Trains December 2021

from the editor

jwrinn@kalmbach.com @TrainsMagazine @trains_magazine Bill Metzger has been our contributing illustrator for years. In that time, he’s produced dozens of feature maps as well as many other maps that have graced these pages. We are fortunate that Bill is a talented mapmaker, and as he retires from our ranks, he does so with our gratitude and admiration. In other staff news, we wish Senior Associate Editor Brian Schmidt well as he takes the throttle at our sister publication CLASSIC Trains. Brian has been on the Trains staff since 2012, and his departure means we have an opening for a new staff member who can keep these pages vibrant and feed Trains.com as it grows and thrives. Check out details under the job listings at our parent company’s website, www.kalmbach.com.…

canadian pacific wins battle for kansas city southern

CANADIAN PACIFIC CEO KEITH CREEL, who in September won a hard-fought, four-month merger battle to acquire Kansas City Southern, is fully aware that the first Class I railroad combination in two decades is history in the making. “We’ve got some history that we’re very proud of with Canadian Pacific. We drove the spike in 1885 that … created Canada as it is today,” a jubilant Creel said in an interview with Trains two days after Canadian National dropped its KCS bid and CP and KCS signed their merger deal. “We’re the railroad that’s going to drive that final spike to actually be the only true North American network that’s going to connect three countries — Canada, the U.S., and Mexico — and that’s something we’re extremely proud of.” To celebrate the occasion,…

investigators seek cause of ‘empire builder’ derailment that killed three

THE VICE CHAIR of the National Transportation Safety Board says Amtrak’s Empire Builder was traveling below its posted speed limit when it derailed and partially overturned Sept. 25 in rural Montana, killing three people. NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg told members of the media that the westbound Empire Builder was traveling at between 75 and 78 mph when it derailed along BNSF Railway’s Hi Line Subdivision near Joplin, Mont. Landsberg says the posted speed limit for passenger trains is 79 mph and that the track is inspected regularly by its owner, BNSF Railway. “The derailment occurred on a gradual righthand curve, and it occurred prior to reaching the switch that is there for a siding,” Landsberg told reporters. “There was a track inspection conducted on the 23rd by BNSF and they…

galloping across the gallup sub

bybillstephens@gmail.com @bybillstephens Blog: Trains.com The westbound Southwest Chief is 6 minutes late out of Albuquerque, N.M., as you roll toward the junction with BNSF Railway’s Southern Transcon at Dalies. From Roomette 14 you wonder: What will happen to the Chief’s timekeeping when we hit the Gallup Subdivision that carries 80 freights per day? The question is bigger than it may seem because host railroad handling of Amtrak trains has become a thorny issue. Regulations that went into effect last year set new on-time performance standards and created a process to enforce them beginning July 1. And the Surface Transportation Board is bracing for a raft of Amtrak complaints about freight-train interference in January, the first month when host railroads can be hauled before regulators for delaying passengers. You ponder all this as the Sept. 9…

mass central passenger excursions revisited

briansolomon.author@gmail.com @briansolomon.author Blog: briansolomon.com/trackingthelight/Podcast: Trains.com A few weeks ago, my old friend Bob Bentley stopped into the North Conway, N.H., station, where for the day I was serving as Manager on Duty for Conway Scenic Railroad, a role that combines station master, yard master, and train dispatcher. “I’ve got great news!” he says. “Mass Central is resuming excursion service. We’ve acquired three passenger cars and hope to start running soon.” Bentley has had a long affiliation with Massachusetts Central, a railroad that I covered in “Against the Odds,” in March 2010. When I was in high school in the early 1980s, Mass Central was a struggling short line that had recently picked up operations of the former Boston & Albany Ware River Branch and fragments of Boston & Maine’s Central Massachusetts route. Carload traffic…

a railroad that’s pure michigan

Ryan Krengel has quite a view out the windshield of his SD40-2 as he rolls northward through the seemingly remote landscape north of Wixom, Mich. Although he’s running through densely populated exurbs on the fringe of metro Detroit, up ahead he sees wooded moraines, small glacial lakes, and the occasional deer. There’s no hint that, within a few miles, his train will once again be snaking through the industrial tangle of Flint and, later, Saginaw. For Krengel, it’s a relaxing run this morning. As the road foreman of engines for Lake State Railway, he’s been assigned to take some of the railroad’s executives on a brief inspection trip. Serving as his brakeman is Roger Fuehring, Lake State’s chief mechanical officer. Behind their lead diesel is a trailing GP40-3, then four passenger cars,…