News photo: Amtrak wraps locomotive to promote King Tut event

Locomotive wrapped in blue and gold design featuring King Tut mask

WASHINGTON — Amtrak’s has specially wrapped one of its ACS64 electric locomotives to promote a National Geographic exhibit on King Tut in Boston and Washington. This is not the first time Amtrak and King Tut have been linked. An Amtrak Cascades F59PHI was wrapped to promote a King Tut exhibit at the Pacific Science Center […]

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News photo: Ethan Allen begins service on extended route

Passenger train arrives at station arrives with crowd on platform.

VERGENNES, Vt. — The inaugural run of Amtrak’s Ethan Allen Express from Burlington, Vt., arrives at the Ferrisburg-Vergennes station on Friday, July 29, 2022. The train had previously originated and terminated in Rutland, Vt. The station — added to the National Register of Historic Places in May 2021 — is a Rutland Railroad building dating […]

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Competing claims complicate Amtrak-CN STB filings: Analysis

Train crosses diamond in small town

WASHINGTON — The question of how Canadian National should receive incentives or penalties for handling of Amtrak trains has no doubt chalked up hundreds — maybe thousands — of billable hours for the companies’ attorneys. The inability of the two sides to reach a new operating agreement first came to the Surface Transportation Board in […]

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Amtrak Capitol Limited day trip to Cumberland

Passenger train moving through autumnal foliage.

An Amtrak Capitol Limited day trip from Pittsburgh is one of the few Amtrak journeys with single-day, round-trip offerings featuring Class I railroading across a famous mountain pass and a second train-riding experience involving a recently restored Mallet steam locomotive. Yes, Amtrak’s Capitol Limited between Pittsburgh, and Cumberland, Md., offers this and more on its […]

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Host railroads tell regulators modeling clearly shows Amtrak Gulf Coast service would cause unreasonable freight impairment

Passenger train approaches curve with freight train on adjacent track

WASHINGTON — The launch of Amtrak Gulf Coast service without infrastructure improvements would cause “immediate and future impairment to freight service that is unreasonable under any definition,” CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern argue in their latest filing with the Surface Transportation Board. This is the exact opposite of the contention Amtrak makes in its latest […]

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Amtrak again argues Gulf Coast service will cause ‘no unreasonable impairment’ to freight traffic

Blue and yellow locomotive waiting on siding, as seen from train on main line

WASHINGTON — Amtrak says its additional analysis shows its proposed Gulf Coast passenger service will cause “no unreasonable impairment” on the proposed route between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala., and argues that the case for such impairment by host railroads CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern “has failed.” Those contentions are included in the passenger railroad’s […]

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News photos: Rare private Amtrak move in the upper Midwest

Passenger train on curve

ELM GROVE, Wis. — In an unusual and unheralded move, Amtrak moved an eight-car train of privately owned legacy equipment from the Twin Cities to Chicago on Thursday, July 28. The train, scheduled to originate at Midway in the Twin Cities at 11:45 a.m. and arrive in Chicago at 8:30 p.m., was photographed in the […]

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Canadian National blasts Amtrak proposal for dispatching control as ‘outrageously self-serving’

City of New Orleans hurries through Matteson, Ill., on May 21, 2020

WASHINGTON — Canadian National calls an Amtrak proposal that would give it dispatching control over CN lines with poor passenger performance “an outrageously self-serving recipe” that would “cause profound harm to freight railroads, freight customers, American consumers, and the broader economy,” and urges the Surface Transportation Board to reject the concept “out of hand.” Amtrak, […]

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