Table of contents for February 2024 in Trains

A BRITISH MAN spent an extended period in intensive care in an Argentine hospital, and three U.S. tourists were also hospitalized, after a narrowgauge, steam-powered heritage railway derailed on Nov. 12 in a remote portion of Patagonia. A tour group from the company Trains and Travel International — mostly from the U.S. and Britain, but also from Australia, Denmark, and France — was onboard the 750mm (2-foot, 5½-inch) gauge La Trochita Railway, which came to international fame as the “Old Patagonian Express” in the Paul Theroux book of the same name. The derailment occurred between Mamuel Choique and Rio Chico. Jim Fetchero, who was among the passengers, told Trains that there were 48 passengers and 10 to 12 crew members on board when the derailment occurred, only about a half-hour…

THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY TRANSPORTATION Authority has announced plans for a major track repair program with the goal of eliminating all speed restrictions on its transit lines by the end of 2024, a program that will require incremental, multi-day shut-downs of the Red, Orange, Green, and Blue lines over a 14-month period. That effort, however, will only scratch the surface of a whopping $24.5 billion in state-of-good-repair needs faced by the transit agency, according to a Nov. 16 needs assessment. That figure had ballooned from $10 billion when the previous such assessment was done just four years earlier in 2019 — in part, the MBTA says, because underinvestment in the system means assets are aging faster than they are being replaced. The trackwork program work will include rail and tie replacement, reballasting,…

This is a picture worth a thousand words. For decades, artists and photographers awed us with images of mighty locomotives scorching the high iron with hundreds of passengers or thousands of tons of freight in tow. The sun shines brightly as the wind blows the hair of the fearless engineer, perched on the armrest. The friendly conductor waves from the caboose. Those moments exist, but to pretend that every day on the railroad is a scene right out of a travel brochure is a stretch. My photographic images have been used to lure travelers aboard passenger trains for a glimpse of a world that can’t be seen from a plane. I’ve also captured freight trains moving America’s industrial output. Another subject of my Nikon, however, has been the exhausted faces…

There aren’t any 1,000-mile U.S. passenger trains operating today that also were around for Trains issue No. 1 in 1940, but one comes close: Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited. Split at Albany-Rensselaer, N.Y., after an overnight run from Chicago, its New York section travels 960 miles and its Boston section 1,018 miles. Beyond that 1,000-mile trip, there are many reasons to delve into this survivor, which exemplifies how passenger service has morphed through stages of feast and famine, both before and after Amtrak resurrected it in 1975 following a 19-year hiatus. HALCYON DAYS Among all the passenger trains to operate between New York and Chicago, the Lake Shore Limited is in no way qualified to lead the list. The No. 1 spot may be subject to endless debate, but the top…

“The tide is another kind of eloquence. It’s the moon’s voice on earth, spoken in perfect synchrony. What the moon does, the tide does.”—Jonathan White Nature’s allure Five companies. Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing, and Weyerhaeuser, plus the Great Northern Railway. Microsoft transformed how we work, Amazon how we shop. Starbucks introduced us to the habit-forming concept of wasting time with expensive cups of coffee. Boeing jets revolutionized how the world travels long distances, and as for Weyerhaeuser … well, now we’re getting to the olden days on Puget Sound. Picture a great wilderness. Cold, clear tidal waters. Oyster beds. Clams. Crabs. The world’s largest octopi. Thousands of ducks and seabirds. Whales and seals. Mountains thick with towering old-growth timber. Streams clogged with spawning salmon in numbers that beggar the imagination.…

THE NEW YORK CENTRAL S1 AND T3A electric locomotives, stranded in Beacon Island, N.Y., have been disassembled and trucked off the site. The Nov. 2 recovery operation culminated years of planning and site preparation enabling heavy-duty cranes and trucks to safely enter the site and move the locomotives. The pieces will be moved to the Danbury (Conn.) Railway Museum. The S1, built in 1904 by Alco-GE, is the first heavy mainline electric locomotive. Subsequent S-motors enabled NYC’s 600-volt D.C. electrification, including the 1913 opening of Grand Central Terminal. The T3a No. 278 is the only remaining T-motor. It too was developed by Alco-GE with a design to improve speed and tractive effort. It was in production from 1913 to 1926. Current preservation efforts began in the early 2000s when Paul Marsh,…

THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE seeks to sell the Flying Yankee, the 1935 articulated streamliner built by Budd Co. for the Boston & Maine Railroad. It is virtually identical to the CB&Q Pioneer Zephyr. In November 2023, the state issued a Request for Proposals for sale of the three-car train set, which has long resided at the Hobo Railroad in Lincoln, N.H., and been the subject of failed restoration attempts both private and state-funded. Proposals are for “the relocation and encouraged restoration” of the train set, and will be rated under a number of criteria addressing how preservation will be addressed. The buyer will sign “permanent restrictive covenants” regarding preservation and maintenance of the train when the sale closes. As described in the 2021 Classic Trains special issue, Burlington’s Zephyrs,…

DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU LIVE, getting to Alaska can take a while. In my case, it meant waking in time to catch a 4 a.m. airport shuttle from Milwaukee to Chicago, a 6-hour non-stop flight to Anchorage, and another hour in a regional jet to reach Fairbanks. It was a long day. I think that’s why, when I arrived in Alaska, I briefly wondered if American money was accepted. I was either jet-lagged or losing my marbles. Fairbanks is in the middle of Alaska. It is the state’s second-largest city, but that doesn’t make it especially big. About 33,000 people call it home. Tour participants were met at baggage claim by our two coordinators from Special Interest Tours. They planned everything and did a fantastic job of keeping the tour moving smoothly.…

AS THE RAILROAD INDUSTRY searches for ways to reduce and ultimately eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, Wabtec sees hydrogen as the locomotive fuel of the future, whether it’s burned in internal combustion engines or used to power fuel cells. “We’re not seeing this as a fringe thing. This is going to be the thing that replaces diesels,” says Philip Moslener, Wabtec’s corporate vice president for advanced technologies. Hydrogen produces no greenhouse gas emissions when burned as a fuel. “It is not economically viable today,” Moslener says, noting that hydrogen currently costs significantly more than diesel fuel. But hydrogen production is expected to rise, which should bring the cost down to rival diesel fuel as early as 2030. In the U.S., the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $7 billion in funding to develop six…

To mark the 1,000th issue of Trains Magazine, the following pages feature articles centered around the number 1,000. These include a profile of the most popular 1,000-horsepower diesel switch engines from Baldwin, Electro-Motive, and Alco; an insider’s account of Union Pacific’s staggering $2 billion single-contract order for 1,000 EMD SD70Ms; and a bridge in Germany that hosts more than 1,000 trains a day. And then there’s the story of this tree. As grading crews and track gangs built the first transcontinental railroad west from the starting point in Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Neb., they celebrated a milestone achievement of their own. Milepost 1,000 was reached in Weber Canyon between present-day Henefer and Morgan, Utah. Coincidently, a solitary pine tree marked the spot. A sign reading “1,000 Mile Tree” was hung from its…

IN THE MOTIVE POWER WORLD 1,000 can mean many things. For example, owning more than 1,000 of any particular locomotive model is quite noteworthy, and only a handful of railroads can boast such a claim. In terms of horsepower, 1,000 is not much these days. The horsepower race is over, with modern road units settling in the low- to mid-4,000-hp range. For lesser duties, locomotives producing 1,000 horsepower are harder to find today, with yard and local assignments largely performed by motive power in the 1,500-2,500-hp range. Even these units have been bumped on some Class I railroads by former four-axle road locomotives rated in the 3,000- to 4,000-hp range. During the steam-to-diesel transition from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, 600- to 1,000-hp switch engines seemed to be…

IN ADDITION TO the Chicago-New York and Chicago-Boston sleeping cars carried today, the early-1950s eastbound Lake Shore Limited dropped one at Buffalo and picked up one there from a Detroit train that it hauled only to Utica, N.Y. A venerable “10-and-6” (10-roomette, six-double-bedroom) sleeper out of St. Louis came off the Knickerbocker at Albany for the Lake Shore’s Boston section. The westbound machinations in 1954 were even wilder. In addition to a dining car, six-double-bedroom lounge, 14-section sleeper, and two 10-and-6 overnighters going to Chicago, there were: • A Boston-Chicago “10-and-6” off of the New England Wolverine at Albany; • A Boston-Cleveland cut-off “10-and-6;” • A New York-Toledo “10-and-6;” • A 17-roomette car coupled on at Buffalo from Toronto and dropped at Cleveland; • A “10-and-6” from Charlottesville, Va., via Chesapeake and…

The Eads Bridge, a double-deck road and rail bridge across the Mississippi River at St. Louis, celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2024. It is the oldest bridge in daily use on the river, but the structure has been amazing and improbable from its origins. A riverman, James Eads, proposed it in 1867 with all its major design concepts. He had never designed or built a bridge, yet this one, his first offering, would break world records for the length of its spans and the depth of its stone foundations. To place those two piers on bedrock beneath the flowing Mississippi and its sandy riverbed, Eads became the North American pioneer in using pneumatic caissons. He was so influential that Washington Roebling went to St. Louis to learn all he could…

CSX TRANSPORTATION CEO JOE HINRICHS will chair the B&O Railroad Museum’s $30 million capital campaign in preparation for the 200th anniversary of American railroading in 2027, the museum has announced. CSX previously launched the campaign by donating $5 million toward building of the CSX Bicentennial Garden, an amphitheater and multi-use public space for community events [see “CSX makes $5 million gift …,” Trains.com, June 8, 2023]. “CSX is the proud successor to America’s first commercial railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio,” Hinrichs said in a press release. “As proud as we are of our heritage, we are equally excited about the future, both the future of our modern transportation company and the future of the dynamic and visionary B&O Railroad Museum. Which is why I am honored to chair the B&O Museum’s…

The CALIFORNIA STATE RAILROAD MUSEUM has launched an effort to restore Santa Fe steam locomotive No. 1010, a 2-6-2 built by Baldwin in 1901 and donated by Santa Fe in 1984, for use on the museum’s Sacramento Southern excursion railroad. No. 1010 is notable for its role in the “DEATH VALLEY SCOTTY” EXCURSION, in which prospector and performer Walter E. Scott contracted with the Santa Fe in 1905 to break the speed record for a cross-country train trip. No. 1010 was one of the 19 locomotives used in the 44-hour, 54-minute trip from Los Angeles to Chicago — which broke the old record by about 8 hours. The locomotive powered the three-car train between Needles, Calif., and Seligman, Ariz. One of three remaining GMC PDA4101 COACH BUSES from the UNION PACIFIC…

J.B. HUNT AND BNSF RAILWAY have set out to bake a bigger pie. In November they launched faster, more reliable premium domestic intermodal service they say will eventually convert millions of truckloads to rail. The Quantum service — which revives a name Santa Fe and J.B. Hunt used when they began their TOFC alliance in 1989 — shaves as much as a day from traditional schedules while offering truck-like 95% on-time performance. Flexible rates range between those of traditional intermodal and over-the-road service. Quantum takes aim at highly service-sensitive freight that’s never been on rails before. J.B. Hunt and BNSF have been working to improve their core intermodal service in order to regain market share lost to the highway over the past few years of service disruptions. “Quantum is over and…

AT AN OCT. 31 EVENT, Wabtec and launch customer Roy Hill unveiled the world’s first 100% battery-powered, heavy-haul locomotive for mainline service at Wabtec’s Erie, Pa., manufacturing facility. The FLXdrive locomotive contains 72 lithium-ion modular battery packs with a total of 36,288 cells, giving the locomotive an energy capacity of 7 megawatt-hours. This is about three times the power of the 2.4-megawatt-hour prototype that operated 13,000 miles on BNSF Railway in California with zero failures in 2021. “This FLXdrive locomotive represents a major step in the journey to a low-to-zero-emission future in the rail industry,” said Rafael Santana, president and CEO of Wabtec. “The FLXdrive is driven from within by our battery technology and the innovative spirit of our employees.” He added, “Roy Hill is an ideal customer to partner…

The ancient city of Cologne (Köln in German) sits alongside the River Rhine in northwestern Germany. The city, with some streets dating to Roman times (the Roman buildings are deep underneath the modern city), is today one of the major traffic nodes on the German, and European, rail network. Today, high speed trains can take you from Cologne to every corner of Germany, as well as neighboring countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria. Overnight trains connecting multiple countries call in Cologne, while regional trains run on multiple routes and urban commuter rail, or S-Bahn, trains run on several high-frequency lines with stops every mile or two. Almost all these trains serve the city’s main station, or Hauptbahnhof, and cross the Rhine on the bridge immediately east…

THE START OF THE 21ST CENTURY marked a shift in North American locomotive technology, as the Class I railroads increasingly acquired new units propelled by alternating current traction motors, especially for heavy-haul operations. Between 1993 and 2004, the last direct-current models to be sold in large quantities were the GE Dash 9 and the EMD SD70M. BNSF acquired the largest fleet of Dash 9s (1,697) in the 11 years of domestic production, 1993-2004. UP countered with the world’s largest order from a single contractor for new locomotives at that time: 1,000 SD70Ms. The order was ultimately expanded to a record-setting 1,427 units in only 5 years of production, 2000-2004. The SD70Ms were the right locomotive at the right time for a railroad recovering from the fog of two difficult mergers —…

Railroads are extraordinarily capital intensive, reinvesting more of their revenue than almost any other industry. Even though most railroad capital investments turn out well (otherwise, Wall Street wouldn’t hold railroads in such high esteem), there have been some real clunkers. These mistakes — difficult to hide in an outdoor sport like railroading, and done for the right reasons — turned out incredibly bad. We set out to identify the worst railroad investments, figuring out what went wrong and why. My perspective comes from a career at Norfolk Southern in planning and operations. I was aided by Pete Rickershauser, who rose from a Central Railroad of New Jersey trackman to BNSF’s vice president, network development; and Nick Fry, curator of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library and a longtime…

ONE THOUSAND ISSUES of Trains Magazine have put tens of thousands of railroad photographs in the public eye. The most memorable of these images do far more than portray a locomotive or a train in motion. They preserve a moment of railroading and capture the spirit of a place, a railroad, and time. Our perceptions of railroading are shaped by our experiences and by the shared words and images of others. Some of the most iconic images in the pages of Trains are those that stir a fascination for the journey. Railroads are about motion — not just the movement of trains between stations, but the movement of people and material across the landscape and across the decades. Long-time Editor David P. Morgan had a keen eye for effective photographs…

EXPERIENCE SOME OF THE WORLD’S BEST rail travel destinations with the editors of Trains Magazine this year. In partnership with Special Interest Tours, Trains offers the following tours for 2024 of the railroads in Alaska, Switzerland, and the East Coast of the U.S. WILD MOUNTAIN RAILS The first tour kicks off in June with Editor Carl Swanson leading a nine-day, all-inclusive tour of the top scenic railroads and museums of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Rail excursions include a shop tour and private charter on the East Broad Top, a private steam charter on the Everett Railroad, a ride on the Cass Scenic Railroad to Bald Knob and Durbin & Greenbrier, plus rides on the Tygart Flyer and Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. ALASKA BY RAIL In September, Trains Associate Editor…