Tabla de contenidos para March 2024 en Trains

A SIGNIFICANT EFFORT to expand U.S. passenger service began to take shape in December with selection of routes for the Corridor Identification and Development Program. The 69 corridors chosen by the Federal Railroad Administration are a hodgepodge of potential new Amtrak routes, extensions to existing service, current routes seeking increased frequencies, and forward-looking high speed proposals. FRA Administrator Amit Bose called the announcement “another step forward as we advance transformative projects that will carry Americans for decades to come and provide them with convenient, climate-friendly alternatives to congested roads and airports.” The step is a relatively small one, though, in a process that could, for some new routes, take seven to 10 years to bear fruit. While the Corridor ID program has the potential to vastly remake Amtrak’s service map,…

Two railway bridges standing side by side across a nearly mile-wide expanse of water seems worthy of note in the annals of civil engineering. BNSF Railway bridges 3.9A and 3.9B on northern Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille represent the culmination of more than a half-century of mergers, route consolidations, and capacity improvements. These events made the nearly 68-mile stretch of former Northern Pacific main line between Sandpoint Junction, Idaho, and Sunset Junction in Spokane, Wash., one of the busiest and most vital pieces of railroad in the nation. BNSF predecessor Burlington Northern managed reasonably well during the 1970s with its Spokane-Sandpoint route being mostly single-tracked. But things got more congested by the 1980s, when a growing number of unit grain trains were traveling toward export docks in the Pacific Northwest. Then…

THE COPPER-COLORED Stadler FLIRT Traverso trainsets that provide the only year-round passenger rail service on Gotthard Pass belong to Südostbahn, better known by the initials SOB, and are part of a somewhat groundbreaking agreement between that company and SBB, the Swiss Federal Railways. In 2017, SBB and SOB agreed to cooperative operation of two routes, the Treno Gottardo route and one between Chur, capital of the Swiss canton of Graubünden, and the national capital, Bern, via Zurich. The latter operates as the Aare Linth, named for two rivers along the route. Under the agreement, SOB provides the equipment for, operates, and markets the routes; SBB provides a flat-rate compensation. Treno Gottardo operation began in December 2020; the Aare Linth began in December 2021. SOB had previously operated in a relatively…

IN EARLY 2023, I had the opportunity to take a step back in time, experiencing a short ride on a privately owned railcar. Through this trip, I was able to see what it might have been like to be a railroad president inspecting his territory. The car, the Abraham Lincoln, with owners in the Pacific Northwest, spent time on Tenino, Wash.-based Rainier Rail for several private-party excursions. It should not be confused with the railcar used in the Lincoln funeral train of 1865. This Abraham Lincoln was built by the Pullman Co. in 1910 for the Western Pacific Railroad as coach No. 894. In 1910, President Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, had just taken control of the Pullman Co. The younger Lincoln more than likely oversaw the car’s construction.…

THE FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE marked our 1,000th issue for Trains — and we couldn’t be more proud! And a huge reason for our success and longevity is the people behind the scenes who go above and beyond for the magazine. So many great writers, photographers, editors, and designers have paved the way for generations of train enthusiasts to come. Not only are they producing exquisite content for the print magazine, but they have continued providing online prose above and beyond their call of duty. “Beyond the byline” is a short and sweet Q/A column that goes online monthly highlighting staff, correspondents, and contributors of Trains Magazine — experts in various fields with vast train knowledge. If you haven’t noticed it yet, please check it out. You can find the column…

SELECTION OF CORRIDOR ID ROUTES (see page 6) wasn’t the only major Federal Railroad Administration announcement in December. The Agency also handed out more than $8.2 billion in Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail grants, awards led by more than $6 billion in funding for two high speed rail projects in the Southwest. Other rail projects also received funding through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Mega Grants program, awarded later in the month. The slightly smaller high-speed award may have been more significant: a $3 billion grant for the Brightline West project to connect Las Vegas, Nev., to Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., via a route mostly along the Interstate 15 right-of-way. That funding was expected to allow the $12 billion Brightline West project to hold a long-awaited groundbreaking early in 2024;…

On a cloudless afternoon in the Swiss Alps, four photographers have gathered on a hillside above the small town of Wassen (population 412, elevation 3,050 feet). They are documenting the sudden and unexpected revival of the Swiss Federal Railways’ Gotthard Pass line. An engineering marvel completed in 1882 that once hosted more than 120 trains a day, the route had been downgraded in recent years to a single passenger train per hour in each direction. That is definitely not the case on this warm September day. Instead, the doubletrack electrified main line hosts a steady stream of regional, intercity, and — in the form of the occasional Alstom-built Cisalpino trainset from Italy’s Trenitalia — trans-national passenger trains. A few freight trains are mixed in. There was no reason to expect…

THURSDAY, JUNE 20, 1968, began simply enough — clear, sunny, and warm. As a newly minted Santa Fe acting trainmaster working vacation relief out of Newton, Kan., I had been assigned by Superintendent Jimmy Fitzgerald — who later became vice president of operations — to monitor and expedite the movement of grain trains from loadouts on the Larned and 5th District (Middle Division) branch lines to the grain silos in Hutchinson, Kan. Working the Larned Branch on what was going to turn into a fateful day, we pulled our train into Larned, Kan., at about 4 p.m. and put our train in the hole (siding) so the crew could go for beans. Getting off the engine, the operator at the Larned depot came running out and in a highly excited…

I LIKE RAILROAD STATION RESTAURANTS, especially those that thoroughly grasp their heritage, offer views of the tracks, and consistently provide great service and delicious food. Over the years, I’ve visited a great many, including traditional establishments in active railroad stations. As a youngster, my father brought me to Grand Central’s famous Oyster Bar; in my Dublin days, I’d meet friends at Heuston Station’s Galway Hooker (named for the traditional Irish fishing boat). Old passenger stations can make ideal restaurant venues. These are well-constructed buildings with large rooms that are often centrally located and feature ample parking. Two of my favorite station restaurants offer examples of adaptive reuse of classic station buildings and embrace the heritage of the buildings and railroads they once served. I’ve known the Lemothe family for many…

CANADIAN NATIONAL WILL ACQUIRE the 253-mile Iowa Northern Railway, the companies announced on Dec. 6. The Iowa Northern, founded in 1984 to operate former Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific trackage, is a short line rags-to-riches story. The current ownership group, headed by second-generation railroader Dan Sabin, took over in 1994, when the Iowa Northern handled 15,000 cars per year on rickety 10-mph track. Today it handles more than 60,000 cars a year and the railroad has invested millions of dollars to bring the track into a state of good repair. The railroad has 110 employees and a fleet of 24 locomotives, plus six slugs. “We are confident that, as part of CN, IANR will be able to continue to provide reliable first- and last-mile service to our local customers while…

MORE THAN JUST a large hole in the ground, the Gotthard Base Tunnel — the world’s longest rail tunnel—is also a tourist attraction. The Swiss Federal Railways understood this. For four months in 2016, after the 57.1-kilometer (35.5-mile) tunnel was completed, but before regular operations began, SBB operated special Gottardino excursions. These trips between the towns of Flüelen and Biasca, many of which sold out, stopped in the tunnel at the Sedrun “multifunction station” including emergency evacuation facilities. At one time, Sedrun was to be the site of a station to be connected by elevator to mountain resort towns more than 2,400 feet above. That plan was scrubbed, in part because passenger-train stops would have decreased tunnel capacity. For the Gottardino visits, the Sedrun facility featured displays on tunnel construction,…

RAY, INDIANA, MICHIGAN “Indiana Northeastern 3125 at station sign Ray,” crackles the radio as engineer Jimmy Van Heerde announces the location of his train ambling through a town whose residents live half in Michigan and half in Indiana. Dust is ripped out of the Stateline Road crossing as twin six-axle locomotives slog northward with a 64-car mixed freight train headed for Hillsdale, Mich. A concrete marker wounded by more than one vehicle accident stands alongside the track like a silent sentinel in Ray, Ind. The marker, with IND on one side and MICH on the other, indicates the state boundary line and sits within sight of an abandoned gas station. Its gravity-feed fuel pumps, as well as the building’s windows, are devoid of any glass they once held, the result…

MID-CONTINENT RAILWAY MUSEUM in North Freedom, Wis., has launched a project to restore its Electro-Motive Corp. motorcar, the oldest surviving piece of EMC rolling stock, to operating condition. Montana Western No. 31, built by EMC in 1925 for Great Northern Railway as its No. 2313, is the 13th railcar built by the company that celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022. The motorcar was featured during a Trains LIVE program [see “Mid-Continent Railway Museum visit with Montana Western No. 31,” Trains.com, Nov. 9, 2022]. The museum said in a press release that it will work with FMW Solutions, a rail engineering firm with experience in preservation projects, to restore the gas-electric car. The car was named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 2003 by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The…