There’s something special about riding a trolley. A number of years ago, while visiting a friend in Maine, she took me to the Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport. It was a fascinating place full of vintage transit pieces. For the admission price, you could ride the trolley as many times as you liked around the […]
WASHINGTON — Devices that ensure a passenger train always activates signal and highway warning devices — regardless of track conditions or a train’s car type, speed, or length — will be installed on some Amtrak trains “this calendar year,” according to the Federal Railroad Administration. Responding to a Trains information request, the FRA said the […]
WASHINGTON — A Canadian National train making a shove move backed into Amtrak’s City of New Orleans, then backed up and hit the passenger train a second time, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary report on the Feb. 22, 2026, collision near Memphis. The incident at about 11 a.m. led to minor […]
CHICAGO — The man in line to buy the Chicago White Sox may acquire the site of Amtrak’s yard in Chicago as part of a plan to build new ballpark for the baseball team. Crain’s Chicago Business, in a paywalled article today (Wednesday, March 18) reported that owner-in-waiting Justin Ishbia’s private equity firm, Shore Capital […]
WASHINGTON — The Federal Transit Administration has issued a Special Directive requiring the Illinois Department of Transportation to take 11 actions to improve its oversight of the Chicago Transit Authority. The FTA also has launched a Safety Management Inspection of IDOT. The directive issued Tuesday says that the FTA has determined IDOT’s State Safety Oversight […]
The arm on a New York Central Railway Post Office car has just snatched the bag from the trackside crane. Incoming bags for such locations would simply be kicked out the door as the train passed. A. C. Kalmbach photo […]
SEATTLE — Amtrak has topped out the steel structure for its new Maintenance and Inspection facility at Seattle’s King Street Yard, one of several facilities under construction nationwide to accommodate maintenance for its new Airo equipment fleet. The project to date has taken more than 200,000 worker hours, and involved installation of approximately 1.8 million […]
DENVER — The Front Range Passenger Rail District has extended the voting for its Name the Train contest by a week to March 30, citing strong interest in the balloting. More than 18,000 Colorado residents voted in the first 72 hours, the agency said. “With thousands of Coloradans already participating, it’s been exciting to watch […]
MISSOURI CITY, Texas — Two passengers suffered minor injuries on Tuesday, March 17, when Amtrak’s Sunset Limited hit a truck hauling a container at a grade crossing, NBC News reports. Missouri City Fire Chief Mario Partida said crews responded to the accident around 11 a.m. local time. Two minor injuries were treated at the scene, […]
WASHINGTON — A second Presidential Emergency Board has sided with a coalition of unions in their ongoing contract dispute with the Long Island Rail Road — but the LIRR rejected the board’s recommendation, setting the stage for a strike or lockout in May. The board was, under the rules of the Railway Labor Act, required […]
HAMMOND, Ind. — South Shore Line commuter service on its new Monon Corridor branch is set to begin Tuesday, March 31, according to the Northern Indiana Commuter Transit District. The 8-mile right-of-way, a segment of a route that once hosted Monon’s Thoroughbred to Louisville, Ky., and the Tippecanoe and Hoosier to Indianapolis before rails were […]
DALLAS — Some equipment from Minnesota’s defunct Northstar commuter rail operation has found a new home in the Lone Star State. Two of the Northstar’s MPI MP36PH0-3C locomotives and eight of its bilevel Bombardier coaches were photographed on Tuesday, March 17, en route from the Twin Cities to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. They have been […]
