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

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Fred finds a stuffed goose

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

A couple of days before Dick Strong and I flew into Alamosa, Colo., to ride the awesome Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, I received an email saying that the tourist railroad, one of the last remnants of Colorado’s fabled narrow-gauge empire, would have a special visitor that day and the rest of the week: Galloping Goose #5. I thought to myself: How lucky can we be to ride a narrow-gauge, steam-powered train through the vast, unpopulated mountains of southern Colorado and northern New ...

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Incident at Medill

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Little things tell you a lot. Mark Hinsdale and I are exploring the Chicago-Kansas City artery of the former Santa Fe Railway. Leaving the southeast corner of Iowa at Fort Madison and entering Missouri, we may as well be traversing a foreign country. The present BNSF Railway veers southwest through a depopulated countryside. In fact, the biggest town in the 215 miles between Fort Madison and Kansas City is Carrollton, population 3,784. The population of Medill, where we end up, is almost zero; i...

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The East Coast Hogger

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

The first words I said to David Shelley when we shook hands last week in Jacksonville, Fla., were, “You’re the closest thing I know to a rock star.” David just blushed. But he is a rock star in his universe, the 350 miles of the Florida East Coast Railway, stretching south to Miami. So I guess this all needs explaining. David has been an FEC engineer since December 27, 1971, and stands number four today on the combined seniority roster of engineers and conductors. He loves rai...

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Joe Boardman's second-term challenge

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

Amtrak’s board of directors has extended Joe Boardman’s contract as president for two additional years. Boardman, who turns 65 in December, will remain at Amtrak’s helm until at least November of 2015. That’s fine with me. It’s good to keep the revolving door of the executive offices from spinning around so often. Some continuity will do Amtrak good. But will what’s good for Joe Boardman be good for Amtrak’s customers? Only if Boardman, now that he&rsqu...

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KCS Part II: The minnow can swallow a whale

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

In a response to my last blog, D.Carlton this morning jolted me wide awake. He said, in regard to which railroad might buy Kansas City Southern: “You have it backwards. The question is: Who is KCS going to buy?” Damn! That Mrs. Carlton sure raised a smart boy. In essence, what D. is saying is that the inflated stock price of KCS is a huge gift that translates into enormous buying power if that railroad went shopping for a bigger partner. It completely turns the table on the usual way...

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Is KCS buyable, and by who?

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

It’s silly time on Wall Street again. Bloomberg Businessweek calls Kansas City Southern, North America’s smallest Class I railroad, both alluring and expensive to acquire. It then goes on to explain which larger railroads may find it attractive. Among securities analysts surveyed by the publication, all but two Class I lines are named as a potential buyer. But I think Businessweek and its sources have it mostly wrong. The larger railroad nobody mentions, I maintain, has the most to g...

57

Mr. Buffett, tear down this wall!

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

BNSF Railway has an identity problem. If you ask, as I did, a dozen strangers on the sidewalks of Washington, D.C., what BNSF Railway means, you will get just quizzical stares. You see, one thing a professional writer learns early on is that words, and names, have meaning. They inspire (“rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air!”), they repel (“serpent”), they tickle your taste buds (See’s Candies), they inspire you to dreams of great wealth (Apple Computer and ...

21

What you see when you see a train

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

In early evening you pull your Dodge Durango to a stop in Strong City, Kan., beside the handsome Santa Fe-built brick depot. Sitting in front of it are three BNSF Railway locomotives fronting a double-stack container train that stretches out of sight around a curve half a mile away. And looking the other way you see a train of empty coal gondolas making its way toward you down the 11,800-foot siding. Presently, the container train gets a green signal, toots its whistle twice, and begins to move...

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Life and death in the energy markets

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

So much that affects railroads is really out of their control. The energy markets are a case in point today. Coal has historically been a bedrock commodity for railroads, and emergence of Wyoming and Montana coal in the 1980s led to just about every railroad being a beneficiary. Then two developments came together last year to alter that status quo. First, approaching regulatory deadlines from the Environmental Protection Agency made it likely that hundreds of older, smaller electrical generatin...

6

Romancing Keith

Posted 10 years ago by Fred Frailey

It was known by practically everyone, when hedge fund manager Bill Ackman fought to install retired Canadian National CEO Hunter Harrison in the top job at rival Canadian Pacific, that Keith Creel would eventually follow his former boss to be Harrison’s right-hand man in Calgary. And in February he did just that, becoming CP’s president and chief operating officer as well as heir apparent to the top job. Now writer Scott Deveau of Canada’s Financial Post has revealed in a fasci...

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