CHICAGO — Railroads are navigating the start of the New Year with a far-reaching winter weather system that resulted in measurable snowfalls from central Kansas to Maryland’s eastern seaboard. Kansas City received more than 12 inches of snow over the weekend and 6 to 12 inches of snow fell across much of central Illinois, Indiana, […]
Office cars Prior to Amtrak, railroads had coupled company owned business and office cars to the rear of passenger trains for the convenience of executive and management personnel. The usually spotless and well maintained fleet of comfortably furnished cars also served as sales offices on wheels for the railroad’s industrial development and traffic departments, allowing […]
Bitten by the steam bug at an early age, Mitchell Johnson will seize any opportunity to go where operating steam locomotives are being worked on. On the mechanical side, the 19-year-old lends a hand in two 4-8-4 restoration projects: Reading Company T-1 No. 2100 of the American Steam Railroad Preservation Association, Inc., and Chesapeake & […]
CHICAGO — Citing equipment issues, Amtrak has cancelled one Hiawatha today (Jan. 6), after two other cancellations along the same route Sunday. The cancellations of today’s Milwaukee-Chicago train No. 336, a scheduled 1:05 p.m. departure, as well as Sunday’s St. Paul-Chicago Borealis and Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha No. 341, are are all attributed to equipment and separate […]
QUINCY, Mass. – RailState, which monitors rail traffic using a network of sensors placed on public property along main lines, has provided a snapshot of long trains rolling along BNSF Railway and Union Pacific main lines in the Southwest during December. Although only 1% of freight trains in the U.S. exceed 14,000 feet, RailState data […]
PUEBLO, Colo. — SunTrain, a San Francisco company, is designing a method to transport power by rail, moving containerized batteries between solar and wind farms in Colorado to existing rail-served power plants in the Denver area. The concept is that batteries, inside standard 20-foot containers and loaded onto 89-foot railcars, are charged at originating solar […]
BRUSSELS — The organization that issued a report in December ranking Europe’s major rail operators has revised its findings, to the significant detriment of Switzerland’s federal rail company, SBB. Corrections on SBB’s ticket prices led to the company dropping to 11th in the rankings of 27 companies by clean-transportation advocacy group Transport and Environment, from […]
WASHINGTON — Both commuter rail operators serving the Washington, D.C., area have suspended operations today (Monday, Jan. 6, 2025) as a winter storm hits the area. Virginia Railway Express announced its decision not to operate about 7:45 p.m. on Sunday night, citing both the weather and the decision to close federal offices in Washington today. […]
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is set to propose infrastructure improvements to the Hudson Line used by Metro-North and Amtrak’s Empire Service that could cut travel times by as much as 15 minutes, and reduce Metro-North’s fastest service between Poughkeepsie and New York City to less than 90 minutes. The proposal will […]
The Big Four U.S. Class I railroads all showed year-over-year traffic growth in 2024, while Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Kansas City experienced volume declines. Looking longer term, however, CSX is the only railroad whose 2024 volume rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of 2019. CSX’s traffic was up 0.6% last year compared to 2019, due largely […]
CORVALLIS, Ore. — A bridge collapsed under a Portland & Western train crossing Mary’s River in Corvallis today (Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025), sending at least one car into the river. KPTV-TV reports the incident occurred around noon PT near Avery Park in Corvallis. A Portland & Western representative told the station a 19-car train was […]
WASHINGTON — Amtrak has announced an extensive list of train cancellations as of today (Saturday, Jan. 4), extending into Tuesday, Jan. 7. Operations from coast to coast are affected as a result of the winter storm currently moving through the center of the country. The cancellations began with Friday’s scheduled departure of the eastbound Southwest […]
