WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday afternoon that encourages the Surface Transportation Board to adopt rail regulatory reforms that shippers have long sought to promote competition. Among the potential changes sure to rile freight railroads: Rules that would permit reciprocal switching for captive shippers and removal of so-called bottleneck restrictions that […]
OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian government has shut down Canadian National and Canadian Pacific operations through the area hit by a wildfire that devastated the town of Lytton, British Columbia. An order issued by Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra, effective as of 12:01 a.m. PDT today, required both railroads to halt train movements except for emergency […]
PALESTINE, Texas — A Texas judge has again ruled that Union Pacific must continue employment of workers at its Palestine, Texas, car shop, which the railroad had planned to close last month. The Palestine Herald-Press reports Judge Michael Davis of the 369th Judicial District Court in Rusk, Texas, must continue to observe a 1955 judgment […]
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Southern was indeed the pretty girl at the dance. KCS was pursued by at least two other suitors besides Canadian Pacific and Canadian National – including an unnamed Class I system that was interested in acquiring only part of the cross-border railroad — during the lengthy process leading to […]
TORONTO — The Canada Infrastructure Bank and governments of Canada and Quebec will provide some C$55 million to modernize the remote Tshiuetin railway, Canada’s first Indigenous owned and operated rail operation. The infrastructure bank will provide $50 million in a long-term, fully repayable loan, while Quebec will provide $5 million, repayable in two years. Transport […]
Canada’s busiest railroad corridor remains hobbled nine days after a devastating wildfire in Lytton, British Columbia. Lytton, which was virtually destroyed by the June 30 fire, is in the heart of the directional running zone Canadian National and Canadian Pacific use in the rugged Thompson and Fraser river canyons. Westbound traffic flows over CN’s single-track […]
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration wants U.S. regulatory agencies to address consolidation and what it considers to be anticompetitive pricing by railroads and ocean shipping firms, the Wall Street Journal reports in a paywalled article. The Journal — citing a source familiar with the situation — says the administration will issue an executive order this […]
WASHINGTON — U.S. rail traffic remained strong in June, with overall carload and intermodal traffic running 14.5% ahead of the same month in 2020. Year-to-date traffic at the end of the second quarter was up 13.7% compared to pandemic-depressed totals for the first half of 2020, according to statistics from the Association of American Railroads. […]
WASHINGTON — Responding to comments made to the Surface Transportation Board on their voting trust proposal, Canadian National and Kansas City Southern have made their final case for approval of a voting trust while the CN-KCS merger is being considered by regulators, rebutting at length claims made by rival Canadian Pacific. The Tuesday filing, available […]
EVANSTON, Ill. — A new report from the Northwestern University Transpotation Center says the U.S. freight rail proved to be reliable and resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, even as other parts of the nation’s supply chain struggled. The report, available here, was prepared by Northwestern’s Joseph Schofer, Hani Mahmassani, Max Ng, and Breton Johnson. It […]
Black Fork Gorge Seven Western Maryland 2-8-0s — two up front, three at midtrain, and two ahead of the caboose — urge a 78-car eastbound train up the twisting grade through the Black Fork Gorge toward Thomas, W.Va. Edward Theisinger photo […]
NEW ORLEANS — CSX Transportation has been ordered to pay more than $220,000 for violating the Federal Railroad Safety Act for firing a worker for reporting safety concerns. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration found in an investigation that the railroad had “demonstrated a pattern of retaliation” in firing the worker in December 2019 […]
