Prototype News

The American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association has launched a video, An Introduction to Employment in the Railroad Industry, described as a“workforce development tool.”

Created in collaboration with ASLRRA’s Human Resources (HR) Committee and other industry stakeholders, the video features testimony from several short line railroad employees “who share what they enjoy about their jobs, describe the many opportunities for lateral and vertical career moves and discuss the ways short lines support military veterans.” ASLRRA President Chuck Baker also appears in the video, “offering his thoughts on the short line industry and what makes it such a good fit for many different people.”

“ASLRRA members are encouraged to use the video in their own recruitment efforts, to help raise awareness of the short line industry and the opportunities it offers,” the association noted. “The video is the latest step in an effort to promote benefits and employment opportunities at short line railroads. ASLRRA’s HR Committee has led the charge to create an industry employment webpage that also includes links to career opportunities and a listing of railroad education providers. As with the employment video, members are invited to incorporate these resources into their recruitment efforts and share them with interested parties. Members interested in being listed on the career opportunities page can send their company name, career page link and ASLRRA region, if known, to Mariel Takamura, along with any other questions about this initiative.”

The post Watch: ASLRRA Recruitment Video appeared first on Railway Age.

Usually when passenger service on a rail line is discontinued, it never comes back, but there have been some exceptions. One is the MBTA’s South Coast Rail “line,” in the shape of the letter “Y,” going from Boston to the two outer destinations of New Bedford and Fall River, Massachusetts. The route was historically part of the Old Colony Railroad, and later the New Haven, branching westward from the main (now Amtrak’s NEC) at Canton Junction. The old New Haven served New Bedford and Fall River until 1958, and passenger trains on the rest of the Old Colony lines bit the dust shortly after.

On March 24 of this year, service from Boston’s South Station returned under the auspices of the “T” for the first time in 66 years, with 36 miles of track rebuilt. As part of my effort to catch up on all the “new starts” in the United States and Canada, including lines that have returned to service, I rode from Boston to New Bedford on Tuesday, October 7 and back from Fall River the next day.

Service returned under the MBTA (the “T”) as part of Boston’s regional rail system, operated by Keolis. The operation is unusual, because of the shape of the line. The operation is not like the Northside line on Boston’s North Shore, where alternating trains go either to Rockport or Newburyport, with essentially “double service” to inner suburbs like Salem and Beverly. Instead every train runs between South Station and either New Bedford or Fall River. Shuttle trains serve the other destination from a transfer station in East Taunton, about a 75 or 80-minute ride from Boston. There are slightly more trains that serve New Bedford than Fall River 15 or 14 on weekdays and seven or six on weekends. Saturday and Sunday schedules are the same.

While the operation is interesting, the line is not scenic, and the stations are not placed conveniently for visiting the towns, which are interesting and normally have plenty of things to see and do.

The current line is not the original route to New Bedford and Fall River. Rather it is a longer line where service is operating for several years on a temporary basis. There are presently unfunded plans to restore service in the future through Easton and Taunton on the former line that was abandoned south of Stoughton, which is two stops south of Canton Junction. In the meantime, the trains now run on the former Middleborough-Lakeville Line, on newly upgraded track the rest of the way to the transfer point and the destination cities on the New Bedford Main or Fall River Branch from Myrics Junction. The route to Fall River essentially follows the original 1846 route of the Old Colony & Fall River RR.

Passenger trains were absent from the entire Old Colony system (except between Providence and Boston, which is now part of the NEC) from 1959 until the present Kingston (and also a short branch to a Plymouth station that was not close to the center of town) and Middleborough-Lakeville Lines opened for restored service in 1997. Because of local opposition and other issues, the Greenbush Line did not get new passenger service for another ten years. The South Coast routes extend the former Middleborough-Lakeville Line and run on it as far as Middleborough. Today the Lakeville station is used only for the seasonal Cape Flyer train to Hyannis on summer weekends, although there has been talk of running peak-commuting trains as far as Buzzards Bay, just short of the Cape Cod Canal and the famous lift bridge that carries the Cape Flyer and local freight trains over the canal.

From South Station, the trains run along the right-of-way of the Red Line subway on a surface-running segment through Quincy to Braintree. They do not serve Back Bay Station. The only current station located in a downtown area is Brockton, although the Bridgewater station is within walking distance of downtown and Bridgewater State, the local college. The next stop after Middleborough is East Taunton, where cross-platform transfers are available. I rode the 6:45 AM departure, the first train of the morning. It was bound for Fall River, so it was necessary to change trains for New Bedford.

The ride between Boston and the outer ends is scheduled to take roughly 1¾ hours, although my train was not due into New Bedford until 8:47. The trainset that was supposed to leave Boston consisted of both single-level cars (two types) and bilevel cars, a mix found only on the T. Due to mechanical issues, all riders were sent to an all-bilevel consist on a dfferent track, which delayed our departure by 15 minutes. Still, there was enough slack in the schedule that we arrived at New Bedford at 8:43. On the way there, there is a station at Church Street, in the northern part of town.

New Bedford and Fall River have much in common, and a single day was only enough time to get the flavor of each of them. Both towns are historic, and both pride themselves on their maritime history. New Bedford has two maritime museums: the New Bedford Whaling Museum (which requires all day to see in detail) and another operated by the National Park Service, which was closed due to the federal government shutdown when I was there. The town also has an active waterfront, with ferries, fishing boats, and some freight-carrying boats. Fall River also has a maritime museum and a waterfront but, instead of major commercial activity, there is Battleship Cove, which is now home to the battleship USS Massachusetts and other vintage Navy ships that are now tourist attractions.

The cities are similar in population: New Bedford has slightly more than 100,000 residents, which Fall River has slightly less than that number. Both cities have highly diversified populations, due in large part to their industrial and seafaring histories. Mills are still standing in both places, and some have been repurposed for commercial or residential use. In addition to immigrants who came to this country to work in the mills, many islanders from the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and Madeira formed the large Portuguese communities in both towns. There are also Italian, various Hispanic, other European, and Asian communities. New Bedford was founded by Quakers, and the Black community there has historic roots. Frederick Douglass lived there for a few years around 1840. The diversity in both cities also gave rise to a varied food scene, consisting mostly of locally owned, independent restaurants.

Another feature that the destinations have in common is that the train stations are not located in convenient places. The New Bedford station is about a half-hour walk north of the city center. The mapping software on my tablet directed me to walk along Acushnet Avenue, a grimy industrial street named after the river that flows through the town. It might have been a better idea to walk across a new bridge from the station and over a wide highway to Purchase Street, and take a bus the rest of the way. The Fall River station is also located some distance north of downtown. There is a boardwalk and bike-and-walking trail along the waterfront that goes to the station, but there are presently no wayfinding signs, so access is tricky. There is a proposal to extend the line to Battleship Cove in the future.

Both towns are historic, but their histories are somewhat different.

New Bedford is a beautiful, historic city. Its primary industry in the middle of the 19th century was whaling, although other maritime trades were practiced there, and industry later supplanted maritime trade. Herman Melville spent time in town and used it as the setting for Moby Dick, his classic novel about whaling, which was published in 1851. Many of the old buildings along the waterfront have been preserved, and they are now filled with shops and eateries that cater to tourists as well as locals.

Downtown New Bedford appears to have changed little in the past 100 years, and many century-old (or older) commercial and government buildings are well-kept and still serve their original purposes. The interior at City Hall (originally the library) dates from the early 1900s and features a semicircular elevator surrounded by an old-fashioned cage, run by an operator, and furnished with a bench for the comfort of the passengers making the 20-foot journey between the first and third floors. The residential parts of County Street and other nearby neighborhoods feature an eclectic mix of houses of different Victorian styles, as well as those from a century ago. While the town has its rough spots, there appears to be enough to see and do for an inquisitive tourist to keep busy for three or four days of sightseeing. So, there is still plenty to see and do in New Bedford, especially if the local history museum reopens (which could happen before the end of this year). One of the activities is finding the train station.

Fall River is as historic as New Bedford, but not as upscale. There are historic buildings downtown, and the classic library, whose slogan: “The People’s University” is carved into its facade, is one of the most beautiful. More buildings in Fall River have been unsympathetically altered, while more in New Bedford retain their historic accuracy. Still, Fall River has some neighborhoods with historic houses, like New Bedford’s, too. Fall River does not have as large a historically upscale component as New Bedford. Traditional New England “triple-decker” houses, with a different family living on each floor, are common throughout Massachusetts, and they abound in Fall River.

As in New Bedford, there are several Portuguese restaurants, and the food in the Portuguese communities in Massachusetts is different than that found in the other major Portuguese community in the Northeast: The Ironbound in Newark, N.J.. The other local food specialty is the “Fall River Chow Mein Sandwich,” an example of an unfriendly meeting of East and West found in local Chinese restaurants. If you are used to authentic chow mein from a big-city Chinatown (with pan-fried noodles to give them a chewier texture than lo main noodles have) you won’t find it in Fall River. What you will find is the bottom of a slider-sized hamburger bun with a handful of crisp noodles taken from a bag and placed on top. The noodles are then topped with a brown gravy whose color and saltiness come from a generous amount of soy sauce. The top have of the bun is placed alongside, and the concoction is eaten with a fork, not chopsticks. If you are not from Fall River, you might consider it a genuine culinary atrocity. I did, but I spent $5.00 to try it so you don’t have to.

Fall River also has a local obsession: Lizzie Borden and the 1892 murders of her father and stepmother. The house where the murders took place is still standing, and today it operates as a combination inn and tourist attraction. For $30.00 you can take a tour of the house, which will include the basement, where the murder weapon (an axe) was found, for an additional $7.00. For a few hundred, you can stay there, if you have always wanted to spend the night in the place where two of the most infamous murders in American history took place. Lizzie was acquitted (some local buffs believe that her privileged background helped produce that result), and she managed to stay in the area and keep her lifestyle going until she died in 1927. The building next door to the infamous house on Third Street is now home to Lizzie’s, a combination art gallery and coffee shop, where the coffee is good and Lizzie is still the main topic of conversation.

Because I was booked to go home on Amtrak train 179 (7:47 PM form South Station), I had to catch the 4:41 train from Fall River. It ran through to Boston and connected with a shuttle from New Bedford. Part of the line through Fall River is elevated, so it’s possible to get a last look at the town on the way to Boston, including a brief glimpse of the ships in Battleship Cove on the waterfront. There is one station between Fall River and the East Taunton transfer station: Freetown, about a ten-minute ride inbound. Freetown is the home of a large nature park, but it is not visible from the train.

For this writer, the ride back was a good way to learn more about the railroad form Assistant Conductor Aden Walker, a second-generation railroader whose father is an engineer on the system. He pointed out the interlockings, stretches of single track, and other features of the route as we rode. There are four callouts needed to dispatchers on different parts of the route, ending with Terminal Dorchester, which covers all Amtrak and local trains that serve South Station, as well as other services. Our train was running against the heart of the commuter peak, and we had six meets along the way. Most of the route is rated for 79 mph, but with a 30-mph restriction at Bridgewater. We arrived at South Station at 6:23. Part of the fun during the ride was learning about the route from a young railroader who was following a family tradition and looking forward to a long career on the rails.

The fare between Boston and either New Bedford or Fall River is $12.25 each way, $6.00 for seniors and people with disabilities. There is a lot to see in both cities, and it’s not necessary to take the train to East Taunton and transfer to a train going to the other destination. The Southeastern Regional Transit Authority (SRTA) runs local buses in both cities, with a route between them that runs local service and express buses that run on the highway and take 25 minutes between the two downtown terminals. Buses run until about 9:00 on weekdays, but only from mid-morning until late afternoon on weekends.

There is a lot to see in both towns, especially when the museums are open. It was more pleasant than taking a bus would have been, and riding on a route that has been restored after a decades-long absence is something to celebrate. The towns are closer to Providence than Boston, but trains from Providence don’t go to New Bedford or Fall River, only to Boston and the suburbs on the way there.

The post A Ride on MBTA’s South Coast Rail appeared first on Railway Age.

Craig Richardson, who retired in March 2025 as Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Union Pacific, has rejoined global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP in its Denver office as an Of Counsel attorney. The return marks his third stint with the firm; he is assigned to Greenberg Traurig’s Energy & Natural Resources and Rail & Transit practices.

A retired Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves, Richardson oversaw all aspects of UP’s legal affairs, including federal and multi-state litigation; economic, environmental and safety regulation at all levels of government; labor relations; international trade; and passenger rail. In his capacity as Corporate Secretary, Richardson provided support for the Board of Directors. Prior to UP, Richardson spent nearly a decade as the general counsel of El Paso Corporation’s Pipeline Group, the largest network of interstate natural gas pipelines in North America at the time.

Before joining the military, Richardson pursued a career in national security after obtaining his graduate degree from Princeton University. He began government service as a Presidential Management Fellow, serving at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. In more than 20 years as a Navy intelligence officer, he provided intelligence analysis and support in operations throughout the globe. On six occasions, he received active-duty orders to the White House National Security Council in connection with presidential initiatives related to Haiti, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Richardson was recalled to active duty in Operations Enduring Freedom and Noble Eagle, where he provided space-based intelligence analysis in direct support of combat operations in Southwest Asia. Along the way, he received his J.D. at Stanford Law School. 

The post UP’s Richardson Rejoins Greenberg Traurig appeared first on Railway Age.

New Jersey Transit has launched two new programs, one designed to improve accessibility for customers with disabilities, the other to supplement revenue through real estate development.

NJT is piloting two new apps that it says “will help empower customers with disabilities.” Through a collaboration with the Transit Tech Lab, customers now have access to GoodMaps, which “provides innovative indoor navigation assistance” at Hoboken Terminal; and Convo, which provides on-demand American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting at Newark Penn Station Customer Service and Ticket Offices. A QR scan connects customers to a live ASL interpreter “for seamless communication.”

“GoodMaps is a cutting-edge station navigation platform now available at Hoboken Terminal,” NJT explained. “GoodMaps empowers all visitors—including the visually impaired or individuals with disabilities—with precise, real-time navigation throughout the terminal, making travel easier and more accessible. The Goodmaps app operates similarly to outdoor GPS systems like Google Maps. However, it specializes in indoor navigation, providing turn-by-turn directions via audio or on-screen text. With the GoodMaps app, customers can access real-time directions for trains and buses right from their mobile device. They can also benefit from features designed for users with low vision and mobility challenges, enhancing independence and comfort.

Convo “offers technology for those who use ASL to communicate,” NJT said. “Customers can scan a QR code and connect with a live interpreter who can convey the message between the customer and an NJT employee. This allows a full experience to all NJ customers and opens the door to building better relationships by making communication more seamless.”

“GoodMaps and Convo are innovative applications that deliver practical solutions tp help make our busiest facilities more accessible to all customers,” said NJT President and CEO Kris Kolluri,” who will speak about “Modernizing Public Transport” at Railway Age’s Next-Gen Rail Systems conference in Jersey City, N.J. Oct. 29-31. “Whether it’s navigating a terminal or communicating with staff, these technologies give people more control over their journey and reflect our ongoing commitment to creating a more welcoming transit system.”

“Our collaboration with the Transit Tech Lab shows how innovation and partnership can advance accessibility in public transit” said NJT Head of IT Innovation Luna Katbah. “By combining technology and inclusive design, this pilot empowers visually impaired and hard of hearing customers to travel with greater confidence and independence.”

The Transit Tech Lab is a program established by agencies in the New York City region “to bring private sector innovation to public transit by connecting tech companies with transit agencies to pilot new technologies and solve critical transit challenges. The Transit Tech Lab provides an accelerated pathway for early to growth-stage companies to solve public transportation challenges for the largest transit agencies in North America.”

NJT says the agency “could realize as much as $1.9 billion in non-farebox revenue over the next 30 years through a combination of opportunities designed to unlock value from its 8,000-acre real estate portfolio,” according to “The LAND Plan: Leveraging Assets for Non-farebox Dollars” study (download below). Additionally, the plan “could add up to $14 billion in economic impact to New Jersey, up to an additional $1.6 billion in municipal revenues, and create up to 50,000 jobs and up to 20,000 new housing units. From Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) to retail concessions to industrial hubs and advertising, the plan offers a unique opportunity to generate essential funding by leveraging its underutilized assets for development, as well as enhancing its customer experience with retail offerings and advertising. The plan presents a series of potential opportunities and suggested actions for consideration to maximize the associated potential revenue.”

Among the study’s key findings for potential non-farebox revenue over the next 30 years are estimates derived from internal NJT analysis.:

• Transit-Oriented Development—Walkable, mixed-use communities centered around transit hubs boost ridership and generate revenue through land leases or sales. Additional revenue potential: $780 million-$1.1 billion.
• Industrial Hubs—Certain properties are ideal for warehousing and industrial uses, requiring large, flat parcels with good road access and utilities. Additional revenue potential: $150 million-$300 million
• Temporary Uses—Short-term activities such as events, filming and pop-ups use land, structures and vehicles. Additional revenue potential: $15 million-$30 million
• Retail Concessions—Rental income is generated from retail tenants occupying concession spaces in NJ TRANSIT facilities, providing desirable customer amenities. Additional revenue potential: $80 million-$100 million.
• Advertising—Revenue streams include advertising on digital displays, within station facilities, on vehicles and through naming rights arrangements. Additional revenue potential: $40 million-$130 million
• Parking Optimization—Parking fees collected at station lots, sometimes shared with municipalities or private operators, provide additional revenue. Additional revenue potential: $170 million-$230 million.
• Wetland Banking—Restoring or preserving wetlands on suitable vacant land earns ecological credits, with the highest value in contiguous conservation areas and watershed management areas otherwise impacted by service development. Restored/Preserved land: 150-170 acres
• Solar Power—NJT can provide opportunities for development of solar power generation projects across multiple redevelopment sites, including surface parking canopies and rooftop installations. Power generation potential: 5 megawatts.

“The revenue generated from these developments—whether residential, commercial, or industrial—will empower NJT to continue delivering lasting, reliable, and high-quality service, and further enrich the communities it serves across New Jersey,” the agency noted.

“This first-of-its-kind plan delivers a roadmap for the next Administration that maximizes non-farebox revenue opportunities for NJT, the State of New Jersey and the municipalities we serve,” said Kolluri, cautioning that the proposed actions “are presented merely as options for consideration—not mandates—to support the plan’s full revenue potential. I have a deep respect for home rule in New Jersey and the legislative process, and look forward to working collaboratively with the legislature, municipalities, and elected officials across the state.”

The post NJT Launches Accessibility, Real Estate Initiatives appeared first on Railway Age.

Transit industry veteran Ronald Swerdon has returned to Urban Engineers, Inc. as a senior project manager for transit. He will lead major infrastructure initiatives across the firm’s public transit portfolio, overseeing quality and cost management programs and supporting strategic growth initiatives.

“Ron’s work will build on Urban’s longstanding success in providing Program Management Oversight services for the Federal Transit Administration, reinforcing the firm’s reputation as a trusted partner in delivering federally funded, complex transit programs nationwide,” said President and CEO Jim Biella, P.E. “Ron brings unquestioned expertise in transit project management and quality assurance, with a track record of delivering projects across North America. His leadership in cost management, quality programs and program delivery strengthens our firm’s ability to provide safe, reliable and efficient transportation solutions to our clients.”

Swerdon has more than 20 years of experience in the transportation industry, including serving as project manager for the Maryland Transit Administration’s Light Rail Vehicle Overhaul Project, and as Project Management Consultant deputy program manager for the Baltimore Red Line transit megaproject. He previously led Gannett Fleming’s International Transit Quality Group, managing a team of 10 responsible for quality and project management support on numerous projects throughout the U.S. and Canada. His background also includes serving as a Project Management Oversight Contractor for the FTA, where he authored revisions to the FTA’s Quality Management System Guidelines.

Swerdon spent nearly 12 years at Urban from 2005 to 2017, serving in various roles, including quality control specialist and quality manager. During that time, “he was recognized for his expertise and insight into critical aspects of transportation project delivery,” the company said. .

“I’m excited to return to Urban and help advance meaningful transportation initiatives that directly benefit communities,” Swerdon said. “I look forward to working with Urban’s talented teams to deliver projects that improve mobility, enhance safety, and elevate quality of life across the regions we serve.”

Swerdon holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University and maintains professional certifications as a Project Management Professional (PMP) and an ASQ Certified Quality Process Analyst (CQPA). He is an active member of the Project Management Institute and previously served as treasurer of ASQ’s Design and Construction Division.

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President Donald Trump said on October 15 that federal funds for one of the most critical passenger rail projects in the country had been “terminated.” 

The Gateway Project has been called “the most urgent infrastructure project in America,” building new tunnels beneath the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, and rebuilding a 115-year-old one that was damaged in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy. The Northeast Corridor in this area features trains from both Amtrak and NJ Transit, and when completed in 2035, will carry 200,000 passengers per day.
Trump has had it out for the Gateway Project since his first term, when he tried to strip funding from the project, despite bipartisan support and even his own transportation secretary calling it “an absolute priority.” This time around, Trump is using the weeks-old government shutdown as a chance to rip away the $16 billion funding for the project. However, it’s unclear what authority Trump has to take the money back. The day after he announced that the funding was “terminated,” work was still taking place on the tunnels, and officials said they could keep going for the time being with state funds. Officials in New York and New Jersey were quick to criticize the decision. 

“It’s petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands of New York and New Jersey commuters, choke off our economy and kill good-paying jobs,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York). “It’s vindictive, reckless and foolish.” 

—Justin Franz 

The post Trump Tries to ‘Terminate’ Hudson River Tunnel Funding appeared first on Railfan & Railroad Magazine.

STV, Inc. is providing engineering and procurement support for 13 BE (battery-electric) dual-power locomotives MTA Metro-North Railroad is acquiring from Siemens Mobility. STV is performing design reviews, test coverage and vehicle inspection services for this program. 

The 13 BE locomotives are an add-on to Metro-North’s existing contract with STV to procure 33 dual-mode (third-rail/diesel-electric) SC42-DM locomotives from Siemens and are modeled after those units. The dual-power BE version will be able to draw traction power from overhead catenary and batteries. They will be employed in a planned new service in which some Metro-North New Haven Line trains on the Northeast Corridor will operate directly to Penn Station New York, as Amtrak trains now do, instead of into Grand Central Terminal.

Metro-North said these locomotives “will be among the first battery-electric passenger rail vehicles in the U.S. The initiative is part of a larger push in the transportation industry to provide more economical and environmentally friendly options to commuters, while advancing long-term operational goals.”

“Our intimate experience with MTA and Metro-North’s vehicle fleet, specifically the SC42-DM locomotives, has helped deliver this cutting-edge innovative solution for the agency,” said STV Vice President of Vehicle Engineering John Batey, P.E.  “In addition to providing more convenient access to New York City from Connecticut and Westchester County, these new locomotives will provide riders with a cleaner, greener option.”  

In other STV news, the company acquired Cypress Construction Management, LLC, a program, project and construction management firm headquartered in the Sacramento region. Cypress will now be known as Cypress Construction Management, an STV Company. “Cypress offers comprehensive program and construction management services to public clients throughout California,” STV said. “The firm is recognized for its expertise in design-build delivery and for leading transformative projects in education, healthcare, justice and public facilities.

“Acquisition of Cypress Construction Management not only expands our capabilities in Northern California, it also advances the goals set in our Strategic Plan,” said STV CEO Greg Kelly. “We’re excited to welcome Cypress to STV during this time of tremendous growth and momentum.”

The post STV Managing Metro-North BE Locomotive Procurement appeared first on Railway Age.

POTUS 47 on Oct. 15 said that $16 billion in federal funding for the project to build the New York/New Jersey Hudson Tunnel under the Hudson River, a key component of the Gateway Program, has been “terminated.” His pronouncement, reported by The New York Times, came two weeks after its federal funding was suspended at the start of the government shutdown. Washington, D.C.-based Politico has debunked that pronouncement.

The Times reported that POTUS 47 “abruptly” announced this during a White House press conference that addressed a variety of issues. The Times went on to report that POTUS 47 took aim at Sen. Chuck Shumer (D-N.Y.) with the statement, “It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. Tell him it’s terminated.”

The Times also reported Schumer’s response to the news from POTUS 47. “Gateway is the most important infrastructure project in America—period. [POTUS 47] trying to kill it again is pure spite and stupidity. It’s petty revenge politics that would screw hundreds of thousands New York and New Jersey commuters, choke off our economy and kill good-paying jobs … [It’s] vindictive, reckless and foolish.”

“It was not immediately clear what [POTUS 47] meant and whether Gateway—as well as another major infrastructure project, [Phase 2] of the Second Avenue Subway—had been stripped of federal funding,” The Times noted. “Both projects depend heavily on federal grants and were both explicitly mentioned in the announcement of the funding pause two weeks ago … Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said the Administration’s decision hurts roughly 15,000 construction jobs supported by both projects and threatens the broader region and beyond. ‘If this system of transportation collapses, the Northeastern economy and the economy of the country collapses, so why be so shortsighted?’ Governor Hochul said in an interview on MSNBC … The White House referred questions to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”

“Massive NY tunnel and subway projects still alive, despite [POTUS 47] claims,” Politico reported Oct. 16. “USDOT has no plans to end the multibillion-dollar Gateway tunnel and Second Avenue Subway projects, an Administration official told Politico a day after the President said they had been ‘terminated.’ [POTUS 47’s] remarks also appeared to contradict Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s comments last week that the projects are ‘important’ and should ‘move forward fast.’ The White House and DOT did not respond to a request for comment. Stephen Sigmund, a spokesperson for the Gateway Development Commission, and Lucas Bejarano, an MTA spokesperson, declined to comment. As of Thursday (Oct. 16) morning, the Gateway project team has not gotten new communication from the Administration, and construction work on the tunnel continues.”

POTUS 47 has also targeted Chicago’s mass transit systems, CTA and Metra, for funding termination.

Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono contributed to this story.

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National Mediation Board member Deirdre E. Hamilton, a Democrat, was fired Oct. 14 by POTUS 47, making her one of many legally questionable independent regulatory agency terminations by the POTUS. Hamilton’s departure leaves the three-member NMB with one Republican (Chairperson Loren E. Sweatt) and one Democrat (Linda Puchala).

Hamilton told Railway Age by phone Oct. 16 that she is exploring her legal options, as the firing—much as with that of Surface Transportation Board (STB) member and Democrat Robert E. Primus and Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—are contrary to statute.

Although Hamilton’s term expired in June, the NMB’s statute provides that members may continue to serve beyond term expiration until a successor is Senate-confirmed. (Note that the STB statute provides STB members may serve a maximum of 12 months following term expiration. Primus was in the midst of second term.)

Primus, as well as the FTC and NLRB Democrats terminated by POTUS 47, have filed separate lawsuits challenging their terminations. The FTC and NLRB Democrats were granted injunctive relief by a federal district court, nullifying their terminations, but the Supreme Court delayed the effectiveness of the lower court ruling pending further litigation—the law not settled as to court authority to order reinstatement.

The NMB is an independent (from Executive Branch) federal regulatory agency that administers the 1926 Railway Labor Act (RLA), which governs labor relations in the airline and railroad industries. It was created in 1934 by amendment to the RLA and its members are nominated by the POTUS and confirmed by the Senate for three-year terms, with no limitation on the number that may be served. (STB, by contrast, limits members to two five-year terms.)

The NMB’s primary function is to minimize work stoppages through dispute resolution procedures such as mediation and arbitration. It also resolves union-representation disputes and maintains a list of qualified arbitrators from which a POTUS chooses for appointment to Presidential Emergency Boards that investigate and make non-binding recommendations for dispute resolution following a collective bargaining impasse.

Unlike the STB, where the POTUS designates the chairperson, the NMB chairperson rotates annually. When reached by phone Oct. 16, NMB Chairperson Loren Sweatt told Railway Age, “I have no comment [on Hamilton]. Have a good day.”

Hamilton was nominated by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in December 2021. She previously was a staff attorney with the Teamsters Union, working exclusively in its Airline Division, and earlier was a staff attorney with the Association of Flight Attendants. Hamilton earned an undergraduate degree from Oberlin College and a law degree from the University of Michigan.

Sweatt, with a long congressional staff career including at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was Senate-confirmed in 2024 following nomination by Biden.

Puchalla, previously an NMB mediator and president of the Association of Flight Attendants, was first nominated by President Barack Obama and Senate-confirmed in 2009. She is among the longest serving of NMB members. The longest serving was Republican Francis A. O’Neill Jr.—1947-1971—who was nominated by President Harry S. Truman and renominated by Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The post Another POTUS 47 Firing—NMB This Time appeared first on Railway Age.

Delaware’s Wilmington & Western Railroad was gearing up to reopen in late October after spending much of the year doing locomotive and track maintenance. 

On February 27, the railroad announced it was taking a “proactive step” by shutting down operations to focus on equipment repairs. Sources close to the railroad told Railfan & Railroad at the time that a major concern was the reliability of its locomotives. Last year, some holiday excursions had to be canceled due to a shortage of available motive power. Both of the railroad’s steam locomotives, 0-6-0 58 and 4-4-0 98, are currently out of service. Uncertainty about the railroad’s future increased further in April when three employees were laid off. Railroad volunteers have alleged that the railroad is being poorly managed by the current board of directors, and they have been voicing those concerns on a Facebook page called “Concerned Volunteers of the WWRR.” 

In an interview with local media, board member and volunteer Mark North said that one locomotive needed wheel work and the rail line needed about 2,500 new ties. Now that that work is complete, the railroad can reopen for the fall and winter seasons. Tickets are now on sale at wwrr.com. 

The W&W was established in 1966 to operate excursions on 10 miles of former Baltimore & Ohio trackage between Greenbank and Hockessin, Del. 

—Justin Franz 

The post Wilmington & Western to Resume Operations appeared first on Railfan & Railroad Magazine.

Given that the new North Star of growth I gave our rail industry is being used to justify an alteration to the course of its future, I must break my annual publication cadence to deal with this fork-in-the-road moment. Credit to Railway Age Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono for maintaining this publication’s place as the rail ideology octagon to have this necessary debate for the future of this industry among railroaders.

The stakes are higher now, and the pressure and failure consequences are real. So, it is time to change the status of rail egos, reputations, years of service, budgets, relationships and career legacies to interchanged-delivered. We must focus on fact, truth, honesty and intellectual depth: May the most meritorious rail track path win its future.

To deal properly with this situation and its complexity, we will use history, logic, reason, fact and real rail honesty. To start the growth our rail industry needs to prosper, we need to start a new fire in its firebox. As usual, please clean your intellectual rail palates before we proceed, ideally with a glass of water to bring with you, for this is a process, and the boiler will be very hot. When we turn on the steam to power the locomotive forward, we will have this new engine prepped for service with the answer to the question: how to get the American rail industry, and the North American rail system, to grow.

To begin, we must unfortunately deal with my least favorite rail acronym, “PSR,” for despite what I thought was my successful deletion of its use and ideas from our industry’s strategic lexicon, its spirit, like a ghost, continues to haunt and distort its future. We must correct its record for this industry to begin growing and dump the ash of this old fire into the ash pan to make space for the new tender and coal that will fuel our new fire.

How did PSR happen? Specifically, why is there a belief that it was a successful financial management strategy for Class I railroads to be admired? Even more specifically, what enabled railroads to generate and realize real higher cash flows and profits, and find themselves ranked as one of the most profitable U.S. industries in 2019? The rail industry’s future, spirit, structure, hiring decisions and reputation have all been altered by these financial results. Despite the sheer quantity of customer shutdowns, emergency situations, bad news stories and regulatory attention, it still did succeed in boosting rail profits to their highest levels in rail industry history at the time. How? And why?

The answer: The Common Carrier Obligation, and the liability protections its current definition provides railroads. Specifically, the vague word that currently helps define the standard for U.S. rail service quality: “reasonable.” The litigious nature of this U.S. rail policy issue is complex. But Canada has already dealt with this issue in the directionally correct way.

Canada’s Transportation Modernization Act of 2018 instructed its railroads to provide “the highest level of service” to fulfill their obligations, while taking into account railroad and shipper concerns.

Let’s focus on this idea of “highest level of service.” This is what railroads control. This is the realization and execution of our new North Star of growth: If railroads deliver the highest level of service they possibly can to their existing customers, those customers will entrust and pay railroads to move more of their freight. It is that simple of an idea, plan and strategy: maximize the happiness of our customers by earning their business with experiential satisfaction and merit. Time to load the tender for use in starting our new fire.

What is the current reputation of the rail industry as it exists in our society today? What did PSR truly do to this industry? What do non-railroaders, the general public, the venture community, the tech industry and even industry veterans themselves honestly think of our rail industry as it exists today? And most important, what does the youth of this industry think? The younger generation of railroaders are not counting down the days until retirement, but instead have been selected, groomed and positioned to be responsible for, execute and lead railroads into the next century. They are the railroaders whose responsibility it will be to execute the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger and actually do the work required to integrate two of the U.S.’s largest rail networks into one. The railroaders whose jobs it will be to help get that beast to function properly without an operational implosion. The railroaders whose professional futures, lives and families will be impacted because of this merger’s alteration of our rail industry forever, especially if it fails.

The youth of this industry does not care about professional legacies. We do not care about corporate-speak. We do not care about a short-term activist investor’s pressure campaign. And we do not care about this industry’s ways of old. Our concern is its future, not its past, specifically, its results, its growth, its well-being, its prosperity and its return to operational, economic and reputational dominance. Elite railroading is what we want. Prideful railroading. A restoration of respect and admiration for what we do daily for our industry, our nation, our economy and our society. On the tracks, in the office, on the road, in the hotels, in the locomotive cabs, in the mechanical shops, in the boardrooms and on the rails, every day, every night, every week and every year, in all weather conditions. We want a hot fire burning for the boiler, at the heart of this industry, within its locomotive, powering it forward, with fresh coal. With the ash of our old fire now dumped, and our tender loaded, it is time to ignite it.

The Canadians are directionally correct: Policy that eliminates bad service as being an operational option is needed. This industry’s worst temptations and behavior, exemplified by the Class I-caused chaos during the PSR era, are enabled when these huge, bureaucratic and rigid entities, like runaway trains, cannot stop themselves from smashing what the railroader I most respect in my generation calls “the railroad easy button”: relying on rules, regulations, market power, a lack of accountability and complacency to grow instead of doing the hard and necessary work of fixing the core problems to earn as much of their customers’ business as possible by providing them with the highest quality operational service experience.

To be clear, it is not easy to run these railroads. Railroading is not easy. These are fundamentally complex operations and organizations spanning large geographic territories, with large machinery, tens of thousands of employees, operating in all weather conditions, with lots impacting their operational execution they do not control. This is not easy. Especially when the still-massive majority of rail vehicles moving along the tracks today lack the real-time GPS monitoring required for railroads to operate at an elite level. Time for the new coal.

The claim of this merger is that by eliminating the apparently poor inter-carrier coordination challenge of executing a smooth and fast interchange at gateways that have historically struggled with congestion (despite  CREATE, the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency project under way to fix Chicago), this newly formed railroad will be able to provide a higher quality service product to a select customer base that allegedly needs that lane’s transit time reduced by one to two days i to justify allocating more of their existing freight, currently moving today by truck, onto this rail route. Doing this will apparently result in “$1.75 billion in revenue ‘synergies’ in year three primarily from the ‘watershed’ truck conversion, better service, more options for customers, and rail industry growth.” The belief in this plan is so deep that UP will spend $85 billion to bring it into reality. The confidence is also so high in this merger’s legality, regulatory approval and industry future track path merit that UP committed to a $2.5 billion dollar break-up fee if it fails. This merger also will apparently generate record-setting advisory deal fees for the banks that were retained to advise and assist in seeing this merger through. More coal.

In June 2025, RailPulse, a rail industry-owned tech startup of which Union Pacific is a part owner, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives T&I Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials stating that getting to full railcar fleet adoption required “additional investment” and therefore “urged Congress to provide financial incentives to help railcar owners equip railcars faster.” Put differently, RailPulse urged Congress to provide additional taxpayer dollars, via resources like CRISI grants, to help justify the cost of equipping all railcars on the rail network with GPS. Commercial-grade GPS devices can cost anywhere from $50 per sensor to a few hundred dollars. While not inherently wrong, this request seems contradictory and hypocritical, given the execution, justification claims, apparent urgency of and the price of this merger.

Why would we not finish equipping the railcar fleet with GPS to see if that helps fix interchange coordination (hint: it will) faster before spending $85 billion on a peer railroad? The only mode of commercial transportation that does not fully use, embrace or view real-time location information for all vehicles as an operating requirement, in 2025, is the rail industry. This is a fixed cost of doing business in our modern transportation economy now. It is not an “investment” decision.

This means that the Canadians again are correct, specifically Keith Creel. He, Joe Hinrichs and Katie Farmer are (and now unfortunately were given Joe’s disgraceful replacing) all right: There are other ways and options to improve interchange coordination and performance before needing to merge. While this merger may be an option, it is not the best, easiest, smartest or fastest immediate option available. More coal.

Why? Zoom out. Ignore the names, the people and the color schemes. Let’s look at the rail system in its entirety. Regardless of trackage rights, ownership and operating rules, there are bedrock facts that are true. First, the track network is one physically connected network. Second, like a stone thrown into a pond, there is a ripple effect on the global network when a disruption occurs anywhere on it. This concept is called schedule delay propagation: Like a wreck on a highway forcing cars to slow, when a disruption occurs on a rail network, regardless of the cause, the schedule delay causes “traffic,” i.e. other trains on the system, getting delayed.

For a railroad, unlike a city street network with alternate route options available to route around the delay by turning left or right on a side street, rail delay schedule propagation is more rapid and consequential. Like a glass cup is more prone to breaking and shattering when dropped than a plastic one, rail network delay propagation has a more disruptive impact on the traffic flows of a rail network than a car wreck does on the flows within a city. While a traffic jam may be caused by a wreck on a street, with advance knowledge a delivery driver can take a different route to avoid it. Doing so mitigates the impact of the blocked street and maintains on-time performance quality for the driver, and for the delivery service. A rail network does not have that physical luxury.

The best way to grow a delivery service is to maximize and optimize for the only delivery service customer satisfaction quality metric that matters: on-time performance. Our rail system as it exists today does not and currently cannot do this. But it could and should. Why? Our final scoop of coal into the firebox. It is time to begin releasing the power and potential of U.S. rail.

Railroads have a reputation of being abrasive, unreliable, complacent, shortsighted, myopic, monopolistic and decaying companies dominated by old ideas, old ways and legacy technology they never want to change and therefore cannot grow. While harsh, I believe this industry has much greater potential. The rail system today is fragmented into isolated regional operating fiefdoms, like ancient castles, with closely guarded moats and gates. They seem to believe their castle moat, which is isolation and control, via a preference of ownership and self-sufficiency of almost all mission-critical systems, innovations, business processes and spending priorities, will not have to meaningfully change, despite the decade of decline, to ignite trajectory-changing growth. That belief is wrong. Many customers have already given up on rail. Some of the best minds in the industry have left or are leaving. Rail integrity has been seemingly lost, and its reputation has been damaged. No one really wants to work for railroads anymore. The PSR-caused non-financial costs and decay in morale, reputations, relationships, turnover, layoffs, experiential knowledge loss, perceptions, trust, and the spirit of this industry that made it so great when I joined it, have been priceless, is real. When leaders fail to or are not allowed to lead properly, the long-term consequences are severe. This is the rail industry right now. And this merger is the surrender, not securing, of our industry’s growth future. Our fire is ready. Time to start the air compressor and unleash the steam.

Drop the fight over the common carrier obligation. Support an updated and quantified common carrier obligation, with a reasonable but ambitious on-time performance target as the quantification metric used to define the standard for rail service quality in not only the U.S. but also Canada and Mexico. Unlike this $85 billion merger, the upfront cost of doing this, to all railroads, is basically $0. Yes, it will require investment to adapt, evolve and adjust to the new standard, but this investment is no longer an option if rail ever wants to meaningfully grow. The decision to support doing this can be made immediately and communicated accordingly within a week from reading this. Yes, the industry will also need to evolve technologically. But the down payment for this digital evolution has been made, and this evolution has been under way for years thanks to the rail tech ecosystem. And it will pay off.

That one signal to the entire market, and that one decisive action, by the employees who are largely and currently responsible for this industry’s future prosperity, will ignite the growth era, and secure our rail industry’s future forever.

Railroads, and specifically rail operational leadership, don’t want or like this kind of accountability. The railroads have fought this update litigiously with intensity for a long time. But growth must be earned. And accountability is not only needed but also required for growth. Without real action with conviction toward change and progress, rail customers will never be the advocates the railroads need in the marketplace to grow. This mindset must change. Why? Do you hear the steam?

Meritorious, transparent and accountable railroading is required to, and will, unleash rail growth. Elite railroading is required to grow. To a rail customer, or to anyone purchasing the services of any delivery service, the true thing you want is for it, whatever it may be, to arrive on time. Need to catch your flight? You plan how early you need to be there and plan your delivery service trip request from a service like Uber accordingly, to be there on time. The speed of the transport is not what matters above all else, nor will a reduction in a few days at a few interchanges spark massive growth for one railroad, much less the rail system, or its ecosystem, in its entirety. The rail industry’s most potent and exploitable marketplace advantage is not speed, it is reliability. It is on-time performance. But that is not possible without system-wide real-time location information, which exists today in every other modal transport option on Earth thanks to cellphones. Had UP leadership understood this, RailPulse would not be asking Congress for taxpayer dollars for GPS. It would be paying for it themselves.

The new rail tech industry formed because of and in the era of PSR. The constriction of spending left rail technological progress underserved and undeveloped. Barely any innovative and new technology was being built to help railroads grow with. No risk for progress was happening. Young railroaders like me saw this and filled the gap. Short lines enabled us to do so. We build and explain what railroads need to use to grow, not what they want to use to operate as they always have. We aren’t disrupting for disruption’s sake. We aren’t some of the most vocal railroaders in this industry for no reason. Our futures are already extremely attached to this industry’s prosperity. Until Class I railroads feel the same healthy pressure we do to improve, build and progress, they never will, and this industry’s growth future will be lost.

The PSR era, and the financial results of the PSR era, would never have happened if railroads were liable, at some reasonable level, for the many severe and expensive operational failures they caused. Until real accountability exists in the U.S. rail system, forcing railroads to identify and fix their hardest problems, the businesses will continue to exploit and at worst abuse their worst monopolistic market power temptations, like runaway trains.

To insert absolutely necessary rhetorical precision into this historical moment: UP will have more options; no one else will. UP will grow, the industry will not. This is not inherently wrong, for JimVena is doing his job. But words matter, just like the one in the Common Carrier obligation that holds this industry back: “reasonable.”

In July 2025, the 7th Circuit Court vacated the STB’s rulemaking attempt to enforce objective reliability standards via reciprocal switching. Quantifying the Common Carrier obligation with on-time performance, and holding U.S. railroads to a high-quality service standard, is the correct and only answer to the question: how to get the American rail industry, the North American rail system, and the entire rail ecosystem full of stakeholders who want it to prosper, to grow. Not a merger. Time to get rolling and blow the train horn.

Alex Luna is the Founder and CEO of AlphaRail, a 2020 Creative Destruction Lab Quantum Computing Stream graduate and the only rail-focused founding member of the United States Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C). Alex started his rail career as an intern on Norfolk Southern’s Ag Marketing team. After modeling and renewing $1.6 billion in rail customer contracts as the Market Manager for Norfolk Southern’s sweeteners commodity franchise, the railroad’s’ most profitable agriculture franchise, Alex left to start AlphaRail to bring high performance algorithmic and computing technology into the rail industry to improve the quality of rail service that rail customers experience. Alex holds a BS in Supply Chain Management and Business Analytics from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an MBA from Vanderbilt University, and Venture Capital Executive Education from The University of California Berkeley. He also serves on the Use Case Technology Advisory Committee for the US QED-C.

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Schaumburg, Ill.: Railway Age’s annual Women in Rail Conference has concluded its second day. At the Awards Luncheon Sponsored by CN, we recognized the outstanding honorees of Railway Age’s 2024 Women in Rail and RT&S’s 2025 Women in Railroad Engineering award programs. 

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Total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 498,462 carloads and intermodal units, down 1.3% compared with the same week last year, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported for Week 41, ending Oct. 11, 2025. However, U.S. railroads realized a 2.8% overall gain through 2025’s first 41 weeks.

Total carloads were 224,562, up 1.2% compared with the same week in 2024, while U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 273,900 containers and trailers, down 3.3% compared to 2024.

Five of the 10 carload commodity groups posted an increase compared with the same week in 2024. They included nonmetallic minerals, up 1,985 carloads, to 32,448; coal, up 605 carloads, to 58,858; and chemicals, up 548 carloads, to 31,048. Commodity groups that posted decreases compared with the same week in 2024 included metallic ores and metals, down 816 carloads, to 18,456; miscellaneous carloads, down 324 carloads, to 8,923; and grain, down 85 carloads, to 23,434.

For the first 41 weeks of 2025, U.S. railroads reported cumulative volume of 9,101,809 carloads, up 2.1% from the same point last year; and 11,126,167 intermodal units, up 3.4% from last year. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 41 weeks of 2025 was 20,227,976 carloads and intermodal units, an increase of 2.8% compared to last year.

North American rail volume for the week ending Oct. 11, 2025, on 9 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 333,005 carloads, up 1.5% compared with the same week last year, and 359,462 intermodal units, down 0.8% compared with last year. Total combined weekly rail traffic in North America was 692,467 carloads and intermodal units, up 0.3%. North American rail volume for the first 41 weeks of 2025 was 27,844,550 carloads and intermodal units, up 2.3% compared with 2024.

Canadian railroads reported 94,937 carloads for the week, down 3.2%, and 70,657 intermodal units, up 0.8% compared with the same week in 2024. For the first 41 weeks of 2025, Canadian railroads reported cumulative rail traffic volume of 6,639,159 carloads, containers and trailers, up 1.9%.

Mexican railroads reported 13,506 carloads for the week, up 70.7% compared with the same week last year, and 14,905 intermodal units, up 60.5%. Cumulative volume on Mexican railroads for the first 41 weeks of 2025 was 977,415 carloads and intermodal containers and trailers, down 5.0% from the same point last year.

The post AAR Week 41: Intermodal Losses Cancel Carload Gains appeared first on Railway Age.

by Dennis A. Livesey/photos by the author

Victor Hand, an extraordinary 4×5 photographer since the 1950s, was asked if he would ever go digital. “No,” Hand replied. “That would mean I would have to start all over again, and I would not be a professional. And one thing I will always be is a professional.” These words have often echoed in my mind.

I am at Reading & Northern’s Tamaqua Tunnel, and 2102 is coming. I have been planning this shot for months. I have my like-new 1955 Graflex Speed Graphic in hand. In the film holder is a 4×5” sheet of Ilford HPS5+ black & white film. The camera’s 127mm lens will render a FOV (field of view) equivalent to a 34mm full-frame camera lens.

More so than any still camera I have ever used, there is a strict checklist to follow. I have reduced it to this mnemonic — “F.A.S.D.” or “Focus-Aperture-Shutter-Dark Slide:

(1) “Focus: 80’, check.”
(2) “Aperture: ƒ/5.6, check.”
(3) “Shutter: 500th, check.”
(4) “…Holy smokes! It’s out of the tunnel! Frame up! Frame up! Wait…wait…until it fills the Action Finder, hold steady (no Image Stabilization with this baby)! Sqqquuueeze the big shutter button. “Whirr-clunk!” goes the camera’s rear curtain shutter. Wow! That was great! Visions of Victor Hand-like photos fill my mind. Now, put the Dark Slide back in… Oh, Nooo!… I didn’t pull the Dark Slide! Augh! No photo at all!”

I started down this particular road a long time ago. As I became more aware of photography in the 1960s, I remember seeing these large black and silver cameras that had big lenses with black accordion bellows. I remember portrait, wedding, and school photographers using these big cameras. They made a loud clacking noise as the film holders were put in, but they made an imperceptible click when the lens shutter was released. Since no one I knew had one, I wrote it off as “too expensive” and something I would probably never have.

However, as I started to learn about railroad photography, the name “Speed Graphic” would pop up in connection with photographers such as Victor Hand and Jim Shaughnessy. At the time, I had to consider these big, expensive cameras out of reach because I was trying to come up with the $248.58 for my first good 35mm SLR. But the results from those Speed Graphics were impressive. The images those men made were fantastic. They were big and sharp, all the way from here to infinity.

ABOVE: Robert Hale, a prolific rail photographer of the 1940s and 1950s was the Babe Ruth of pan and pacing shots. What’s more, he did it all using a Speed Graphic. While chasing Reading & Northern 2102 out of Nesquehoning, Pa., with friends, I had opportunity for two attempts at a pacing shot. One worked. Oren Helbok was at the wheel to make this possible. 

What Is a Speed Graphic?
The Speed Graphic was made by Graflex Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., from 1912 to 1972. The year it was introduced, the sharpest photographs were made by view cameras with large-format film sizes of 4×5, 5×7, 8×10, and up. While view cameras excel at flexibility and image quality, they are entirely unsuited for action because they are large, cumbersome, slow, and require a tripod. On the other hand, the Speed Graphic with its 4×5-sized film was designed to have the image quality of a view camera, but in a configuration that could be used in the hand by press photographers. The kicker, however, was this — at the time, the fastest shutter speed of lenses with leaf shutters was 1/400th of a second, clearly inadequate for subjects like sports, automobiles, or trains. The solution was to place a curtain shutter in the rear of the camera.

A curtain shutter is made of two rollers, one on top of the body and one on the bottom, rolling and unrolling a rubberized cloth curtain between them. In the curtain, there are five slits of ever smaller openings. While the spring unwinds the curtain at the same speed, it is the curtain opening that you select that governs the amount of time the film will be exposed. This spring-driven shutter was not only able to do 1/500th of a second but an amazing 1/1000th of a second, enough to stop the fastest Pennsy K-4.

The most popular rail photographer model was the Pacemaker Speed Graphic. Practical advantages for the rail photographer over the previous model included simpler shutter controls, a coated lens, and a body shutter release. An elemental camera, to be sure, it features a lens with a leaf shutter in the front; a curtain shutter, ground glass, and film holder in the rear; a bellows between them; a side or top-mounted rangefinder (for focus); two viewfinders (for composing); and a body with a folding railbed holding everything together. The front “lens standard” (the metal frame that holds the lens in place) is mounted on rails. Two focus knobs on the side of the rail bed allow you to move the lens standard back and forth (the bellows providing the flexibility needed for this) to focus the lens. The folded box (61/2×71/2×41/2 inches) is covered in pebble leather and stainless steel, with Mahogany wood. Weighing with a film holder, it tips the scale at seven pounds. In comparison, a Canon R6 with a 24–70mm ƒ/2.8 lens weighs three pounds 12 ounces. Holding one, you’ll notice it’s a sturdy, well-made camera.

This camera isn’t the most ergonomic in the world. While there’s a hand strap on the left that works fine, your right thumb, middle, ring, and pinky fingers need to support the right side so your right index finger can press the shutter. In other words, you have to adapt to the camera…

The post Using a Speed Graphic: Come With Me to the Dark Slide appeared first on Railfan & Railroad Magazine.

by Kevin EuDaly/photos and cartography by the author

There’s something I don’t fully understand. How can we fall in love with a land, a place, a piece of this earth? Especially a rugged, hostile place, where few live and almost no one goes to play? A place where every plant’s defense is something sharp, and where dangerous creatures abound? Though I don’t understand how it happens, there is little doubt that it does. They say the Pilbara gets in your blood, an idiomatic expression used in an attempt to explain the love affair that happens in the hostile Outback, in the vast open spaces where nameless paths once crossed the barren landscape, where today steel rails reach to the horizon.

The Australian Pilbara trips in 2011 and 2018 had one overreaching effect; we had to go back — and soon. Not long after arriving home from the 2018 trip the planning began for another trip in 2020 — I wasn’t waiting another seven years this time. By early February 2020 I had the itinerary set, and it looked like another repeat with John Benson, Mel Wilson, and me. With my fingers poised above the keyboard to start making reservations, all hell broke loose.

Wait! What? I’m certain I muttered expletives under my breath. Even though the resistance wasn’t from the Pilbara itself, unleashing a worldwide pandemic to keep us away, more than once I said to myself, “The Pilbara gods have really outdone themselves this time.”

ABOVE: August 11, 10:38 a.m.: The three primary paint schemes are on display on this northbound loaded train south of Emu on Rio’s former Hamersley Iron main line. In the lead is ES44ACi 9123 in the Rio Tinto stripes scheme, followed by Dash 9-44CW 7095 in Hamersley Iron lettering wearing orange and blue stripes, and finally Dash 9-44CW 9404 wearing Pilbara Rail lettering and the orange, yellow, and black striping. The silver background is common to all Rio units, some of which have only a yellow frame stripe.

Humor aside, this was no joke. Travel restrictions, lockdowns, and chaos ensued while I waited for a return to normal. For two years Australia not only locked out anyone outside the country, but locked in those who were there. Furthermore, travel across state lines was forbidden — not even Australians could move about the country. More than once in the following two years, I almost wished I’d gotten to Western Australia and been trapped there for a year — the appeal is that strong.

I kept close tabs on the situation in Australia, not-so-patiently waiting — for more than two years. The Australian government website regularly posted travel restriction updates, and finally, after what seemed an eternity, came the posting I was looking for:

“From July 6, 2022, the way you travel to and from Australia has changed. People entering Australia do not need to provide evidence of vaccination status; will not be asked to provide evidence of their vaccination status; and do not need a travel exemption to travel to Australia.”

ABOVE: August 11, 2:03 p.m.: The former Robe River line from Cape Lambert to Pannawonica has an appeal all its own. While in the northern part of the Pilbara, we journeyed toward the Fortescue River bridge several times, and chased this northbound behind ES44ACi 9121 in the stripes scheme. This was north of Maitland.

It was too late to get to the Pilbara in 2022 before super-hot summer weather and high sun arrived in October or November, which would be followed by the fall rainy season in February and March (the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere), so it would have to be 2023. In the meantime, my brother Lon planned to retire in June 2023, so with apologies to John, the ill-fated 2020 trip was scratched and it would be me, Mel, and Lon.

This trip was planned a little differently. Wherever possible, I booked whole-house Airbnbs, including starting the trip at one in Wickham, and carefully planned where we’d stay and for how long (if construction projects pop up in the Pilbara, places to stay can get scarce). Mel and I were really itching to get “out to the ends” of the various lines, and so, after a lot of discussion, we constructed the trip to include time deep in the Pilbara where the mines are located. Lon had no Australian experience to base any decisions on, so he was like I was in 2011 — along for the ride.

The departure date was set: August 7, 2023. At 10:24 a.m., I stepped out of our home in East Texas bound for Karratha, Western Australia. The thrill of adventure in the Pilbara was calling me, as it so often does. I’m sure Mel felt the same, leaving with Lon from Kansas City, Mo. But Karratha is a long way from the Midwest, both literally and figuratively. We all met in Los Angeles, and 14 hours and 15 minutes from when I walked out my front door, the wheels left the runway, and we were heading across the Pacific Ocean. At the 30-hour, 26-minute mark we arrived at the gate in Melbourne. We flew west to Perth, then north to Karratha, touching down at the 40-hour, 10-minute mark at 3:34 p.m. on August 9, losing a calendar day by flying across the date line.

ABOVE: August 16, 12:09 p.m.: FMG SD70ACe/LCi 704 and Wabtec rebuilt AC44C6M 104 pull slowly through the loadout at Christmas Creek. The two units will handle the loaded train on a flat grade to Cloudbreak, where bankers will be added for the grade to Moreland. There are two grades against northbound loads; the first is 0.53 percent from Morgan Spur (three miles south of Morgan) to near the north end of the siding at Morgan, a total of five miles. After a mile-and-a-half 0.87 percent downgrade, the following grade is 3.4 miles of 0.55 percent.

Our flight from Melbourne to Perth was a little late, and consequently, our checked baggage didn’t make it to Karratha, so we left the Airbnb address for the airline to forward it to us. We grabbed the rental car, a mine-compliant SUV, and headed trackside. At 4:45 p.m., we photographed our first train on Rio Tinto south of Eight Mile. It was exhilarating euphoria — we were back in the Pilbara at last.

To and Fro: Wickham
We started at Karratha, located east of the former Robe River yard and port complex. Rio’s two lines include the former Hamersley Iron to the port at Dampier, and the former Robe River Iron Associates to the port at Cape Lambert. Hamersley Iron was the second Pilbara iron ore-era railroad, opening on June 23, 1966, less than a month after Goldsworthy Mining was opened on May 25. Half a century earlier, the steam-era Marble Bar Railway opened from Port Hedland to Marble Bar in July 1911, but the last train ran on October 25, 1951, so it was long gone before the iron ore era. The last of the early iron ore predecessors to open was Robe River Iron Associates, which began operations on August 15, 1972.

Robe River and Hamersley Iron eventually consolidated under worldwide mining giant Rio Tinto. Originally, Robe River crossed over Hamersley Iron on a bridge without any connection between the two at what later became Western Creek Junction. To be brief, several entities exist under the Rio Tinto banner, and operate separately to this day, but aside from some paint scheme and lettering differences, the trackside experience is ubiquitous — big GEs on heavy iron ore trains — with one notable exception; the Deepdale trains run with drivers (engineers are called “drivers” in Australia) on the former Robe River, while the rest of Rio’s operations in the Pilbara are autonomous. The autonomous trains with no crewmen on board take some getting used to, and truthfully, a little of the railroad charm is lost without human contact with the crews…

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by Olev Taremae/photos by the author except as noted

In the modern diesel era, American railroads have repainted locomotives and rolling stock in unique ways to promote themselves, publicize events, raise awareness, and promote actions supporting specific issues. For example, the slogan “Keep It Moving With Conrail” emblazoned on the side of Conrail U23B 1980 was intended to catch the attention of passersby and promote shipping on the quasi-government-owned railroad. Wisconsin & Southern is among the many railroads that have called attention to their longevity by painting locomotives trumpeting the anniversary of the road’s start-up.

Several railroads have promoted sports events with specially painted locomotives. Southern Pacific SD40R 7347 was repainted for the 1984 Summer Olympics, while Conrail repainted SD40-2 6373 for the 1992 Olympics bicycle trials. Union Pacific repainted SD40-2s 1896 and 1996 for the torch relay before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and also repainted SD70MACs 2001 and 2002 for the torch relay before the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.

ABOVE: Stars and stripes are dominant on Pennsylvania & Southern SW7 17, resting near the enginehouse between assignments on August 30, 2017. The railroad serves the Letterkenny Army Depot near Chambersburg, Pa. The design and frame lettering honor service members who died when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan in 2011, operating under the code sign “Extortion 17.”

Locomotives painted to promote awareness of causes include GP38-2s 425 and 436, which Florida East Coast Railway use to focus attention on breast cancer. Conrail’s SD40 6300 promoting buying and holding U.S. Savings Bonds was an example of a message with a specific call to action.

The Bicentennial Started It All
Starting with the painting of Seaboard Coast Line U36B 1776 in 1971, celebrating the Bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence became the largest-ever subject of repainted and otherwise redecorated locomotives. More than 300 locomotives celebrated the Bicentennial, most in elaborate and inventive one-of-a-kind paint schemes; combinations of red, white, and blue were created coast to coast. Other than the theme of honoring veterans and supporting the military, no single subject other than the Bicentennial has resulted in the repainting or decorating of more locomotives.

ABOVE: Paducah & Louisville GP40-2 2129 provides a good example of how a railroad can decorate a locomotive to honor veterans within the context of its standard paint scheme. The message Salute to our Veterans, an American flag, and a yellow ribbon adorn the hood of the locomotive, still clad in the railroad’s green and white paint scheme. The 2129 is sitting in Paducah, Ky., on August 17, 2024. —Paul Wester photo, Author’s Collection

The decoration of locomotives to honor veterans and support our troops has reflected changes in the nation’s overall attitude toward the military and current military campaigns. The notion of honoring veterans and supporting the military was slow to build in the post-World War II era. In the early 1950s, celebrations in the U.S. at the conclusion of the Korean War were muted at best, as that war had ended in a stalemate. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Vietnam War was controversial among the public at large and split opinion about both the military and those who served in it. Returning veterans were honored at times; at other times, they were treated with indifference or, in some extreme cases, hostility. Railroad equipment was not repainted honoring veterans or with military support themes in this era.

The celebration of the Bicentennial around 1976 reflected an increasingly positive American self-image and an increase in the public display of patriotism. This set the stage for the veterans- and military-support painted locomotives.

ABOVE: The fanciful graphics enabled by vinyl wrap technology are exemplified on Savage Services GP7u 8613, shifting a tank car in Cedar City, Utah, on August 30, 2024. —Matt Griffin photo, Author’s Collection

Honoring Our Troops
Union Pacific broke ground in honoring veterans and supporting U.S. troops on February 27, 1991, unveiling repainted ex-Missouri Pacific 6053, then UP 3953. The SD40-2 was dubbed “Desert Victory” in connection with the first Gulf War and wore a camouflage paint scheme. Mounted on the side were the names and hometowns of 66 Union Pacific employees who had been called to serve. Burlington Northern soon followed by painting SD60m 1991 in a red, white, and blue paint scheme and bearing a logo “Pulling for Freedom – Supporting Our Troops.” These graphics supported troops engaged in Operation Desert Storm. Conrail followed in 1992 with SD50 6707 wearing a yellow ribbon during the era of campaigns in Kuwait and Iraq as part of Desert Storm.

Since these three locomotives were introduced, a total of 56 additional locomotives from 34 additional railroads and/or industries have been painted, wrapped, or otherwise decorated with graphics to honor veterans and/or support the troops. These efforts have served multiple purposes for the railroads; first, and most basic, the messages are intended to promote the causes of honoring veterans and supporting the military because of the positive and patriotic nature of the stated message. Providing such a message creates goodwill by connecting the railroad with a popular public outlook, a message that reflects the outlook of railroad management and ownership. Second, some railroads have used these messages to specifically pay tribute to their current and past employees who have served in the military. Some of these messages apply generally to military veteran employees while others are specifically targeted to individuals. Lastly, several railroads have used these messages as a recruiting tool for attracting new employees. The messages have emphasized the positive attributes of employees with a military background and the transferability of skills honed in the military that have particular applicability in the railroad industry…

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In this issue, we follow along with Greg McDonnell to view some vintage diesel-electric locomotives on Ontario Southland. These locomotives are part of a large series of models that were first built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division from the 1930s to the early 1960s. They are colloquially known as “F-units,” following the EMD catalog designation. Ontario Southland’s examples were built in the 1950s for Canadian National as FP9s, the “P” standing for “passenger” meaning they had different speed gearing and were equipped with steam generators. Thousands of F-units were produced, making them among the most successful and impactful of early diesel-electric locomotives.

What made F-units unique and recognizable is the same quality that makes them seem oddly out of place today — their stylish body work. All F-units share a similar appearance, from the initial FT introduced in 1939 to the last FL9 produced in November 1960 — a full-width car body, an arched roof, and most distinctively, an elegant nose of compound curves. They were, in that most 1930s of design terms, “streamlined,” styled to appear as if they were moving at speed, even when standing still. Observers and fans nicknamed them “bulldogs,” although I’ve always found the comparison odd, as the F-unit’s clean lines have always seemed more elegant. They are, in my view, the definitive streamlined diesel.

Numerous companies fielded lightweight streamliners throughout the 1930s, and some of the most stylish examples were bespoke models built to haul premier passenger trains in the late 1930s and into the 1940s. One of the best examples is Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 9911A, an E5 built by EMD predecessor Electro-Motive Corp. in 1940 and preserved today at the Illinois Railway Museum; its long rakish nose and gleaming stainless-steel sides are stunning. Other examples are almost as spectacular, such as the long-nosed PA-1s built by American Locomotive Company or Baldwin’s “sharknose” RF-16s, both from the late 1940s.

The F-units are far simpler and cleaner, in part as a result of economizing. The original FT of 1939 was intended as a freight unit, befitting a simpler design. Despite this, and despite the massive numbers built, each F-unit nose was handcrafted. As a former employee once described it, the simple curves were constructed from sheet steel, while the joining, compounded curves were built by hand-hammering and the careful application of fillers. The F-units, then, were a rolling contradiction. They were one of the first mass-manufactured diesel locomotives, transitioning many railways away from steam, yet their most distinctive visual feature was individually built by skilled craftsmen.

Maybe this is why, today, they seem not just like an anachronism, but as something from an entirely different world. Since the 1960s, locomotive builders have made efficiency and utility their primary design principles, with precious few concessions to aesthetic appeal. Simpler, more rectilinear designs were easier and therefore cheaper to build, while narrower car bodies with numerous doors and external walkways made routine maintenance far easier.

If anything, this philosophy has accelerated in our century, with most new locomotives looking exactly as they are — built to a price. The aesthetics of the F-units, by contrast, stated confidently that the railways belonged in the modern age, an attitude toward industrial design that has been long absent on North America’s railways. This makes it all the more ironic that today, if we are lucky enough to encounter one of the few surviving Fs, we see them nostalgically, a vision of railroading’s golden past, rather than its silvery future.

—Alexander Benjamin Craghead is a transportation historian, photographer, artist, and author.

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Anacostia Rail Holdings subsidiary Pacific Harbor Line (PHL) has entered into a development agreement with Remora, a Michigan-based climate technology startup that is pioneering mobile carbon capture for freight rail and trucking. The partnership “aligns with PHL’s long-standing commitment to innovation, environmental stewardship and practical pathways toward decarbonization of freight rail operations.”

PHL, which provides rail transportation, maintenance and dispatching services to the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, is an investor in Remora. Anacostia President and CEO Peter A. Gilbertson, serves as an advisor.

“We’re building this technology not only to meet environmental goals, but to make it financially compelling for railroads,” said Remora Co-founder and CEO Paul Gross. “Pacific Harbor Line’s support and Anacostia’s leadership will be instrumental as we bring carbon capture to freight rail.”

“We are proud of our progress toward zero emission operations, which started when we acquired Tier 2 (lower emission) locomotives some 16 years ago,” said PHL President Otis L. Cliatt II. “That initial success was followed by an evolution to Tier 3+ locomotives and then a conversion to renewable diesel fuel which cut CO₂ emissions by some 70%. PHL also operated a zero emission (ZE) EMD® Joule battery-electric locomotive from Progress Rail in test service, and we currently operate a Tier 4 locomotive. We plan to upgrade our entire fleet of Tier 3+ locomotives to Tier 4 using proven after-treatment technologies. This partnership with Remora gives PHL an opportunity to help shape a technology that could significantly reduce freight rail emissions while creating new economic value for operators. We’re proud to support innovations that have the potential to benefit the entire rail industry.”

“For PHL and Anacostia, carbon capture adds yet another option in our efforts to slash emissions,” said Gilbertson. “In addition to reducing CO₂ emissions, Remora’s technology elevates connected locomotives to EPA Tier 4 standards and also enables the reuse of carbon in other commercial applications. The U.S. is facing a CO₂ shortage, even as trains and trucks emit roughly 375 million tons of it every year. Remora’s solution captures that CO₂, converts it to liquid, and sells it to industries such as farming, food production, and manufacturing, sharing the revenue with its transportation partners.”

Founded five years ago, Remora designs and manufactures carbon capture technology for rail and trucking. Its technology transforms exhaust into beverage-grade carbon dioxide sold to breweries and greenhouses, generating revenue while reducing emissions. Founded in 2020, Remora has raised $117 million in venture capital and has partnered with major carriers including DHL, Ryder, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. The company said its early truck-based pilots “informed a redesigned system that eliminates backpressure, increases efficiency and captures up to one ton of CO₂ per hour at locomotive scale.”

For railroads, Remora places a tender car behind a locomotive “to scrub emissions, preventing them from entering the atmosphere,” NS reported in the Story Yard section of its website on April 28. “Locomotive exhaust enters a containment system allowing CO2 to be stored as liquid and is easily offloaded when the locomotive refuels. The carbon is transported to end-users like concrete, fuel, and chemical producers, for purchase. Remora, a carbon capture pioneer, is leading the work with us, and others like Union Pacific, and Pacific Harbor Line. Revenue from carbon sales is shared with the group.” Also partnering with Remora: Genesee & Wyoming Inc.’s Buffalo & Pittsburg Railroad and Indiana & Ohio Railway.

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One of the nation’s largest railroad unions is calling for drones to be grounded at rail yards and along main lines, something that could have a major impact on railroad photographers who have recently taken to the sky to capture photos. 

On October 6, the National Safety and Legislative Department of SMART-TD sent a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration, “demanding a full prohibition on the use of drones by railroad managers, or anyone else, in active rail yards and along main lines where trains are moving.” The filing comes as an increasing number of railroads are using drones to inspect infrastructure, but also stealthily keep an eye on crews. 

“Our rail yards are not laboratories or surveillance zones. They’re our offices,” said Jared Cassity, SMART-TD National Safety and Legislative Director. “When a drone flies overhead, it’s not just a nuisance; it’s a distraction in one of the most dangerous work environments in America. And make no mistake: if something goes wrong, it won’t be the manager behind the joystick who gets hurt. It’ll be one of our members. There is nothing cute, cool, or futuristic about any of that.”

Cassity further stated that the union also believed drones flying around railroad property pose a threat to national security, since the railroad could be considered a target by “bad actors.”

It’s unclear whether the FAA will act on the union’s request, and it’s also uncertain how feasible it is to ban drones near rail lines. Most commercially available drones require FAA approval to operate in restricted areas near airports, so the system could potentially be expanded to include rail lines. However, given the extensive size of the rail network, expanding such a system would be a monumental task. There’s also the question of how far from the right-of-way these restrictions would apply. 

Drones have become a popular tool for railroad enthusiasts over the past decade, and banning them at rail yards and along main lines would likely significantly affect that part of the hobby. 

—Justin Franz 

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The Commuter Rail Coalition (CRC) has gotten behind HR 5697, the Passenger Rail Liability Adjustment Act of 2025, a bill that would modify current statute to allow passenger railroads 90 days to secure additional excess liability insurance coverage when the federal cap is next scheduled to be inflation-adjusted in 2026.

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.) a member and former Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Railroads Subcommittee, introduced the bipartisan bill, whose original cosponsors are House Railroads Subcommittee Ranking Member Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). Nehls “has maintained his support of our efforts to find a solution to the problem posed by the current law, which gives commuter railroads just 30 days to obtain additional insurance coverage when the federal liability cap is inflation-adjusted every five years,” CRC noted. “Securing coverage is a complex process that requires much more than 30 days to complete. If commuter railroads are unable to secure coverage within the 30 days, then they will have to cease all operations. We estimate that the next increase will be in excess of $70 million when the U.S. Department of Transportation announces the newest cap sometime in early 2026. The cap is adjusted by applying the Consumer Price Index.”

The CRC has issued an action alert requesting all railroads engage their federal elected representatives in support of HR 5697. “It is imperative to demonstrate clear and widespread support for this legislation,” the organization noted. “It would be an even stronger endorsement if elected officials would become cosponsors of the legislation. CRC is also lining up support in the Senate. Expressions of support should be directed to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. We are pushing for the inclusion of a permanent solution to this problem in the upcoming reauthorization of the federal surface transportation programs. Reauthorizing legislation will be necessary when the current Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) expires Sept. 30, 2026. The CRC has expressed its support for a permanent solution with the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, as well as the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. We are advocating for a modification in the statute that would provide for the cap to be calculated every four years instead of the current five, while allowing a full 365 days for implementation of the new cap. This would allow all railroads to acquire additional coverage in the normal course of business when they complete their annual renewals.”

The commuter rail industry will convene in Washington, D.C. from November 3–5 for roundtable discussions with policymakers and technical tours at the 2025 Commuter Rail Summit.

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