NEW YORK — Amtrak has restored service between Philadelphia and New York’s Penn Station following the issues that disrupted operations Monday night, the company announced in a service advisory at 7:15 a.m. ET today (Tuesday, April 16). NJ Transit is offering limited service on the Northeast Corridor. Along with what the company is calling “residual […]
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CHICAGO — Amtrak has cancelled a series of state-supported trains in the Midwest on Friday and today (Saturday, April 13) because of issues involving parts for its Siemens Venture equipment. Responding to an inquiry from Trains News Wire, Amtrak’s Beth Toll wrote in an email, “A supply chain backlog from key vendors has delayed replacement […]
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Italian national rail company Trenitalia launched its latest hybrid passenger trains earlier this month on the scenic route from Taranto to Reggio Calabria on the nation’s southern coast. The trains, built by Hitachi in Italy, are claimed to be the world’s first four-mode hybrid trains — and while they are the first to enter service, […]
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CHICAGO — More than 430 passengers rode at least a portion of Amtrak’s southbound Saluki and northbound Illini between the Chicago and Carbondale, Ill., on Monday. Many were taking advantage of a schedule change which made it possible for customers to witness a rare four minutes of totality in the southern Illinois city during the […]
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From short lines to Class I railroads, you’ll likely come across a mainline steam excursion with one or more tenders/tank cars coupled right behind the locomotive’s main tender. Water is the primary commodity, all for the steam locomotive when out on the road. The use of an auxiliary water car, sometimes referred to as a […]
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Eagle Mountain Railroad Traveling to see a railroad “in the middle of nowhere” has always been a two-sided coin. Despite advanced planning and awareness of what days the railroad operates, there is always the possibility you may sometimes come up with nothing after driving for hours. The expected operating day did not come off, there […]
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CARBONDALE, Ill. — For a few hours Thursday, travelers along Illinois’ Chicago-Carbondale Amtrak corridor could book a daytime round trip to next Monday’s solar eclipse “path of totality,” thereby avoiding monumental traffic jams along parallel highways that occurred during a similar event in August 2017. But that window of opportunity closed when seats that briefly […]
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New Chesapeake & Ohio GP7s hustle a southbound freight out of Plymouth, Mich., in the early 1950s. Robert A. Hadley photo […]
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Amtrak’s Hilltopper What had a locomotive on each end, two coaches in the middle, a crew of six, few passengers, and ran backwards for 30 of its 1,674-mile route between Boston, Mass., and Catlettesburg, Ky.? Amtrak’s Hilltopper — my first regular assignment as a passenger trainman, employed by the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, which operated […]
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FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway eliminated several hundred management positions at its headquarters and across the system last week as part of a belt-tightening move. The railroad did not disclose how many jobs were affected, but people familiar with the matter say that BNSF cut 8% of its management workforce. That would translate into […]
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SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — Two daily Pacific Surfliner round trips will resume through the San Clemente area as of Wednesday, March 6, providing through service between San Diego and Los Angeles for the first time since a Jan. 24 landslide at Mariposa Point. The Orange County Transportation Authority announced today (Tuesday, March 5) that Metrolink […]
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WASHINGTON — Beginning today (Monday, March 4), Amtrak is scheduling four additional Northeast Regional round trips weekdays and two on the weekends between New York and Washington, D.C. The decision to reconfigure seating in each coach so that half of the seats face in different directions [see “Fixed forward and backward seating to speed Northeast Regional […]
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