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LONDON – The only passenger rail link between Britain and the rest of Europe has been shut down indefinitely, Eurostar said Sunday, promising more travel misery for thousands of stranded passengers just before Christmas. Services have been suspended since late Friday, when a series of glitches stranded five trains inside the Channel Tunnel and trapped more than 2,000 passengers for hours in stuffy and claustrophobic conditions. More than 55,000 passengers overall have been affected.

Those hoping to ride the state's high-speed train next decade will have to dig much deeper into their wallets than officials originally thought, a harsh reality that will chase away millions of passengers, according to an updated business plan released Monday. The average ticket on the bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles is now estimated to cost about $105, or 83 percent of comparable airfare. Last year, the state said prices would be set at 50 percent of comparable airfare and predicted a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles would cost $55. As a result of the...

Brushing aside tradition, the Obama administration is pushing for federal authority to regulate the nation's subway and light commuter rail systems following last summer's subway crash in Washington, D.C., that left nine people dead. Next week, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will formally ask Congress to give his department authority to regulate and oversee those rail systems, a move that some Republicans on Capitol Hill worry is another alarming example of an ever-expanding federal government. "In this case, it sounds good, safety and enforcement over transit systems, but it may not be that effective," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told Fox News....

U.S. Rail Freight Volume Down During Thanksgiving Holiday Week 3 Dec 2009 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For More Information Contact: AAR Communications Holly Arthur 202-639-2100 harthur@aar.org U.S. Rail Freight Volume Down During Thanksgiving Holiday Week Increases Seen in Nine Freight Commodity Groups WASHINGTON, D.C. – Dec. 3, 2009 – The Association of American Railroads today reported that freight rail traffic was down for the Thanksgiving holiday week ended Nov. 28, 2009. U.S. railroads reported originating 246,133 carloads for the week, down 3.9 percent compared with the same week in 2008 and down 29.3 percent from the same week in 2007. The...

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The head of Russia's Orthodox Church Sunday called on authorities to give a "powerful reply" to the people behind a train bombing that killed 25 people, as police probed whether Islamist rebels were involved. A blast derailed a high-speed Russian train Friday night on the main line between Moscow and Russia's second city, St Petersburg, raising fears of a new wave of attacks five years after a bombing campaign in Moscow by Chechen rebels. "We believe the reply will be effective and powerful enough to show these shameful, terrible people that ... when the hand of an...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — Officials say a Washington Metro subway train crashed into the back of another at a rail yard, injuring three workers. The Metro transit agency says injuries were minor and not life-threatening. No passengers were on board when the crash occurred at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday. Metro says a six-car train was returning to the West Falls Church Rail Yard in northern Virginia when it rear-ended a parked six-car train. Two workers were cleaning the parked train to get it ready for service.

An express train carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to St. Petersburg derailed, killing dozens of people and injuring scores of others in what an official says "appears to be an act of terrorism." "We have the blast remains; a crater. There is little doubt this is terrorism," a source in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office told Fox News. Who was responsible for the derailment or why it occurred "remains unclear," the source said. Thirty people were killed in the accident and scores injured after the last three cars of the 14-car Nevsky Express left the tracks in the...

At least 29 passengers were killed and about 75 were injured when the Nevsky Express train from Moscow to St. Petersburg derailed, an emergencies ministry source said Saturday. It was not immediately clear what caused the accident. Just prior to the accident, the train driver had applied the brakes. The last four cars out of thirteen were involved from train #166 at 18:34 GMT Moscow time. A mobile field hospital was being flown to the accident site, near Bologoye, 200 miles from Moscow, to render assistance to injured passengers. Ambulances, Federal Security Service officers, law enforcement, emergency services and railroad...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The crash of a luxury train in Russia killed 25 people and injured up to 63 more, an official said on Saturday, and sources suggested it may have been an act of terrorism. "Twenty-five people died in the accident," an official reported to Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu during a meeting televised by Vesti-25 television, hours after the crash. Several carriages of the Nevsky Express traveling from Moscow to St Petersburg were derailed at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Friday near the town of Bologoye, 350 km (200 miles) from Moscow. Estimates of the number of injured ranged...

ABOARD AMTRAK AUTO TRAIN 52 TO WASHINGTON - All aboard on this train doesn’t mean just people. It means minivans, cars and motorcycles, too. To board you have to be packing some serious luggage: Every traveler must also be transporting a vehicle. Amtrak’s Auto Train, the only one like it in the nation, has only two stops: one near Orlando, Fla., and the other in Virginia near Washington, D.C. For more than 25 years, it has carried vacationers and their vehicles, and a new $10 million station expected to open in Florida in 2010 may mean even more passengers. ~~~SNIP~~~...

(snip) There’s a list of issues being hammered out, but at the top is finding money for South Florida’s cash-strapped Tri-Rail. Republicans are targeting a $2 fee on rental cars as the source and discussing whether to let county commissions approve the charge or require a referendum.“That’s sort of one of the issues we’re dealing with,” Crist said. Florida’s Republican leaders believe they need to settle funding issues for Tri-Rail and a host of insurance and money issues for a proposed Central Florida line known as SunRail before the state has any chance at securing $2.5 billion in federal stimulus...

Supporters of a proposed maglev train from Pittsburgh International Airport to Greensburg wooed state representatives Friday with promises the project could create thousands of jobs in high-tech manufacturing, if the government could pay the $5.3 billion price tag. Building the 54-mile magnetic guideway between the airport, Downtown, Monroeville and Greensburg would create demand for an estimated 533,000 tons of steel and 712,000 cubic yards of concrete, and the precision-welding technology that would be used to turn the steel into the track could then be exported around the world, proponents told members of the state House Transportation Committee during a hearing...

Pa. Mom, Toddler In Stroller Killed By Train Woman’s two young daughters manage to dart across tracks unharmed DERRY, Pa. - A woman pushing a stroller across railroad tracks in western Pennsylvania was struck by a train and both she and her 2-year-old son were killed, police said. The 37-year-old Derry mother and three of her children were returning from a shopping trip early Friday evening, authorities said. They said she was struggling to push the stroller across the tracks when she and her toddler son were hit by a Norfolk Southern train at about 5 p.m. Her two young...

Eight billion dollars isn’t enough — not nearly enough. It’s not often you’ll hear this newspaper make a statement like that. Usually we are urging fiscal restraint. But if this country truly wants high-speed rail, we’re going to have to get serious about the effort. Eight billion dollars won’t get us there. That’s the amount of federal stimulus money promised by the Obama administration for high-speed rail. Already the administration has received requests from 24 states for projects amounting to $50 billion in high-speed projects. It also has received $7 billion in requests from states wanting to improve rail travel...

MELBOURNE schoolboy Aaron Dryden has been revealed as the shy hero who pulled a tiny baby from under a train at Ashburton station. Aaron, 18, told Woman's Day how he crawled under the train after six-month-old Saurish Verma's pram toppled from the platform. He leapt on to the tracks without a thought for his own safety and ran to where the train had ground to a halt. Followed by Saurish's terrified mother Shweta, and fearing the worst, he crawled 5m under the train to find the battered pram. "When we got to him, the pram was lying on its side...

Amtrak is raising serious objections to a proposal that would allow passengers to stow unloaded guns in their checked baggage, saying the train operator cannot screen passengers' bags the same way airlines do. The Senate passed a measure last month that would allow passengers to declare and check a weapon on the trains, something airline passengers can do now, provided the weapon is unloaded and in a hard and locked case. But Amtrak and some House members are against the idea. The House did not include the provision in their version of the bill approved by the Senate. "That could...

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia—As an engineer pulls the throttle, villagers track side gawk at the bullet-shaped train as it gathers speed. Soon, forests and wooden shacks are a blur as a dashboard display reads 250 kilometers an hour (155 miles per hour). Ten years in the making, Russia's state-owned railway is testing eight aerodynamic trains that in December will rush travelers from here to Moscow in less than four hours. With fancy kitchens and leather seats in first class, the Sapsans (Russian for peregrine falcons) mark a change in Russia's egalitarian rail tradition. More broadly, though, Russia's new trains mirror a...

Express passenger trains linking America's major metropolises. It's an idea whose time has come and gone and, thankfully, come again. Just don't expect them to come to Utah any time soon. When the Federal Railroad Administration released its list of intercity rail corridors eligible for high-speed rail funding last spring, there was a hole the size of the Intermountain West on the map. It wasn't an oversight. When you start connecting the big-city dots in the Intermountain West, it's a long way between dots. Higher-density corridors in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and on the West Coast are more logical places...

PHOENIX (AP) - Congestion in the skies and on the ground may pave the way for bullet train expansion to Phoenix and other western cities. Regional rail planners from Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno and Salt Lake City have formed the Western High Speed Rail Alliance. The group says it's goal is to form a network of rapid intercity trains. Transportation officials plan to cite a study released by the Washington think tank the Brookings Institution. It's expected to show Phoenix to Los Angeles is the third-busiest short-hop air travel corridor, with a distance that would make high-speed rail competitive....

Eastern Jackson County, MO —      Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders says his $1.03 billion commuter rail proposal is a uniquely Kansas City solution for Kansas City’s unique situation. “It has the potential to transform the greater Kansas City area in the span of two years,” he says. Our fair metro is often described as the second busiest rail hub in the country. That means we have lots of trains using lots of tracks – but there are also many miles of unused or underused tracks.      Jim Terry, who worked for the Union Pacific for 32 years and has...

<p>MELBOURNE, Australia — A 6-month-old baby has miraculously survived a train hitting his stroller, which rolled onto the tracks when his mother let go for an instant.</p> <p>The escape was captured on security camera footage that shows the red, three-wheeled stroller plunging off a station platform just as the commuter train pulls in, and the mother's panicked lunge to grab it.</p>

CCTV footage of a baby's miracle escape when a pram was slammed by a peak-hour train has been released. Witnesses at a suburban Melbourne station feared the worst but were stunned when the six-month-boy was hauled from the tracks with little more than a bump on his head. The near-miss happened at Ashburton station as a city-bound train pulled into the station just after 4pm yesterday. The baby was strapped into a three-wheeler pram that rolled forward and toppled on to the tracks. The pram was carried 30 metres as the desperate driver tried to pull up the 250-tonne train....

MELBOURNE, Australia — A 6-month-old baby has miraculously survived a train hitting his stroller, which rolled onto the tracks when his mother let go for an instant. The escape was captured on security camera footage that shows the red, three-wheeled stroller plunging off a station platform just as the commuter train pulls in, and the mother's panicked lunge to grab it. The train pushed the stroller about 130 feet (40 meters) along the tracks before it stopped, but it did not go under the train. The baby, who was strapped into the stroller, received only a bump on the head....

Maglev trains could shorten the travel time between Tokyo and Osaka to 67 minutes from the 138 minutes it takes today's fastest bullet trains, Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) said Tuesday. The estimated time is for the shortest planned route of 438 km connecting Shinagawa Station in Tokyo and Shin-Osaka Station, which could cost ¥8.44 trillion to construct, the railway said. JR Tokai also provided estimates for two longer routes. The company plans to construct the Tokyo-Nagoya section of the Tokyo-Osaka maglev system with its own funds by 2025. But it has not decided on a construction schedule or...

Construction of the long-awaited rail network that will link the six members of the GCC is expected to start in 2010 or 2011. Abu Dhabi: The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries' proactive approach to building railroad networks, whose estimated cost is more than $60 billion (Dh220 billion), will help boost cross-border trade, cut freight costs and result in faster movement of cargo and passengers, experts have said. "Rail is safer, faster, cleaner and [a] more economical mode of transportation. Strong logistics networks encourage trade and provide industry with a competitive advantage," Hussain Al Nowais, chairman of the UAE's newly created...

Voters mixed on proposals for high-speed transportation The debate over which high-speed train would best serve Nevadans is a hot topic in the political arena, but a recent poll shows that, by a slim margin, most voters aren't overwhelmingly supportive of that particular mode of transportation. It's a showdown between a magnetic levitation train (maglev) and the steel-wheeled DesertXpress rail project. A poll conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Washington D.C.-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. showed that of 500 registered voters throughout the state, 42 percent supported the maglev train, which would ferry passengers from Las Vegas to Anaheim, Calif....

Itanagar, October 3 (Agencies): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said a Rs.125 billion trans-state highway in Arunachal Pradesh would be completed by 2013, a step that would boost infrastructure in the strategic northeastern state bordering China. “The Trans-Arunachal Highway, rail and air connectivity, and construction of two small hydro projects would meet the requirement of many remote areas, especially villages located on border areas, suffering from isolation,” Manmohan Singh said, addressing an election rally at Pasighat in East Siang district. “The highway would be completed by 2013 and would go a long way in boosting infrastructure in the region....

Metro, the city of Galveston and a third group are all pushing commuter service conceptsA political turf war has broken out to determine who will bring commuter rail to the Houston area. While actual trains are years in the future, the lobbying and jockeying have begun behind the scenes, spurred by stimulus money and the promise of future federal money for high-speed passenger trains. “If this thing gets built it's going to involve a lot of funding,” said Christof Spieler, a transportation analyst on the board of the Citizens' Transportation Coalition. “Every agency wants to be in charge of that...

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced on Friday that his state would build the first bullet train in the nation, a project that would provide a 10-billion-dollar economic boost to the state.     "I think it is disgraceful for America to be so far behind when it comes to infrastructure," Schwarzenegger told a press conference.     "In Europe and Asian countries, they're traveling now up to 300miles or 480 kilometers (per hour on bullet trains), while we're traveling on our trains at the same speed as 100 years ago. That is inexcusable. America must catch up," he...

The French national railway SNCF has filed a detailed proposal with the Federal Railroad Administration stating an interest in operating high-speed rail in Texas. The route in question would run from DFW through Austin and into San Antonio. It would not be the Gulf Coast route that's been on the USDOT's official list of 10 prospective HSR corridors or the much-promoted Dallas-Houston link (including the Texas T-Bone). But Houston could be in the distance. From Yonah Freemark on the TransportPolitic blog: At $13.8 billion in construction costs, SNCF expects benefits to outweigh public infrastructure costs by 170% over a period...

Imagine whizzing from Anaheim to San Francisco in just two hours and 57 minutes on a high-speed train, to enjoy dim sum in Chinatown. For $40 billion or so, it might just come to pass! On Thursday, the California High-Speed Rail Authority decided to apply for $4.57 billion in Federal High-Speed Rail Stimulus Funding for 10 projects throughout the state. That includes: $2 billion for the Los Angeles to Anaheim segment, $1.28 billion for the San Francisco to San Jose segment, $819 million for the Fresno to Bakersfield segment, and $466 million for the Merced to Fresno segment. California would...

Virginia Railway Express riders will be able to carry firearms aboard trains operating in Virginia because of a policy adopted by the commuter rail service's operations board. During a meeting Friday, board members changed the transit agency's policy to match Virginia code, which allows people without a criminal record to carry weapons in plain view and those with a permit to carry concealed weapons. VRE spokesman Mark Roeber noted that guns remain banned once trains, which run from Manassas and Fredericksburg to Washington, cross the Potomac River into the District. "When we looked at making the current [policy] changes, this...

With all the howling this week over at the New York Times Editorial Board about Senate passage of the Wicker Amendment, its refreshing to learn that the Board of Directors of the Virginia Rail Express voted yesterday to let train riders carry loaded guns. While the Wicker Amendment passed by the Senate this week requires AMTRAK to let train riders check their unloaded guns in cases onto trains as is done by the airlines, the VRE Board passed a resolution just two days later (September 18, 2009) to let riders carry loaded guns. . . . However, as is the...

A woman trying to smash a penny on the tracks was hit by a train Thursday night. Emergency crews rushed to the scene at River Road and Idaho Street in Sedamsville just after 8 p.m. They say the woman in her 20s suffered a minor head injury and was walking around when crews arrived. She was taken to the hospital for observation.

I’ve just been on Amtrak’s website to see how much it would cost for a single day, round trip adult ticket from Metro Park, NJ (MET) to Union Station (WAS) on September 12, 2009. When I do this, the total cost is $224.00. Note that this is for the 121 Train departing at 6:20 AM and the 182 Train leaving DC at 7:20 PM. When I enter the same itinerary for one week later, September 19, 2009 and select the same trains the total round trip cost is $98.00. The dramatic price difference confuses me and I can’t explain why...

Here is shocking video from a camera on the front of an Amtrak train in Michigan that collided with a car carrying five teenagers on July 9. The car reportedly went around warning barriers and drove right into the path of the train. All five passengers were killed. The video shows the collision. You can see the car dart right into the path of the train, and then you can hear the train's brakes stopping the train. You cannot see the car stuck to the front of the train in the video, but at the 2:25 mark of the video,...

He loves Thomas the Tank Engine, travelling on the Eurostar and watching his train set go round and round. So when a vacancy opened up as director of the National Railway Museum Sam Pointon was confident he could do the job - despite being only six years old. His letter, in which he outlined how he could control two trains at once, arrived with hundreds of other applications but stood out a mile.

The only major transportation program inserted into the $787 billion federal stimulus package was $8 billion for so-called high-speed rail. The Obama administration later added another $5 billion to the passenger rail kitty, bringing the federal commitment to $13 billion. The administration’s initiative, however, may soon become a potent symbol of the economic stimulus program’s failures. In April, President Obama claimed “my high speed rail proposal will lead to innovations in the way we travel” and new rail lines “will generate many thousands of construction jobs over several years, as well as permanent jobs for rail employees and increased economic...

U.S. rail hauls of metal cargoes reach highest level yet in 2009 A traffic recovery for large U.S. railroads picked up steam in the week ending Aug. 1, adding to signs that freight demand may be on a sustained climb from recession lows. The Class I carriers and a few regionals that report to the Association of American Railroads said their U.S. operations carried 274,728 bulk carloads, up nearly 800 from a week earlier. Train hauls of intermodal boxes, containers and trailers combined, hit 193,332 units for a gain of about 350. From the same week in 2008, carloads were...

While we have gotten several economic reports in a row that indicate the economy is stabilizing, if not starting to expand, there is one indicator of the real economy that is not budging, namely rail traffic. The table below comes from Railfax, which tracks activity on the nation's rails. It shows very little change in activity. Look at the 4-week rolling average (the weekly numbers can contain a lot of noise, the 4-week average smooths them out) relative to the year-to-date numbers. For total rail traffic, there has been only a 0.2% difference in the year-over-year rate of decline, down...

Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to endorse a light rail line over bus rapid transit with his announcement Tuesday that Maryland will pursue federal transit money to build a Purple Line linking Prince George's and Montgomery counties. His administration will apply for funding for the 16-mile line as well as a 14-mile Red Line through Baltimore, two long-awaited projects that have been in the planning stages for years. O'Malley has scheduled a whistle-stop train tour befitting both announcements: He'll hold an 8:30 a.m. press conference with state and local officials at the New Carrollton Metro Station,the proposed eastern terminus for...

Central Illinois has a powerful ally in its long desire for access to high-speed rail service, and some Peoria County officials got that word directly from the source last week. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told a trio of local officials that high-speed rail service is a high priority for the Obama administration. Peoria, though, isn't directly part of that plan. Even if Illinois gets a high-speed train between Chicago and St. Louis, the closest that route would come to Peoria is Normal. Peoria County officials, however, are working to climb aboard with the help of the Tri-County Regional...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Officials say the Long Island Rail Road is going to be cleaner and greener, thanks to an influx of federal economic stimulus money. Gov. David Paterson announced Saturday that $25.5 million in stimulus money will finance a new, environmentally friendly train wash for the commuter railroad's electric fleet. The facility will be built in Babylon, replacing an old train wash that was demolished. Another facility in Ronkonkoma also washes electric trains, which make up a large part of the LIRR's fleet. The Babylon train wash will recycle some of its water and get some of its...

After quietly toiling for nearly five years on an environmental study, the designers of a proposed high-tech, magnetically levitating train from Pittsburgh International Airport to Downtown, Monroeville and Greensburg are seeking more than a quarter of the federal stimulus money dedicated to high-speed rail across the country. Last week, the Pennsylvania High-Speed Maglev Project and PennDOT submitted a preliminary application for $2.3 billion to help design and build the train system, starting with the segment between the airport and Downtown. The final draft of the project's Environmental Impact Statement could be released to the public by late September or early...

(07-10) 17:00 PDT OAKLAND -- A man who lay down on the tracks in front of an Amtrak train in Oakland had limbs severed but was taken from the scene alive this afternoon, authorities said. Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said the eastbound Capitol Corridor train No. 536 was leaving Jack London Square when it struck the man at Webster Street at 3:37 p.m. The man lost some limbs and was hospitalized in critical condition, police said. Further details were not available, and the man's name has not been released.

As America's largest city without rail transit, some people want San Antonio to “keep up” by building light rail. You need to know only one thing: Light rail is really expensive. I mean, really, really expensive. The average mile of light-rail line costs two to five times as much as an urban freeway lane-mile. Yet in 2007 the average light-rail line carried less than one-seventh as many people as the average freeway lane-mile in cities with light rail. Do the math: Light rail costs 14 to 35 times as much to move people as highways. The Government Accountability Office found...

New Mexico, Colorado and Texas are applying for federal funds to study the viability of a high-speed rail system from El Paso through New Mexico to Denver. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Sen. Tom Udall, DN.M., said Thursday the three states will submit a joint pre-application Friday for up to $5 million to pay for the study. Congress has authorized up to 11 high-speed rail corridors nationwide.

Click link for video and details. Wreck occurs at 1:10 mark.

Two monorail trains smashed into each other at Walt Disney World in Orlando early Sunday morning, killing one conductor and injuring the other. A Walt Disney World spokesman said the crash happened at about 2 a.m. Sunday on the monorail's last run of the day. The trains were carrying only five passengers and two employees, none of whom were hurt. "Two trains collided at the ticket and transportation center. One driver on one train is dead and the other driver from the second train was taken to the hospital," said Bo Jones of the Reedy Creek Fire Department. The crash...

Ex-Chinese leader may be on train involved in collision - HK rights centre 399 ¦r 2009 ¦~ 6 ¤ë 29 ¤é 16:07 BBC Monitoring Newsfile BBCMNF ­^¤å (c) 2009 The British Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No material may be reproduced except with the express permission of The British Broadcasting Corporation. Text of report by Hong Kong Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy on 29 June [Report: "Train Collision in Hunan's Chenzhou; Jiang Zemin May Be on Board"] As this centre has learned, at 0240 this morning [1840 gmt 28 June], train number K9017 going from Changsha to Shenzhen...