Índex per October 2024 a Trains

THE FIRST SIEMENS VENTURE food service car in Amtrak state-supported service, a coach-café for Midwest trains, made its long-awaited debut in daily Chicago-St. Louis Lincoln Service operation in July, with Trains sampling the new equipment on a trip from Chicago to Bloomington-Normal, Ill. Illinois and California transportation departments, not Amtrak, managed the procurement of single-level Venture cars and Charger locomotives. Though they agreed on aisle width and the same type of coach seat, the agencies differed on how their respective rolling stock was to be configured. The Midwest cafés went through a variety of changes from what was initially envisioned as a standardized design; California opted for vending-machine cars that have yet to debut on the San Joaquins. Illinois DOT spokesman Scott Speegle tells Trains that as the 17 Midwest café…

Nighttime — Chicago — Sept. 21, 2023 Tucked away under the Roosevelt Road overpass in Amtrak’s Chicago coach yard, the two vintage passenger cars sat like a pair of diamonds in the rough. The presence of the private varnish punctuated an otherwise uniform sea of aging Phase IV paint-scheme Superliner and Amfleet cars. While the Amtrak trainsets parked on the surrounding tracks had certainly been around the block a time or two, they were still youngsters compared to the two meticulously restored cars sitting in their midst. Yard royalty The queen of the yard this evening is undoubtedly a 1948-vintage round-end observation car. Soft, warm light spilled from the panoramic windows that stretched from nearly floor to ceiling. The railcar exuded an unmistakably regal aura. “New York Central” lettering was…

FOUR DECADES LATER, I still chuckle when I think about the grouchy old farmer who jumped on my locomotive at a central Iowa grade crossing, cast iron fry pan in hand, and cussed me out like he was a drunken sailor! It was summer 1979. I had been a qualified Chicago & North Western Railway engineer for only a couple months, working the extra board out of Boone, Iowa. My crew and I were called to dog-catch trains that could not make it from Clinton to Boone under their hours of service. The Rock Island Railroad had entered bankruptcy in 1975 and was about to call it quits. Much of the Rock Island traffic was being diverted to C&NW’s eastwest main line across the Hawkeye state. Those of us…

I LIKE RELATIVELY SHORT rail journeys — trips of less than 3 hours or hops where multiple short trips are combined. I’ve also made all-rail escapades that have gone on for weeks. To make the most of our recent rail-themed trip to Ireland, my wife Kris and I mixed it up; we traveled both by train and by road where necessary to see the sights and make railroad photos. Driving in Irish cities is an acquired taste, so our urban journeys were largely rail-based, except for trips to and from Dublin airport, which has no rail connection. We traveled by train between Dublin and Cork via the fast but crowded Irish Rail InterCity service [see “Irish lessons in train travel,” “Commentary,” February 2023]. Cork’s Kent Station is a regional hub,…

YOUNG GUNS IN PRESERVATION is a series of Trains.com articles highlighting the efforts of some amazing individuals in today’s organizations. Erik G. Ledbetter’s “Steam’s young guns” from Trains’ May 2006 issue serves as the catalyst for the passion behind this project. There is also a personal connection for this humble staff writer. Reading his piece nearly 20 years ago inspired me to pave my own path in the world of rail preservation by being a Swiss Army Knife-type volunteer for the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Mich., before ultimately joining the Trains.com team. Today, the ongoing Young Guns in Preservation series of Q&A-style articles shares the stories of these folks and their contributions — ranging from mechanics to managers to film-makers — while providing insight into an industry they serve and…

AMTRAK AND NJ TRANSIT have pledged to work together to address operational issues plaguing both services on the Northeast Corridor, but aging infrastructure has complicated operations on the heavily used passenger route, and not just on the 58 miles those two services share between New York City and Trenton, N.J. The Amtrak-NJ Transit commitment came after officials from both organizations were called together by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. The two sides had begun blaming each other for a series of problems on the corridor, with NJ Transit pointing to catenary while Amtrak blamed NJ Transit equipment. NJ.com reported that on eight occasions between April and that June 27 meetings, Amtrak wires became tangled with NJ Transit pantographs. Amtrak board chair Anthony Coscia said the operators recently “discovered an issue in…

When it was published in 1959, Hammond’s Family World Atlas, New Revised Edition, included rail lines on each of the 50 state maps. That atlas shows 5,500-square-mile Connecticut with just two railroads: The New York, New Haven & Hartford (better known simply as “the New Haven”) and Canadian National subsidiary Central Vermont Railway. Connecticut, which had its first railroad in 1837, has been called The Land of Steady Habits. But that may not hold true for the state’s railroads. Sixty-five years after that atlas was printed, Connecticut is the same size, but the state’s list of railroad operations has grown to 13, which operate a total of 628 route-miles. Bankruptcies, mergers, abandonments, new short lines, and the creation of state and federal railroad operators all led to this expanded directory.…

The year was 1976. I was in my late 20s, out of the military, back in college, happy with my girlfriend, and working as a writer. I was driving north from my home in Los Angeles to the far northeast part of the state to the tiny hamlet of Herlong to visit the Sierra Army Depot. Sierra Army Depot is a military ammunition facility. In the 1970s, long trains of boxcars bringing back unused or dated weaponry combined with outbound cars loaded with fresh ammunition and supplies weaved in and out of myriad ordinance bunkers on dozens of miles of track. This amount of traffic meant the motive power needed to be larger than the usual center-cab switchers that then predominated on many military bases. Informed fans — remember, this…

A NEW ROUNDHOUSE GALLERY AND TURNTABLE are in the works at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Wash. The new facility will house seven significant pieces of rolling stock from the museum’s collection. New exhibits will also be presented along with a 5,000-square-foot HOscale model railroad illustrating, “how railways determined present settlement patterns and opened previously inaccessible regions across Washington State geography,” according to a description on the museum’s website. “The roundhouse will be a museum gallery space,” says Richard Anderson, Northwest Railway Museum executive director. “This will be a climate-controlled environment designed to exhibit and protect our seven King County landmarks.” The 35,000-square-foot facility is the fourth and final structure in the museum’s site plan. Work toward fully realizing the plan has been underway for nearly two decades…

Soon to be gone Just like the leaves on the autumn trees, these former Pennsylvania Railroad position lights will soon fall. About a month after this 2019 nocturnal exposure in Portage, Pa., the signals were replaced by current owner Norfolk Southern. Autumnal hues, blues A pair of Conrail C40-8Ws, Nos. 6215 and 6055, lead double-stack train TV204Y down the Hudson River’s west shore at Fort Montgomery, N.Y., in October 1993. The train is crossing the low trestle at the mouth of Popolopen Creek. Fall on the DM&IR A lone evergreen is silhouetted against the gray outside of the former Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range yard in Proctor, Minn., on Oct. 12, 2008. The dim headlight belongs to SD38-2 No. 211. Canadian National took over the DM&IR in 2004. Pick the…

The FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION issued directives to the SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY to address its “deteriorating safety record” following a six-month safety assessment sparked by a flurry of incidents in July 2023, including five — one fatal — in a single week. The total of 16 findings and 24 required actions covered three areas — transit worker safety; the ability to ensure safe operations; and specific findings from incidents. Issues include not fully addressing assaults on transit workers, staffing shortages in key positions, and inadequate management and training of new operators. SEPTA must present plans to address the issues to the FTA for approval in 30 to 120 days. Not included: SEPTA’s commuter-rail system, under FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION jurisdiction. The JAMES E. STRATES SHOWS carnival train, sidelined since 2019, made…

NOT INCLUDED IN OUR BAKER’S DOZEN LIST of Connecticut rail operations is the Branford Steam Railroad, which is not a tourist railroad nor steam-powered. BSRR is a 7-mile rail line connecting a large quarry at North Branford to a connection with Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and a barge loading pier on Long Island Sound. Dating back more than a century, the operation replaced its last tank locomotives with GE 44-ton diesels in 1960, although the “steam” name remained. Larger locomotives followed over the years, with an EMD SW1001 arriving in 1975. Today’s line-haul trains often are handled by a leased GATX GP38-2.…

The words “Be the Engineer!” drew my attention to a Nevada Northern Railway ad in a Trains magazine. I’m a veteran train museum patron. I’ve been to many, from Los Angeles to Scranton, and most are a lot easier to get to than Ely, Nev. Ely is 3 hours, 42 minutes north of Las Vegas, a lonely desert drive with just one rest stop on the way. As a museum it is unique in two ways. First, there’s no big display room with the artifacts or lovingly restored static equipment. Instead, NNRY is a working historic railroad, offering many scheduled and special excursion runs behind its Alco 2-8-0 No. 93 (built 1909), Baldwin 4-6-0 No. 40 (1910), or Electro-Motive Division diesel SD7 No. 204 (1952). Nevada Northern’s museum is all…

THE FORMER GREAT NORTHERN “HI-LINE” across Montana is BNSF’s primary route to the Pacific Northwest. The BNSF line across Montana is paralleled by U.S. Route 2 instead of an interstate highway and is a boon to the railfan. For 557 miles, U.S. 2 is alongside BNSF from Whitefish in the western Montana mountains to Williston, just over Montana’s eastern border in North Dakota. BNSF’s CTC-equipped main line hosts about 30 daily trains (more when grain is running heavy), providing ample train-watching targets while driving. Start your trip with the morning arrival of Amtrak’s eastbound Empire Builder at the ex-Great Northern depot in Whitefish. The Stumptown Historical Society owns Whitefish’s 1928 alpine-style depot along with a rare Electro-Motive NW3 in GN colors displayed trackside. BNSF’s Whitefish yard is active (including a turntable…