Free Republic

Hold onto your engineer caps, railroad history lovers. Seventy years after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, the steep Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Utah were still giving the Union Pacific Railroad trouble. Despite having massive steam engines, the Union Pacific, one of the biggest railroads in America, still struggled to move heavy freight trains over the mountains and would often have to use multiple locomotives to get trains to their destination. This practice required more workers and more fuel. In 1940, the Union Pacific’s mechanical engineers teamed up with the American Locomotive Company to build one...

... Japanese rail system occasionally becomes the focus of international headlines—as on May 11, when West Japan Railways issued a florid apology after one of its commuter trains left the station 25 seconds early.... The orderliness of society is taken as a given—Japanese commuters know how to queue on an escalator and can easily navigate the confusing, but wide-open, spaces of Tokyo’s rail stations without assistance. This allows rail operators to instead focus on deeper psychological manipulation. Operating on the theory that exposure to blue light has a calming effect on one’s mood, rail stations in Japan began installing these...

Mounting problems may end high-speed-rail projects in California and Texas. A decade ago, high-speed rail was the new, new thing. In 2008, California voters narrowly approved initial bonds for a train that was supposed to go 220 miles an hour and deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. The next year, the Obama administration’s stimulus bill allocated money for it and several other high-speed lines. But soon the push for trains slowed to a crawl, and now it appears to be on life support. In 2011, the new GOP governors of Florida, Ohio,...

A disaster was narrowly averted in eastern India Saturday after a runaway train carrying up to 1,000 passengers rolled with speed for several miles before being brought to an emergency stop by railway staff. Video on social media shows the train, which was traveling from the western state of Gujarat to Odisha state in the east, speeding past stations as onlookers and passengers scream helplessly. The train was eventually stopped after railway workers placed wooden wedges on the tracks, bringing it to a crunching halt.

THE NSW Government has an embarrassing problem with $2 billion worth of new trains that are on order — they’re too wide to go through the tunnels. Whereas the current trains are 2.9m wide, the new models being built in South Korea are 20cm wider. That small difference could have a big impact. It means the new trains could collide with the tunnel walls on their way up to the world famous Blue Mountains. But Transport for NSW (TfNSW), the Government body that manages the state’s rail system, has come up with a cunning plan. It has proposed simply relaxing...

That may sound like a clickbaity headline, but it’s proving to be literally true. Apparently, no one can guess it, least of all the California High-Speed Rail Authority that is running the bullet-train project. Their latest projection shows total predicted cost has jumped 20% to $77 billion, with a completion date moved out four years to 2033.For now, anyway. Be sure to check back next week in the Boondoggle Lotto! The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be...

The price of the California bullet train project jumped sharply Friday when the state rail authority announced that the cost of connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco would be $77.3 billion and could rise as high as $98.1 billion — an uptick of at least $13 billion from estimates two years ago. The rail authority also said the earliest trains could operate on a partial system between San Francisco and Bakersfield would be 2029 — four years later than the previous projection. The full system would not begin operating until 2033. The disclosures are contained in a 114-page business plan...

The projected cost of California's bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles has jumped to $77 billion and the opening date has been pushed back four years to 2033, according to a business plan released Friday. The two-year plan presented by the California High-Speed Rail Authority is the first under new chief executive Brian Kelly, who has promised more transparency about the project's challenges after years of cost increases and delays.

CROZET, Va. – A train carrying dozens of Republican members of Congress, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, to their legislative retreat in West Virginia hit a truck on January 31, 2017 leaving one person dead. Wednesday the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary investigation into the crash. They said around 11:15 a.m., a 2018 Freightliner truck equipped with a McNeilus Truck & Manufacturing refuse body was traveling southbound on Lanetown Road in Albemarle County near Crozet, Virginia. The refuse truck, operated by Time Disposal LLC, had a 30-year-old driver and two passengers as it drove towards a highway–railroad grade...

<p>A high-speed Amtrak train bound for Penn Station broke apart as it was cruising through Maryland on Tuesday, sources told The Post. Modal Trigger A high-speed Amtrak train bound for Penn Station broke apart as it was moving at top speed through Maryland.</p>

Two Amtrak personnel were killed and over 100 others were injured when an Amtrak passenger train collided with a parked CSX freight train early Sunday just outside the capital of South Carolina, officials said.

An Amtrak passenger train collided with a freight train in South Carolina early Sunday morning, causing injuries, the national passenger railroad service said. Amtrak said in a statement, "Amtrak Train 91, operating between New York and Miami, came in contact with a CSX freight train at around 2:35 am in Cayce, South Carolina." The statement continued, "The lead engine derailed, as well as some passenger cars. There were 8 crew members and approximately 139 passengers, with injuries reported. Local authorities are on the scene responding. More information will be provided as available."

From FOX: Details very sketchy now. Train headed to Greenbriar, WV (Mt. Weather) Some sort of "incident" Details to follow.

The White House is confirming one fatality and one serious injury after a chartered train carrying Republican lawmakers to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says there are no serious injuries among members of Congress or congressional staff. Sanders says President Donald Trump has been fully briefed on the matter and is receiving regular updates. The train carrying the lawmakers hit a garbage truck south of Charlottesville, Virginia. Lawmakers are heading to their annual legislative retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Officials increased the cost estimate for the first phase of California’s high speed rail project by 35 percent on Tuesday, to $10.6 billion. That would put the entire cost of the train from San Francisco to Los Angeles at roughly $67 billion, although officials said they hope to recover the newly announced costs later. […] The $2.8 billion price jump is for a 119-mile (191-kilometer) segment in the Central Valley, which is partially under construction. The fresh costs are due to trouble acquiring rights of way for the track, the need to build more barriers along the tracks and other...

A Missouri man whose bizarre antics on an Amtrak train in October landed him in jail now faces terrorism charges. Taylor Michael Wilson, 26, of St. Charles, Miss., allegedly forced his way into the train engineer’s cab while in southwest Nebraska and pulled the emergency brakes. He then made odd statements like, “I’m the conductor b----“ and “what are you going to do, shoot me?” NBC News reported. The FBI believes Wilson is a white supremacist who is a member of a neo-Nazi group, authorities said. Wilson, 26, was charged in December with “terrorism attacks and other violence against railroad...

The Trump administration has shut down a $13 billion federal spending plan to rebuild an Amtrak project between New York and New Jersey. According to a letter obtained by Crain’s New York Business, the administration called the deal proposed by former President Barack Obama — which would have been half paid for by the federal government — “non-existent.” “Your letter also references a non-existent '50/50' agreement between [the Department of Transportation], New York, and New Jersey. There is no such agreement," wrote Federal Transit Administration deputy administrator K. Jane Williams in a Friday letter. “We consider it unhelpful to reference...

Machines and structures fail sometimes, but the human factor is at the heart of dangers we face time after time, from global warming to traffic collisions. People make mistakes. The human factor likely played a role in Monday’s fatal Amtrak train derailment near Olympia. There will be a long investigation, but early indications are that the rails and the train functioned as they are supposed to, which leaves questions about the people at the controls. When something goes wrong, the fault can be with the people who operate equipment, the people who design systems, the people who decide how much...

Audio: Mayor predicted people will 'get killed' on Amtrak route "It’s virtually inevitable that someone is going to get killed that wouldn’t be killed otherwise," Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned WSDOT about the new high-speed route. Author: Susannah Frame Published: 10:37 PM PST December 18, 2017 Two weeks before a high-speed Amtrak train derailed near DuPont, Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson warned the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) that the route could be deadly without additional safety precautions.

The mayor of a city near the scene of Monday’s deadly train crash in Washington state warned earlier this month that the start of high-speed service was bound to end in disaster.During a Dec. 4 meeting of the Lakewood City Council, Mayor Don Anderson blasted plans by the Washington State Department of Transportation to let Amtrak trains travel through the city at up to 79 mph without first installing overpasses or other means of keeping motor vehicles and pedestrians away from the tracks.“Come back when there is that accident, and try to justify not putting in those safety enhancements, or...