News Wire’s stories of the year, 2018-2024

A review of the recent history of major rail news, as well as this year’s Top 10

Train with black locomotives with steel mill as backdrop — A Norfolk Southern train passes the Cleveland-Cliffs Indiana Harbor steel mill in East Chicago, Ind. NS has topped Trains’ list of top stories the last two years — for all the wrong reasons. David Lassen

Welcome to a new year.

As we wait to find out what 2025 has in store for us, here’s one final look at our top stories of 2024, as well as a review of previous top stories, to give this year’s events some context. Norfolk Southern ends up in the top spot for the second consecutive year — a distinction it would probably have preferred to avoid.

Looking at the past top stories, it’s interesting to see how many remain relevant or played a role in this year’s events.

2018: Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson

The choice for 2018 — the controversial three-year term of the former Delta Airlines CEO as head of Amtrak, then roughly at its midpoint — continues to leave its mark on the nation’s passenger operator. It opened the door for others with no rail background to head the company, triggered the elimination of traditional dining-car meals that is only slowly being reversed, and triggered — through a proposal to substitute a bus bridge for part of the Southwest Chief route — led to the emergence of a group of members of Congress who were willing to stand up for the passenger operator and scrutinize its actions. That group could be tested by a new administration in 2025

2019: Big Boy returns

The return to operation of Union Pacific’s 4-8-8-4 in time to mark the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony remains the gold standard of preservation stories. It continues to show the value of steam as a promotional tool for the railroad, which sent the locomotive on two tours in 2024. What 2025 has in store for the big Alco remains to be determined.

Having written so much about the locomotive in 2019, we marked its status as the No. 1 story with a video, rather than the usual article.

2020: Railroading and the pandemic

The impact of COVID-19 took so many forms that we addressed our No. 1 story this year with not one, but five articles, considering the impact on freight railroading, transit, passenger railroading, preservation, and international railroading. Some of those, unfortunately, were lost when Trains.com moved to a new online platform. The pandemic led to massive, and in some case, permanent changes in society, and railroading certainly was not immune to its effects. Rail transit, for example, will likely never be the same, given the shift to work-from-home policies, although riders are slowly returning on most system. Amtrak, also hit hard, finally edged back ahead of 2019 ridership in fiscal 2024, although long-distance capacity has yet to be fully restored.

2021: The battle for Kansas City Southern

Red, yellow, and black locomotive at grade crossing — A Kansas City Southern locomotive leads a westbound Canadian Pacific train across the Menomonee River in Wauwatosa, Wis., on Dec. 6, 2021. The CP-KCS merger followed a lengthy battle between CP and Canadian National for control of the smaller railroad. David Lassen

Railroading’s version of a soap opera began when Canadian Pacific announced plans to merge with KCS in March 2021, and Montreal-based CN said “au contraire” and launched its own bid a month later. As we recounted here, the resulting saga turned on a Surface Transportation Board decision rejecting a voting trust for a CN-KCS deal. That meant shareholders would have to wait much longer to cash in, and sent KCS back into the arms of CP; the union was finally consummated in April 2023, an event commemorated this year with the three-nation barnstorming tour of CP Hudson No. 2816.

2022: Rail labor and the near strike

The Byzantine negotiating process of the Railway Labor Act makes a national strike almost impossible, but ill will between railroads and their union workers brought the U.S. rail network closer than it had been in decades before an 11th-hour settlement. It appears that the two sides are climbing away from that low point, however. First, they addressed the issue of paid sick leave in a series of agreements in 2023, then — led by CSX, with Norfolk Southern and BNSF close behind — began reaching new five-year agreements with many of their unions even before the official date to start the next round of negotiations. Not everyone has signed on as of yet, and things remain contentious in Canada, where CN and CPKC workers actually staged a walkout — for less than a day, before being sent back to work when the government ordered binding arbitration.

2023: East Palestine

The ugly plume of black smoke that marked the burn-off of toxic chemicals after the Feb. 3 derailment of a Norfolk Southern train is long gone, but the dark cloud of the derailment and hazardous-material event in the small eastern Ohio town still hangs over the entire rail industry. Federal legislation to address rail safety — some of which even actually addresses the events in East Palestine — stalled out in Washington; whether the 119th Congress, to be sworn in Jan. 3, will make another run at the issue is unknown. In the meantime, the incident spawned a wide range of state-level legislation, all of which will face court challenges based on the longstanding legal principle that regulation of interstate commerce is a matter to be addressed at the federal, not state level.

2024: Turmoil at Norfolk Southern

A proxy fight for control of the board of directors, a federal lawsuit over passenger train delays, the firing of the CEO for a relationship with another executive — at times it seemed like Norfolk Southern was just a plague of locusts away from hitting for the bad-corporate-news cycle. In case all those things weren’t enough, there was also the National Transportation Safety Board taking the railroad to task for its decision to burn off those chemicals at East Palestine the prevous year, as well as the NTSB chair’s statement that the railroad’s conduct during the board’s investigation was “unprecedented and reprehensible.” Despite all of that, the railroad — which quickly named Chief Financial Officer Mark George as its new CEO, replacing the deposed Alan Shaw — reached the end of the year showing significant operational improvement. Not only did it improve its operating ratio — which had helped make it the target of that proxy fight — but it also showed an increase in traffic and made progress on key performance metrics. Perhaps in 2025, if NS makes the year-end top 10, it will be in positive fashion.

For the record, here’s how the voting went for the top stories, with links to each, in case you missed one. The tiebreaker used was the number of ballots on which a story appeared.