Trains News Wire wrapped up its countdown of 2022’s top stories on Saturday. In case you missed any of our coverage, we open the new year with a recap — not only of this year, but of five years of News Wire top stories.
2018: Richard Anderson
The highly controversial three-year tenure of the former Delta Airlines CEO as head of Amtrak was roughly at its midpoint when he was judged to be the year’s top story. By then, he had already launched such changes as the elimination of freshly prepared food onboard long-distance trains, elimination of off-route charters, significant restrictions on private-car movements, and floated a trial balloon to run a bus bridge instead of a train on part of the Southwest Chief route — an idea forcefully shot down by legislators from states served by the train.
2019: The return of Big Boy
The revival of Union Pacific’s massive 4-8-8-4 locomotive was the be-all and end-all of preservation stories when No. 4014 returned to operation. By the time the year ended, we’d said so much about the locomotive that, instead of writing another story, we marked its status as the No. 1 story of the year with this video.
2020: Rail and the pandemic
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were so pervasive, not just in railroading but in society, that News Wire addressed the No. 1 story with not one, but five articles: on the impact on freight railroading, transit, passenger railroading, rail preservation, and international railroading. Unfortunately, the first two of those stories appear to have been lost when Trains.com upgraded to its current website, but you can still read the other three.
2021: CP, CN battle for Kansas City Southern
Part business story, part soap opera, the dueling bids by the two Canadian railroads for the smallest U.S. Class I road turned on the Surface Transportation Board’s rejection of a voting trust for the proposed CN-KCS deal, which meant shareholders would have had to wait much longer to see financial benefits of the union. That sent KCS back into the arms of CP; their deal will likely receive final approval early in 2023.
2022: Rail labor and the near strike
Ill will between railroads and their unionized workers came close to producing the first strike in decades. Steps by Congress and President Joe Biden to impose a settlement, avoiding that strike, underlined an unfortunate truth about U.S. freight railroading: It is out of sight and out of mind for the vast majority of the population until there’s a chance it might be halted, at which point the public suddenly learns or is reminded how vital railroads are to the economy.
And the rest of 2022’s top stories:
No. 2, service issues, and No. 3, crew shortages.
No. 4: Amtrak cutbacks and service issues.
No. 5: Gulf Coast passenger conflict.
No. 7: Railroading Heritage of America makes its mark in Silvis.
No. 8: Continuing progress at East Broad Top.
I honestly wonder if anyone who knows of Amtrak’s history thinks Richard Anderson is better or worse than Thomas Downs, as Downs discontinued a lot of trains under his leadership.
He was a great one for coporate reconfiguation. Who needs trains when you have an org chart?