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WASHINGTON — If Americans now have a train enthusiast in the White House, they soon will have one at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, testified Thursday to the Senate Commerce Committee, a precursor to his likely confirmation by the full Senate. The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Republican […]
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Transportation’s service deteriorated in the fourth quarter as pandemic infections and quarantines affected train, engine, and yard crews across the system. At the hardest hit terminals, up to 40% of employees were unable to come to work due to infections or quarantines, executives said on the railroad’s earnings call on Thursday. […]
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – CSX Transportation expects intermodal and merchandise volume to grow faster than the economy this year as the railroad continues to win share from the highway. “We expect to return to growth in 2021,” CEO Jim Foote told investors and analysts on the railroad’s quarterly earnings call Thursday. Merchandise traffic growth should outpace […]
OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific expects volume to increase by 4% to 6% this year as vaccines are rolled out, the economy recovers, and trucking capacity remains tight. Railroad executives gave their cautiously optimistic outlook Thursday morning during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. Other than energy-related traffic segments, UP has a positive view on volume. […]
Thursday midday rail news: KCS, development firm to develop Wylie, Texas, logistics park Kansas City Southern and NorthPoint Development have announced plans to develop a 220-acre logistics park in Wylie, Texas, adjacent to the railroads’ David L. Starling Wylie Intermodal Terminal. The Wylie Logistics Park, in a northeastern suburb of Dallas, will have the potential […]
FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway says it will spend $2.99 billion on capital improvements in 2021, nearly equaling its $3.08 billion capital plan of 2020. The vast majority of funding — $2.41 billion — will go to maintenance. The railroad plans to replace 428 miles of rail, approximately 2.6 million ties, and will undertake […]
BNSF Railway under new CEO Katie Farmer will have the same focus on growth that the company has had since its inception 25 years ago. “We have always had and will always have a bias for growth,” Farmer, who became chief executive on Jan. 1, told the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers on Wednesday. “We […]
WASHINGTON — Intermodal strength continues to be the defining characteristic of U.S. rail traffic, according to the latest weekly statistics from the Association of American Railroads. For the week ending Jan. 16, 2021, the total rail traffic of 528,547 carloads and intermodal units was up 5.8% over the corresponding week in 2020 — thanks to […]
AKRON, Ohio — William B. “Bill” Benson, who was deeply involved in a number of steam railroading activities in the 1970s and 1980s, died on Jan. 16. He was 80. He was a co-founder of Steam Tours Inc, and owned former Reading T-1 No. 2102, operating it on a number of excursions in the Midwest […]
WASHINGTON — In a document filed Tuesday with the Surface Transportation Board, Amtrak and Metra have outlined areas where they’ve reached agreement in their long-running dispute over Metra’s use of Amtrak-owned Chicago Union Station — just ahead of a deadline to file briefs on remaining issues, including rent, to be addressed by the board. The […]
SHERBORN, Mass. — The Firefighters Education and Training Foundation has added a DOT 113 cryogenic tank car, the type approved for movement of liquefied natural gas, to its Safety Train program. Acquisition of the one-of-a-kind training car was possible through a joint effort of the Federal Railroad Administration, which donated the car, and insight and […]
The publicly traded Class I railroads will begin reporting their fourth-quarter and full-year financial results Thursday, when Union Pacific and CSX Transportation release their earnings. As a group, earnings for the six Class I systems are expected to rise 5.5%, according to I/B/E/S consensus estimates. That’s far better performance than is anticipated for the large […]
