CHICAGO — Amtrak’s stretched-thin and aging fleet is encountering significant challenges to reliability across the entire system this week as national network trains remain sold out for many segments. Sunset cancelled With Tropical Storm Beryl causing widespread flooding in the Houston area early in the week, Amtrak truncated the eastbound Sunset Limited at San Antonio, […]
WASHINGTON — Circumstantial evidence gleaned from Amtrak’s booking site portends mid-November changes to the operation of the Chicago-Washington, D.C. Capitol Limited and the New York-Miami Silver Star. A Trains News Wire review of ticketing availabilities on the two trains indicates tentative plans to combine their operation as a single-level Chicago-Miami train. Doing so would allow […]
NEW YORK — Officials signed off on a $6.88 billion federal grant Monday for the Northeast Corridor’s Gateway Tunnel project — the largest single federal grant ever for a transit infrastructure project, and part of $11 billion in federal money for the $16 billion project to build two new bores under the Hudson River between […]
WASHINGTON, Mo. — No injuries were reported when Amtrak’s Missouri River Runner derailed this evening (Monday, July 8), KSDK-TV reports. All cars remained upright. Amtrak said in a statement that the train hit a tree on the tracks at about 4:55 p.m. CT, derailing the locomotive’s rear axle. There were 124 passengers and five crew […]
Union Pacific and BNSF Railway shut down their operations in the Houston area Sunday in preparation for Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall today (Monday, July 8) as a Category 1 storm. Beryl, which was downgraded to a tropical storm this morning, came ashore at Matagorda, Texas, about 90 miles southwest of Houston. Beryl is expected […]
NEW YORK — Amtrak service on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York City was restored as of about 9 p.m. Saturday night, the passenger operator announced late Saturday evening. The company says the preliminary cause is a lightning strike that disrupted power. Normal operations are planned for today except for three early trains […]
NEW YORK — Amtrak service between New York City and Boston was cancelled for the remainder of today (Saturday, July 6) as of mid-afternoon because of “an ongoing electric power issue,” the passenger operator said in a service alert on its website posted at 5:50 p.m. ET. An earlier notification indicated that the problem was […]
WASHINGTON — Three labor organizations have opposed Amtrak’s request for a waiver allowing installation of a device the company claims will prevent incidents where trains fail to trigger track circuits. As a result, a decades-old issue that recently has forced Amtrak to assign at least seven Superliners to trains operated over Canadian National’s Chicago-Carbondale, Ill., […]
NEW YORK — Amtrak announced on Friday, June 28, that had awarded a construction contract to build a new Connecticut River Bridge on the Northeast Corridor to replace the existing 116-year-old structure. A joint venture of O&G/Tutor Perini received the contract award for the $1.3 billion project, which has received a $827 million Federal Railroad […]
NEWARK, N.J. — Amtrak and NJ Transit have committed to work together to address operational issues that have been plaguing both services on the Northeast Corridor, including more frequent inspections of their equipment and the 170 miles of track they share between New York and Trenton, N.J. The two agencies made that pledge after a […]
WASHINGTON — The process that determines how much money Amtrak will receive for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2024, began Wednesday with release of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Committee’s “Department of Transportation Appropriation Act of 2025.” Funding levels for the U.S. DOT and its related highway, rail, and […]
WASHINGTON — New Jersey’s congressional delegation is requesting that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg investigate Amtrak issues on the Northeast Corridor that have led to what a letter calls a “commuting nightmare” on one recent morning, as well as a series of other recent disruptions. The June 25 letter, signed by all 11 House members from […]
