Shippers and railroads square off over STB’s service-based reciprocal switching proposal

Hopper car in rail switching yard

WASHINGTON — The Surface Transportation Board’s controversial service-based reciprocal switching proposal faced another round of criticism this week, with many shippers saying it doesn’t go far enough and railroads saying it’s an unworkable, unrealistic rule that goes too far. The proposal, unveiled in September, would allow shippers located in terminal areas to seek access to […]

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Lionel No. 3459 green dump car

green model dump car: Lionel No. 3459 green dump car

Take a look at the Lionel No. 3459 automatic dumping ore car, cataloged from 1946 through 1948. The most common version of this model came with a black-painted frame and black metal tray with “Lionel Lines” heat-stamped on both sides in white. Lionel offered this variation for all three years it cataloged the 3459 and […]

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BNSF near reopening of Southern Transcon in Arizona

BNSF Railway logo

ADAMANA, Ariz. — One track of BNSF’s Southern Transcon main line is expected to reopen today (Thursday, Dec. 21) through Adamana at approximately 7 a.m. local time following a Wednesday derailment, according to a customer service update by the railroad. No estimate has yet been determined to reopen the second track through the site. One […]

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Weekly U.S. rail traffic shows significant surge

Weekly table showing U.S. carload rail traffic by commodity type, plus overall intermodal volume

WASHINGTON — U.S. rail traffic continued its winning streak in a big way for the week ending Dec. 16, showing a 7.6% increase in volume compared to the same week a year ago. It is the sixth straight week that traffic has shown gains over the corresponding week in 2022. According to figures from the […]

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Switching stock cars at Omaha

South Omaha Terminal Railway switcher

A switchman signals a South Omaha Terminal Railway switcher as the diesel adds cars onto the meat train transfer at the Terminal yard on a darkening October evening in 1957. The cars will soon become part of Illinois Central’s hot CC-6 Council Bluffs–Chicago perishable train. William D. Middleton photo […]

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Parallel Systems shows off autonomous cars’ ability to move together in platoons

LOS ANGELES — Parallel Systems today for the first time demonstrated the platooning capability of the autonomous, battery-electric container cars that it is developing for short-haul intermodal service. The self-propelled cars lack traditional Janney railroad couplers. Instead, they can operate in platoons through bumper-to-bumper contact and coordinating tractive effort among all of the cars in […]

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