DAVENPORT, Iowa – Railroaders are working “around the clock” this week to restore and maintain service along water-logged routes in the Midwest, but the worst may be yet to come as communities along the Mississippi River brace for major flooding in the coming days. Over the weekend, flooding affected hundreds of miles of BNSF Railway […]
ATLANTA — Suburban Gwinnett County is voting today on whether to fund an expansion of the Atlanta-area MARTA transit agency, including an expansion of its heavy rail system, into the county. The referendum asks voters to approve a contract between the county and MARTA that would allow MARTA to take over existing Gwinnett County transit […]
RITZVILLE, Wash. — Adding to the list of mid-March nature-related disruptions across its network, Union Pacific is cleaning up a derailment that has interrupted traffic on its Ayer subdivision between Spokane and Hinkle, Ore. A UP spokesman said a train with a Canadian Pacific locomotive derailed 23 rail cars of mixed freight near mile post […]
Joe Boardman gets the engineer’s perspective of a Siemens ACS-64 electric on a test track at the Transportation Technolgy Center in Pueblo, Colo., on July 29, 2013. A significant number of Amtrak employees were on hand for Boardman’s funeral Friday in Rome, N.Y. Bob Johnston ROME, N.Y. — More than a hundred current Amtrak employees, […]
WASHINGTON — Twitter wars are common enough between people of opposing political views, some celebrities, or various social-media influencers. But between Amtrak and one of its host railroads? A Wall Street Journal report (behind a paywall) notes that Amtrak and Norfolk Southern have been trading letters about an Amtrak tweet last month in which the […]
Authorities in the Netherlands are calling a fatal shooting on a light rail vehicle in Utrecht a terrorist attack. Google maps AMSTERDAM — Three people have been killed and five seriously injured after a shooting incident this morning on a light rail train in the Dutch city of Utrecht, and a suspect has been arrested […]
CHICAGO—Flooding in eastern Nebraska, western Iowa, and northwest Missouri has caused delays, truncations and outright cancellations to the Chicago-Emeryville, Calif., California Zephyr and two state-sponsored Missouri River Runner round-trips between St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. Today’s eastbound Zephyr is cancelled entirely out of California; Amtrak has blocked sales east of Denver until at least […]
Responding to requests from Amtrak, NJ Transit, and New Jersey officials, the Coast Guard will no longer allow opening of the Portal Bridge during rush-hour periods. Russell Sullivan SECAUCUS, N.J. — The U.S. Coast Guard has changed rules regarding the opening of New Jersey’s troublesome Portal Bridge, reducing the risk of disrupted Northeast Corridor service […]
BALTIMORE — CSX Transportation trains are moving again through Baltimore after a Friday afternoon derailment closed the railroad’s main line and damaged an electric substation for the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The Baltimore Sun reports that CSX crews worked Friday and Saturday to repair a line that leads to the Howard Street tunnel in the city. The […]
OMAHA, Neb. — Widespread flooding across the Union Pacific system has forced the railroad to announce a number of service embargoes. A UP notice to customers notes that flooding and track washouts have UP lines out of service in the Omaha, Blair, Columbus, Lincoln, and Falls City subdivisions, and that the widespread nature of the […]
WASHINGTON — The Federal Railroad Administration has denied Kansas City Southern’s request to shift a brake test from the International Railway Bridge in Laredo, Texas, to one of its yards in neighboring Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. For more than a decade, KCS has used an existing FRA waiver to conduct a Class III brake test on […]
WASHINGTON — The proposal to build a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River has once again received a low rating from federal regulators that makes it ineligible for a key source of U.S. government funding, the Associated Press reports. The Federal Transit Administration has rated the new tunnel between New York and New Jersey […]
