable travelers deliberately build in extra time to ensure reliability. Most would agree that it’s better to arrive at the airport, bus stop, port of embarkation or railroad station somewhat ahead of the scheduled time, for example, than to show up a minute after your transportation has departed, ...

20

Hunter’s prediction for the Norfolk Southern locomotive fleet comes true

Posted 3 months ago by Bill Stephens

Back in the closing days of 2015, Canadian Pacific CEO E. Hunter Harrison was in hot pursuit of a merger with Norfolk Southern, partly so he could implement his Precision Scheduled Railroading operating model on one of the big eastern systems. We know how that turned out. NS said no repeatedly, CP gave up early in 2016, and a year later Harrison wound up running CSX Transportation. Little remembered from the NS merger battle, perhaps, is this nugget: Harrison said NS was using way too many loc...

20

How to Keep Track of All Those Books?

Posted 3 months ago by Steve Glischinski

With many people working from home or otherwise having time on their hands these days, no doubt many railroad fans are delving back into their library of books. I know I have, and over the years I have amassed a fairly large collection. I’ve got them organized on shelves, alphabetically by railroad, then if not specific to a railroad, alphabetical by subject matter. Still, over the years I’ve managed to actually buy two copies of a books not remembering I already had them, and I was ...

10

Fanning in the age of Coronavirus

Posted 3 months ago by Dave Lustig

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably realized you’re not doing as much train watching since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. Lockdowns, distancing, and mandatory face masks are the new normal in many parts of our nation. While this inconvenience is certainly not important compared to our health, on a personal level, it’s something most of think about. And miss. We’re also so done cleaning our equipment and sorting our photos and...

25

Absolutely, Positively

Posted 3 months ago by George Hamlin

FedEx; no mistaking the strong graphics on the sides of the trailers in Norfolk Southern’s intermodal train 211 (northern New Jersey to Atlanta) on Sunday, March 29, 2020, at Audley, Virginia, the north end of what was previously known as the Berryville siding on the NS H-line. The siding (which 211 is not taking) ends just south of Main Street in Berryville, the modest seat of Clarke County. A decade ago, you weren’t likely to have seen this company’s trailers on th...

34

Will pandemic have long-term consequences for passenger rail?

Posted 3 months ago by Bill Stephens

The coronavirus pandemic is, above all, a human tragedy. The unprecedented economic impact of COVID-19 seems to worsen by the day and is spilling over into the railroad world in a big way. Freight railroads will respond to the downturn like they always have: Move what traffic there is to move, and otherwise hunker down by cutting costs and reducing the workforce as volume declines. When the recovery comes, they’ll bounce back. It may not be so simple this time around for passenger,...

38

Finding opportunity in this crisis

Posted 4 months ago by Malcolm Kenton

As I and everyone I know endure this pandemic together, I keep reminding myself that every crisis presents opportunities — in this case, opportunities abound for positive long-term changes in our lives and in how our economy and society function. Before I get into that, though, I want to take a moment to echo our editor Jim Wrinn in expressing my deepest gratitude and encouragement to all the front-line workers in the railroad and rail transit industries who are keeping trains running to t...

8

Splendor in the Grass

Posted 4 months ago by George Hamlin

No, this has nothing to do with Wordsworth’s poetry, nor to a 1960’s movie starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood that used the same title. Instead, think the Canadian Prairies, and a search for some of the few remaining wooden grain elevators along Canadian Pacific’s Aldersyde Subdivision, between Calgary and Lethbridge, Alberta, on June 11, 2005. Early on, it had been a somewhat frustrating exercise. I’d caught up with a southbound, behind one of ...

82

The autonomous barbarians are at the gate

Posted 4 months ago by Bill Stephens

Update, March 19: Starsky Robotics, one of the companies spotlighted in the "60 Minutes" report, has shut down. Read here to see why the company founder says the technology just isn't ready ... yet. The CBS News show “60 Minutes” on Sunday night aired a segment on autonomous trucks. The report was startling not because of the topic but because it showed a truck navigating highways with no one in the cab. In this case, a picture (or video) is indeed worth a thousand words. Se...

12

Did You Get 'the' Shot?

Posted 4 months ago by George Hamlin

I suspect that most rail photographers have heard this question while out in the field, chasing, etc. It usually occurs regarding a geographic location that you visited were while photographing railroad activities, in particular a specific train, piece of equipment, lighting conditions, etc. The implication is that the person interrogating you already has the scene in their mind’s eye, because they, and probably many other people have taken photos at other times there, and therefo...

63

Finding the will to make a giant leap

Posted 4 months ago by Malcolm Kenton

What will it take for the U.S. political climate to become favorable to the kind of massive federal outlay that is needed to truly bring our passenger train and rail transit systems into the 21st century, so that we can start to catch up with Western Europe, China and Japan? At this moment, with the stock market tanking, coronavirus fears gripping much of the public’s attention, and an administration and Senate that vary between indifference and hostility to rail investment, it’s har...

11

CN’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad start to the year

Posted 5 months ago by Bill Stephens

It would be hard to imagine a worse start to the year for Canadian National, whose volume is down 16% due to a string of events that’s mostly odd, unrelated, and unrelenting. CN is taking it on the chin, as no other North American railroad has seen its volume fall by more than 10% this year and rival Canadian Pacific’s traffic is up 10%. First, there was Mother Nature. Winter arrived in January with eight days of deep cold in Western Canada, forcing CN to restrict train length. Then...

18

How Many More Sunsets?

Posted 5 months ago by George Hamlin

No, I don’t have any better idea than you. While I suspect that this former Norfolk & Western CPL (color position light) signal at Waynesboro, Virginia is on the proverbial “borrowed time” (and I’ve heard the rumors on the nearby outposts of the railfan grapevine (electronic version) that this year will be the last for the remaining CPLs on the former Shenandoah Line between Front Royal, Virginia, and Roanoke), I’m not aware of any official announcem...

33

Midway through the 1960s

Posted 5 months ago by George Hamlin

(Photo by George W. Hamlin) The decade of the 1960s was bracketed, essentially, in U.S. railroading by a pair of “loss” events: the demise of mainline steam at the outset of the time period, followed by the elimination, for all practical purposes, of the private, railroad-owned and operated passenger train in the first half of 1971. To be sure, the ‘60s also were a time of political upheaval; a return to U.S. involvement in an overseas war; and significant cultur...

22

1309’s difficult past – and prosperous future

Posted 5 months ago by John Hankey

I have been a little shocked, and greatly dismayed. I am deep into my sixth decade of serious work in railroad preservation, and have never seen the kinds of unwarranted criticism, vitriol, and downright nastiness directed towards the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad and its project to return former C&O 2-6-6-2 No, 1309 to service. The railroad does not deserve it. WMSR recently announced a campaign to raise the final few hundred thousand dollars needed to get the locomotive into operation....

22

Financial engineers at the throttle

Posted 5 months ago by Bill Stephens

Railroads employ locomotive engineers, civil engineers, and financial engineers. The first two make the railroad work. And the third? Well, to varying degrees they’ve got their hands on the throttle at the four U.S. Class I railroads that are embracing Precision Scheduled Railroading. Consider that CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific each spent more buying back shares last year than they spent to maintain and expand their networks. In some cases a...

11

Details and Detailing

Posted 6 months ago by George Hamlin

In my mid-October 2019 blog, “Red, White and Green”, I featured the photography of my friend Mel Lawrence. While Mel is probably better-known for his extensive and evocative airliner photography from the 1950s and 60s, he also was a railfan, and photographed trains, equipment, structures and other railroad scenes, as well. Sadly, in October 2019 Mel passed away, a few days subsequent to his 82nd birthday. Since he was active in the slide trading/selling communities, I ...

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