WASHINGTON — An Amtrak train was traveling at 40 mph when a conductor suffered a fatal fall in a January accident in Westerly, R.I., according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board. The accident occurred about 2:15 p.m. on Jan. 15, 2022. The conductor was discovered to be missing when […]
FILLMORE, Calif. – Former Fillmore & Western Alco S6 1059, a heavyweight passenger car, and a detrucked Pacific Fruit Express wood-sheathed refrigerator car left Fillmore on Tuesday by low-boy trucks for their new home at the Virginia & Truckee Railroad in Virginia City, Nevada. The diesel, former Southern Pacific No. 1059, was numbered 1229 in […]
SEATTLE — Almost two years after halting the service because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Amtrak has begun preparations to restore Cascades operations to Canada from Seatttle. Last week, Amtrak posted a notice on the Facebook page dedicated to the Cascades service informing customers that they might see Cascades trains running between Seattle and Vancouver, British […]
WASHINGTON – Active cross-examination by Surface Transportation Board Chairman Martin Oberman and other board members marked almost eight hours of testimony Tuesday on the first of two days of public comment on the ramifications of two proposed daily Amtrak round trips between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala. Some 45 witnesses spoke Tuesday. While most repeated […]
MONTREAL — At approximately 5 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 12, a loud impact called to the attention of those in the vicinity, including at least one rail enthusiast, that something had gone quite wrong with the delivery of a new bilevel commuter car for Montreal-area commuter operator EXO. The new car, built by China’s CRRC […]
ORLANDO, Fla. — Brightline has completed construction in the first of the four construction zones in its expansion from West Palm Beach to Orlando, Fla., finishing the small but complicated 3.5-mile Zone 2 in and around Orlando International Airport. “Our construction through OIA presented one of the most complex construction efforts of this entire project […]
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Passenger and freight railroad projects will benefit from federal surface transportation dollars made available in President Biden’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law in November. But freight railroads should also see residual value from increased carloads of construction-related materials as highway and infrastructure-heavy projects ramp up. This […]
All through February 2022, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the Southern Pacific Lines. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Southern Pacific passenger trains selected from the image files in Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. This gallery was first published in January 2019. […]
WASHINGTON — The Cardinal, Sunset Limited, and Texas Eagle were the Amtrak trains experiencing the most delays in fiscal 2021’s fourth quarter, according to a report on Amtrak performance released Monday by the Federal Railroad Administration. The quarterly report on performance and service quality uses metrics defined by the rule issued in 2020 which requires […]
LOS ANGELES — Parallel Systems, the company seeking to build autonomous battery-powered intermodal rail vehicles, has received a $.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the development of its technology. The grant is part of the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, program, developed to advance high-potential, high-impact energy technologies. It […]
NEW YORK — An Amtrak Acela train bound from Boston to New York was stalled on the Northeast Corridor for more than seven hours after losing power on Monday, the Associated Press reports. Train No. 2151 left Boston at 5:05 a.m. but lost power in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of Queens at 8:37 a.m., 10 […]
Amtrak will square off against CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, and the Port of Mobile, Ala., during Surface Transportation Board hearings this month and next regarding proposed Gulf Coast passenger service. Technically, this is about Amtrak’s disagreement with the freight railroads over starting a pair of daily round trips between Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans. But […]
