LUDINGTON, Mich. — Loading-ramp damage has brought an early end to the 2023 season for Lake Michigan car ferry S.S. Badger. “We have made the difficult, and unfortunately unavoidable, decision to suspend our daily crossings for the remainder of the season,” Mark W. Barker, President of Interlake Maritime Services, parent company of the Lake Michigan […]
CHICAGO — Metra will add four trains — two daily round trips — the weekday schedule for the Metra Electric District’s Blue Island Branch as of Aug. 14, the commuter operator announced Tuesday. Those trains, and adjustments to the current 18 daily trains on the branch, will also address ridership trends and service gaps to […]
Amtrak Floridian service provided direct service between Florida and the Midwest for almost a decade. The train was first known as the South Wind, a name inherited from predecessors Pennsylvania Railroad, Louisville & Nashville, and Seaboard Coast Line. With the issuance of Amtrak’s first in-house timetable on Nov. 14, 1971, the name was changed to […]
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons will sign legislation this week including $50 million in funding for grade-crossing improvements, and will announce a crossing safety plan with the Missouri Department of Transportation, WDAF-TV reports. Parsons will sign House Bill 4, an appropriations bill governing the Department of Revenue and Department of Transportation passed […]
Baltimore & Ohio class S-1 2-10-2 6199 leads Toledo-bound time freight 94 across the road’s double-track Chicago Division at Deshler, Ohio, in 1952. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
HUDSON, Ind. — The locomotive maintenance facility of the Indiana Northeastern Railroad Co. in Hudson was a beehive of activity over the weekend as historic steam locomotives, vintage diesels, and over 2,500 attendees swarmed around what was the first Railroad Open House. The July 29-30 event headlined the summer for the 2023 Indiana Rail Experience, […]
OSCEOLA, Wis. — Trains Magazine is sponsoring a two-day photo charter in September featuring vintage diesel locomotives from the Minnesota Transportation Museum (MTM) collection. Trains will run Sept.11-12 out of Osceola on MTM’s Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway, which operates over Canadian National’s 25-mile former Soo Line Dresser Subdivision. Trains will be pulled by […]
The Milwaukee Road Hiawatha fleet stands out among mid-century passenger operators. Of all the major U.S. railroads that fielded impressive fleets of passenger trains between the end of World War I in 1918 and the arrival of Amtrak in 1971, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific — more commonly known as the […]
Lake Superior & Ishpeming’s locomotives The writing has been on the wall for years. Fifteen years ago, in Trains’ April 2008 issue, David Lustig warned of the demise of Lake Superior & Ishpeming’s venerable fleet of former Burlington Northern General Electric U30C and C30-7 locomotives. Now, that time appears to have arrived at the short […]
Even as he handed it to me the other night at a Milwaukee slide show, I couldn’t quite believe what Mike Schafer was telling me. “Hey, this is my first railroad book! Maybe you’ll write about it?” Mike Schafer’s first railroad book. That didn’t sound quite right. I’ve been reading Mike’s name on […]
CHICAGO — A U.S. appeals court has ruled Union Pacific does not have a common-carrier obligation to continue operating commuter trains for Metra, likely hastening the transition of operations on three commuter lines from UP to Metra operation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled on Wednesday that “Union Pacific is not […]
LUDINGTON, Mich. — It will likely take a “few weeks” to return Great Lakes car ferry S.S. Badger to service after a loading-ramp failure last week, the owner of the former Chesapeake & Ohio steamship said in a statement earlier this week. Lake Michigan Carferry, owner of the ship built in 1952, said that on […]
