WASHINGTON — The operator of a piece of maintenance-of-way equipment moved onto unprotected track for unknown reasons, the National Transportation Safety Board said in determining the probable cause of a July 2022 collision between a Union Pacific roadway maintenance machine and an Amtrak Capitol Corridor train in Oakland, Calif. The NTSB completed its final accident […]
CHICAGO — BNSF Railway reached a settlement last week in a biometric data privacy case in which it had initially been assessed a $228 million penalty, only to have that award thrown out on appeal. Reuters reports that the railroad reached a settlement with a group of truck drivers over claims that BNSF illegally collected […]
WASHINGTON — Amtrak received almost $200 million in the Federal Railroad Administration’s Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grants announced Monday, a list of awards highlighted by the more than $178 million for the restoration of Gulf Coast passenger service [see “Federal Railroad Administration awards more than $1.4 billion,” Trains News Wire, Sept. 24, 2023]. […]
BOONTON, N.J. — With persistent rain canceling both the United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey’s annual Museum-for-a-Day event and the town’s street fair, the group quickly shifted on Sunday, Sept. 24, to a no-frills open house, showing off two newly painted historic diesel locomotives in their first public display. Live music and other attractions […]
Bullet train TOKYO — Since December 2022, the Central Japan Railway Co. has offered personalized “chartered car packages” on its Nozomi bullet trains of the Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed line. Designed to cater private events, such as graduation and employee trips, the new service has caught the attention of onboard wrestling, a world first. According to […]
ABOARD SWISS AIR FLIGHT 6 — Well, those were three remarkable weeks. But how could they be otherwise? When it comes to railroading, Switzerland is one remarkable place. I spent those three weeks meandering around the country by rail — solo at first, then as part of a small tour organized by Swiss Tourism built […]
ROCKHILL FURNACE, Pa. – The East Broad Top Railroad has won a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund an 18-month program for long-term protection of the road’s thousands of maps, drawings, photographs, and artifacts. The grant is one of 280 awarded nationally in the August round of NEH funding, totaling […]
History of track gauge: The gauge of a railroad is the distance between the inside vertical surfaces of the head of the rail. Standard gauge is 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches. This is the gauge used when steam railroading began. It became the common gauge of Britain, North America, and Western Europe — except for Spain, […]
News & Products for the week of September 25th 2023 Model railroad operators and builders can get the latest information about locomotives, freight cars, passenger cars, tools, track, and more by reading Model Railroader’s frequent product updates. The following are the products Model Railroader editors have news on for the week of September 25th […]
70 rail improvement projects WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration announced the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant recipients for the 2022 fiscal year. In a press release on Sept. 25, 2023, more than $1.4 billion from the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was awarded to rail-related improvement projects across 35 states. The […]
Santa Fe 93 WICHITA, Kan. — Today is the day. Great Plains Transportation Museum (Wichita) has begun a fundraiser to support the restoration of Santa Fe locomotive No. 93. Michael Gross, Family Ties actor, is the face of this campaign. Just a bit of background: No. 93 was built by EMD in late 1967. It […]
Have you ever been curious about how to calculate the speed of toy trains? Running trains over a layout, how can we know whether it’s moving at a realistic speed? Answering this question requires a bit of math. Speed, or velocity, is simply distance divided by time. In the United States, we are used to […]
