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

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Amtrak and CHSRA team up for new high speed trains

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

Amtrak and the California High Speed Rail Authority are joining forces this coming week to begin the process of ordering up to 62 sets of high-speed trains for use in both the Northeast Corridor and in the Golden State. Thirty-two of the train sets would be earmarked for the NEC, for use at speeds up to 160 mph, and the others for California. As of now, the plan is to announce on Thursday, January 17, a request for information (RFI) to get input from builders of such trains, almost all of them ...

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Ed Ellis and Pullman Rail Journeys

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

The railroad career of Edwin Earl Ellis has been anything but common and ordinary. He started two short-line conglomerates (and was fired by the first one). He bootstrapped Amtrak’s mail and express business into a $150 million-a-year behemoth that created 46-car Southwest Chiefs and 25-car Lake Shore Limiteds (and as thanks, was fired again). But say what you want about Ed Ellis, he has tenacity. Now begins the most audacious — some would say foolhardy — part of his remarkabl...

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The education of a train watcher

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

I was west of Topeka today, more than half way from Virginia to the Colorado Rockies, driving a steady 79 on Interstate 70 and admiring the layer of snow the season’s first storm had delivered the day before, when I saw the exit sign: McFarland 1 MILE McFarland! Oh my goodness. The memory of that evening some 50 years ago came rolling down like a Big Sur wave and washed over me. Growing up, there wasn’t an interlocking tower or other 24-hour office in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, or ...

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We have a winner

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

Thanks to all of you for acting as my travel agents. A week ago I asked for your best ideas for getting me from Sarasota, Fla., on February 19 to Vancouver by 8:30 p.m. on February 22, to ride VIA Rail Canada’s train No. 2, the Canadian, with 55 of my nearest and dearest friends. I thought I had all the best ideas covered. How much I underestimated you. I was offered dinners, cab rides, and even speaking engagements. One of you, I believe, even remembered my love of a dry martini. Your im...

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A Republican governor who gets it

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

A happy group of people rode what I dub The Celebration Train to Norfolk this week, the day before start of daily Amtrak service between points on the Northeast Corridor and Norfolk, Va. Nobody was happier than I. You see, Virginians love passenger trains and prove it every day. And we have a conservative Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, who understands this and is supportive. Six short-distance trains, all of them extensions of NEC trains to or from Boston or New York, now ply CSX and Norfo...

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A contest: Get Fred to Vancouver

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

My friend Bill Schafer, retired recently as a Norfolk Southern poobah, is having a party on February 22. You’re invited, by the way. The party starts on VIA Rail Canada’s Canadian leaving Vancouver, B.C., on that evening and ends four nights and three days later in Toronto, unless the 55 travelers signed up so far raise such a ruckus that we’re all expelled to the clutches of the Mounties in some inaccessible spot on the Canadian Shield and get thrown into a Northern Ontario du...

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The Interstate 95 conundrum

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

I spent much of this week watching trains on the CSX North End Subdivision, between Richmond, Va., and Rocky Mount, N.C. Usually, you can count on spotting on this heavily trafficked, mostly single-track line the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their names being Hunger, Death, Pestilence, and Unexpected Delays. But they and their black stallions were nowhere to be seen this time. The North End Sub operated like a well cleaned watch, the dispatchers seemingly trained by Peter Josserand (Rights o...

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Fred Frailey's first Darwin Awards

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

As you know, Englishman Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was a naturalist who popularized the idea of survival of the fittest. Those species who could evolve and deal with change survive, he said, while those that cannot perish. These two awards honor his memory. First, to the docks at the Port of Los Angeles. The 800 members of Local 63 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union are perhaps the highest paid clerical workers in the world. To shuffle paper, they are paid $165,000 to work eight...

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The day we import corn . . .

Posted 11 years ago by Fred Frailey

The U.S. is the world’s biggest producer of corn. To put this in its most basic perspective, corn is a major foundation of our economy. We export oceans of the stuff. The portion we feed to livestock keeps meat affordable. So I was struck by a press release I read the other day. A ship containing four trainloads of Brazilian corn had docked at Port Manatee, near Tampa, Fla., to sell to American customers, for animal feed. Hello? What kind of bad dream is this? We sell you corn, you being ...

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