Free Republic

One has to wonder what the DHS has been doing for the past 7 years. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=20200234&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — CSX Corp. is taking a different approach to the government. For years, the railroad industry wanted to keep government out of its affairs. But an increase in advertising by CSX (NYSE: CSX) and Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC) is an attempt to make voters and policymakers aware of rail’s benefits, said Anthony Hatch, a New York City-based transportation analyst. “The industry had been going through the pains of deregulation and was trying to do as much as they could to be ignored by the government,” he said. “That began to change over the past decade as railroads...

History tends to repeat itself in more ways than one. Wichita Falls historian and author Steve Goen has again been asked to give a presentation at George Bush Presidential Library and Museum at the Texas A&M campus at College Station Nov. 22. This will be his second appearance at the library. Goen’s presentation, “The Katy Railroad — Our State’s Original Trans-Texas Corridor,” will showcase the evolution of transportation along the Blackland Prairie in Central Texas. “Gov. Rick Perry and politicians in Austin are pushing for a superhighway with a railroad running through it,” Goen said. “There’s a lot of resistance...

3rd Suspect Nabbed in Subway Terror Plot By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN, Associated Press Writer 51 minutes ago The investigation into an alleged plot to bomb the city's subway moved forward on several fronts Friday as a third suspect was arrested in Iraq and authorities looked into whether a fourth person had traveled to New York as part of the scheme, officials said. A law enforcement official familiar with the case said the man's trip to New York was described by an informant who had spent time in Afghanistan and proved reliable in past investigations. "He's been a source of multiple correct...

COLFAX, Calif. -- A train carrying non-hazardous chemicals derailed in northeast California and was partially suspended over a steep cliff Sunday night. One of the train's 73 cars hung over a drop known as China Wall in a rural area away from people and homes, said Placer County Sheriff's Captain Rick Armstrong. No one was injured and authorities said the rail car was not in danger of falling. One of the six cars that derailed contained non-hazardous byproducts and two were carrying an ammonia sulfate powder that is not dangerous by itself, Armstrong said. The Burlington Northern & Santa...

CRESCENT CITY, Fla. (April 20, 2002 7:34 p.m. EDT) - Investigators said Saturday that two Amtrak engineers and a conductor hit the emergency brakes just seconds before a train derailment that left four people dead and more than 150 injured. The lead engineer of the Amtrak Auto Train told the National Transportation Safety Board that he saw a disjointed track about an hour into a trip from Sanford to Lorton, Va., and slammed on the engine's brake. Seconds later, a backup engineer in the locomotive cab and a conductor two cars back felt the train hit the disjointed track and...

Local report just heard on the top of the hour update.Anomaly: 1. Deviation from the normal or common form or rule. (syn anomalousness)2. A person who is unusual (syn. unusual person) Source-Word Net 1.6 1997 Princeton University

Click on the link to view the Beijing to Tianjin High Speed Rail link The Chinese are really up to something.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19, 2008 – Union Pacific is a company that is proud of its strong ties with the military. Hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans helped build the first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, which was considered vital to national defense. During World War I and II, the railroad canteen in North Platte, Neb., was a resting place for many troops on their way overseas. Union Pacific’s partnership with the military continues today and, in some respects, is stronger than ever, said Roy Schroer, assistant vice president of human resources. Of the company’s more than 50,000 employees, more...

Melanie Allen has been "scared to death" this week knowing her son was scheduled to begin a risky escape from the country of Georgia, where Russian troops are poised for further invasion. Lee Allen, 34, and his Georgian wife, Tiko, were to have become part of a caravan fleeing the war-torn country. It may be days before Melanie Allen learns if the couple made it out safely. She was at her Ocean Springs home Tuesday night with friends who are supporting her. -----snip On Monday, four days into the fighting as Russia seized several towns and a military base deep...

"...Bombardier's team was stumped. Europe is a mishmash of disparate rail systems that predate the European Union, back when governments banked on the incongruity "to protect themselves from invading armies and competition from foreign industries," says Oliver Sellnick, director at the International Union of Railways in Paris. While the European Union has managed to unify most of the continent on everything from a common currency to farm policy, combining railroads hasn't been easy. Traveling by train from one country to another has long required coordination with multiple national railways. Drivers and locomotives, for instance, are changed at the borders for...

WASHINGTON — This is not your economy. It's not even your parents' economy. To a surprising degree, this is your great-grandparents' economy. Quietly, while attention has focused on the technology, finance and service sectors, businesses that stood astride 19th century industrial America but then collapsed have been resurrected to meet the needs of a feverishly industrializing world. In the process, much of what Americans think they know about their economy is being upended. Steel makers, railroads, mining concerns and agriculture, long considered part of a fading past, suddenly have bright futures. And segments of the economy long lauded as the...

Want to invest in a green industry that employs the latest technology, reduces U.S. oil consumption and is priced very attractively? Look no further than the railroads. Laggards for decades after the 19th-century boom ended, they're hot again. "There was steady traffic growth until last year, and the trend looks good once the economy gets back up to speed," says Kenneth Kremar, an economist who follows the railroad industry for consulting firm Global Insight. Perhaps that's why railroad stocks have largely escaped the battering that other sectors have taken so far this year. Of course, their business could still be...

Germany has come up with the funds to launch its first magnetic levitation - or maglev - rail service. The state of Bavaria is to build the high-speed railway line from Munich city centre to its airport, making it Europe's first commercial track.

The state faces "a perfect storm" as far as paying for transportation infrastructure is concerned... With that in mind, it only makes sense for the state to divert scarce transportation dollars from the proposed Rail Runner extension to Santa Fe and plow those dollars into road construction and maintenance. [While] Rail Runner's projected total cost is $400 million, those costs are not evenly-distributed. Phase I of the project from Belen to Bernalillo, which is now in service, cost $135 million. The Bernalillo-Belen segment of the proposed RailRunner route is approximately 51 miles long— more than half of the system's proposed...

Eurostar has set a record on its inaugural journey from Paris to London via a new high-speed line in Britain. The train, carrying journalists and VIPs, arrived at St Pancras, instead of Waterloo, for the first time. It took two hours, three minutes, 39 seconds.

Congo train crash kills at least 100: government By Joe Bavier A train crash in a remote part of Democratic Republic of Congo killed at least 100 people and injured more than 200, the central African country's minister of information said on Thursday. "We are still discovering the dead. So right now we are putting the death toll at about 100," Toussaint Tshilombo told Reuters, adding that the cause of the crash was still unknown. "It happened late last night, so we haven't had time to look into how it occurred. But we are sending a team tomorrow, and we...

Switzerland has opened the world's longest rail tunnel on land - the 34-kilometre (21-mile) Loetschberg tunnel under the Alps. It will cut the journey time between Germany and Italy by at least a third.

WASHINGTON - The Capitol Limited, an Amtrak train from Chicago, is scheduled to arrive in Washington every day at 1:30 p.m. But frequent rider Edda Ramos knows better than to make plans for the afternoon or evening. She knows a late arrival — sometimes by an hour or two, sometimes by seven or eight — "is the one thing you can count on." The 764-mile route is among Amtrak's most dismal performers, with just 11 percent of trains arriving within 30 minutes of their scheduled time last year. But the problem exists to one degree or another on the majority...

Phil Maymin, the Libertarian candidate in the Fourth Congressional District, doesn’t want voters to flush away their ballots this November, calling a vote for a Democrat or a Republican a “waste.” “If you’re unhappy with the course the country has been taking for the past 10 years, you have to realize that the Democrats and Republicans have made this mess,” he said at a meeting with reporters and editors from Hersam Acorn Newspapers Thursday, September 7. Mr. Maymin, a Greenwich hedge fund manager, is running against Republican incumbent Rep. Christopher Shays, and Diane Farrell, the Democratic challenger. Just added to...