Tabla de contenidos para November 2025 en Trains

BNSF RAILWAY AND CSX in August announced an intermodal partnership that will offer seamless domestic coast-to-coast service, plus new international service linking BNSF’s Kansas City terminal with CSX-served ports on the East Coast. The move came a little more than three weeks after Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern unveiled plans to merge into the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. But a CSX spokesman said the railroads had been working on their agreement for months. BNSF and CSX said they would introduce direct domestic intermodal service between Southern California and Charlotte, N.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. Service also will be launched between Phoenix and Atlanta. The seamless service, the railroads said, will aim to convert over-the-road freight to rail. In addition, the railroads plan to offer new direct international intermodal services linking Kansas…

Most commuters hate their railroad. They’ll brag about their city’s sports teams, symphony, or scenery. But commuters will compete to tell horror stories about how bad it is to commute by rail, insisting that their carrier, route, or station is the absolute worst. And the past five years of pandemic and aftermath have been painful: no transportation sector has suffered more than commuter rail. White collar rail commuters can work from home, while blue-collar workers are often back on the bus and subway. Which commuter railroads do a good job and which deserve the criticism aimed their way? We used data from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database to construct five measures — efficiency, utilization, growth, relevance, and reliability — then combined the measures to produce a grade for…

IN THE LATE 1970S, time was running out for the remnants of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific’s once-extensive passenger train fleet. The railroad could not afford the initiation fee to join Amtrak in 1971 and was obliged to continue operating its two remaining passenger trains — the Quad Cities Rocket, train Nos. 5 and 6 between Chicago and Rock Island, Ill., and The Peorian, train Nos. 11 and 12 between Chicago and Peoria, Ill. By 1978, after numerous petitions to discontinue them, the Rockets were running  out their final miles. Indeed, the entire railroad was less than two years from extinction. I’m one of the few old enough to remember riding a Rock Island-operated intercity passenger train. I was 8 years old at the time, too young to comprehend…

The ENGINE 25 RESTORATION GROUP in Butte, Mont., has plans to cosmetically restore NORTHERN PACIFIC 2-8-0 NO. 25 and enhance its exhibit environment with a new shelter and interpretive labels. The locomo tive, built in 1899, is located at the front of the Butte Civic Center. No. 25 is the last of 13 such locomotives used on Homestake Pass. For more details, visit engine25.org. Engine 25, Al Hess Also in Butte: THE VIRGINIA & TRUCKEE RAILROAD sent 1914 BALDWIN 2-8-2 NO. 18 and THREE PASSENGER COACHES via semitruck from Carson City, Nev., to Montana for the filming of Paramount’s series 1923, a prequel to the popular show Yellowstone. The 900-mile move required five trailers. No. 18 weighs 90 tons. The EAST TROY RAILROAD MUSEUM received a $10,000 donation from the CANADIAN…

TWENTY YEARS AFTER Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, and more than nine years after a New Orleans-Florida “inspection train” that held the promise of restored passenger service, two daily Mardi Gras Service round trips are now running between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala. The start also comes three years after weeks of Surface Transportation Board hearings prompted by the adversarial approach of the railroads charged with operating and hosting the trains. It shouldn’t have taken this long. Hundreds of enthusiastic well-wishers turned out at each of four rural Mississippi stops to greet the inaugural special on Aug. 16; revenue service started the following Monday. The New Orleans brass-band sendoff and large gatherings at communities along the way were particularly satisfying to backers from the Southern Rail Commission. Its predecessor…

PHILADELPHIA HAS BECOME the first major U.S. city to see massive cuts to transit service because of a post-pandemic financial crisis, but it may not be the last. On Aug. 24, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority began enacting 20% cuts to bus and rail service, reducing frequencies on Metro rail lines, eliminating 32 bus routes and shortening or reducing frequencies on 104 others. The cuts reflected a $213 million budget shortfall and a deadlock in the Pennsylvania legislature over how to resolve the issue. But a 21.5% fare increase and reductions in Regional Rail service, set for Sept. 1-2, were placed on hold when a Philadelphia judge issued a temporary injunction. That came in response to a lawsuit claiming the transit agency was “making up” the crisis to get more…

ROSS ROWLAND’S recent and unexpected death unleashed the expected flood of memories, along with the usual chagrin that we had neglected to do a serious oral history with one of the most significant figures in the history of railway preservation. Few individuals in the field have so directly touched so many lives, created as much controversy, or made such indelible impressions on everyone he worked with. It was my privilege almost 35 years ago to hold down the right-hand seat of his former Chesapeake & Ohio Greenbrier No. 614 for a full day’s running. I’ve had my share of noteworthy experiences out on the railroad, but that particular day stands out as one of the most memorable — but not for the reasons you might expect. It was everything a…

Short line railroads work closely with Class I railroads to provide important first-and final-mile service in towns large and small. They drive economic growth in rural towns and large cities. In Florida, now the nation’s fourth-largest economy at more than $1.3 trillion in annual gross domestic product, short lines operate almost as many miles as their Class I railroad partners. Florida’s economy trails only California, Texas, and New York, and its population grew 14% to 21.5 million between 2010 and 2020 while adding more than 9 million homes. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands more people call Florida home. At one point, it was believed as many as 1,000 people per day were moving to the state. For the rail industry, this means short lines play a more important…

IT IS GOING TO BE A BIG STEP—a big step forward and in the right direction for the future of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. The museum’s vision has two main parts: Move from an all-volunteer organization, growing into one with a paid, professional staff; and develop a new campus site by renovating an old railroad roundhouse. “This is an ambitious plan,” says new museum Executive Director Matt Nawn. “It will be a phased development with our goal of completion in 10 years.” Nawn, himself, is part of the plan. A long-time transit enthusiast and museum member/volunteer, he was named executive director in June 2025. He is the museum’s first paid, professional executive director — the beginning of a full-time staff. Even with a paid staff, volunteers will continue to play…

FIVE ALSTOM TRAINSETS, finally accepted by Amtrak following years of testing and modifications, entered revenue service between Washington and Boston on the Northeast Corridor just before Labor Day. More are primed to supplant their 25-year-old legacy brethren in the succeeding weeks. Although the trains’ 160-mph top speed is touted as the fastest Amtrak has ever operated, the NextGens initially assumed existing Acela schedules for two round trips Sunday through Friday and one on Saturday. That development is linked to the fact that performance capabilities related to the trains’ ability to take curves at higher speeds could not be replicated after years of testing, modifications, and re-testing on the Northeast Corridor’s aging infrastructure. Aboard a press run the day before revenue service began, Alstom U.S. operations vice president Noah Heulitt noted…

Canadian Pacific Kansas City CEO Keith Creel says Union Pacific’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern is a nationwide service disaster waiting to happen and an “endgame scenario” for the rail industry. Retired NS CEO David Goode — who snatched 58% of Conrail away from CSX in 1997 and made the NS map what it is today — says the UP-NS combo is the logical outcome of nearly two centuries of rail history. “The story of railroading has always been the story of mergers and expansion,” he says. And to UP CEO Jim Vena and current NS CEO Mark George, their blockbuster deal is a gamechanger — the spark required to ignite growth in an industry that has seen precious little since traffic peaked in 2006. They say the…

THE END OF A TRIP, a delivery made, or the conclusion of a shift. All represent the Last Mile — a railroad concept that can be illustrated through container ships and double stacks, shortline transload yards, museums, and even a worker carrying a crate off a boxcar. The Last Mile transcends time and is older than railroading itself. Entries for the 2025 Trains-National Railway Historical Society Photo Contest garnered a wide variety of interpretation to consider. Entries varied from modern to vintage images and were not limited to capture in the U.S., but illustrated railway scenes from across the globe. This year, 330 entries were received from 136 photographers. The Grand Prize image, from Todd Halamka, is an early morning view of the Munich (Germany) Main Station, which is “the…

THIS SUMMER, my wife Kris and I took a three-day railroadthemed mini-vacation to Scranton, Pa. This fascinating place is a wonderful way to experience history. Scranton is a complex, layered city with many fascinating elements of railroading to explore and enjoy, but you need to take the time to seek it out — both at rail level and underground. The city was built and prospered on the mining and transportation of anthracite coal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the nucleus of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, which by the dawn of the 20th century was among the richest of American railroads. Yet DL&W was only one of eight railroads that blanketed the coal-rich Lackawanna Valley. The name “Lackawanna” is derived from the Lanape language…