Free Republic

There's a network of freight trains that runs the length of Mexico, from its southernmost border with Guatemala north to the United States. In addition to grain, corn or scrap metal, these trains are carrying an increasing number of undocumented immigrants whose aim is to cross into the U.S.... People call the train La Bestia, or The Beast.... It's estimated that up to a half-million migrants now ride The Beast each year, sitting back-to-back along the spine of the train cars, trying not to get knocked off their rooftop perch. "They're just packed," says photojournalist Keith Dannemiller, "There's not much...

Officials at all levels of government are banking that Metro Transit's $957 million investment will do more than simply shuttle existing bus riders in fancier vehicles between the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis when it debuts June 14. They are counting on light rail to be a catalyst -- an economic game-changer for downtown St. Paul and much of University Avenue. Both areas have lost industry since the 1970s. The city as a whole lost 13.4 percent of its employment from 2000 to 2011, a period during which the U.S. shed 2.2 percent of its jobs, according to Wilder...

To the Honorable Mr. Indyk Sir: Several days ago, you appeared on the Israeli media and blamed all the current ills, including the breakup of talks between our negotiators and the Arabs among us, on the "settlement" movement and the resumption of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria. We would have you know, that from the first days of the "Return to Zion" movement", over 130 years ago, and followed by the forming of Theodore Herzl's Zionist movement, there was always – and still is – disagreement ... Some felt that it was necessary to convince the world, and perhaps...

China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska. "Right now we're already in discussions. Russia has already been thinking about this for many years," says Wang Mengshu, the engineer cited in the article. The proposed "China-Russia-Canada-America" line would be some 8,000 miles long, 1,800...

WORCESTER, Mass., May 5 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts man who was drinking during a Saturday afternoon pub crawl in Boston was allegedly found “surfing” on top of an MBTA commuter train while wearing a sombrero and poncho that night. The train's engineer stopped the train between Southborough and Ashland after being told someone was on top of the train while it was traveling 40 mph.

A dangerous scorpion shocked passengers as it nipped into a Tube station and tried to pinch a ride on a man’s bag.The man screamed when he saw it clinging to his bag at Victoria Underground station in central London. London Underground staff were quickly on hand after hearing the commotion, British Transport Police (BTP) said. They managed to capture the scorpion and placed it in a plastic lunchbox, which they pierced with air holes, while they called the police. Specialist wildlife crime officers from BTP went to the station to remove the creature, which had been put on a shelf...

A train derailment in Lynchburg, Virginia dumped as much as 50,000 gallons of oil, the latest such rail disaster in a recent series. Thus far, the spill doesn’t pose a safety issue for local water use, as the river into which the rail cars tumbled is only used as a drought resource. CBS News raises the point that the safety of oil transport by rail has become a serious problem, and that the federal government has thus far acted slowly to respond to it: Concern about the safety of oil trains was heightened last July when runaway oil train derailed...

When California first put the issue of building a high-speed bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco before voters, Gov. Jerry Brown made all sorts of nifty-sounding promises about how efficient, convenient, and fiscally sound a choice the rail line would be for Californians. All of those promises have more or less turned out to be a sham by now, as the train’s costs have exploded and its deadlines pushed way back, and now it appears that that less-than-three-hour ride Californians were originally promised… well, probably isn’t. ... who really considers a mounting “wall of debt” and a slew...

CHICAGO—An emergency track-side braking system activated but failed to stop a Chicago commuter train from jumping the tracks and barreling to the top of an escalator at O'Hare International Airport, a federal investigator said Tuesday. The events that led to Monday's accident, which occurred around 3 a.m. and injured more than 30 passengers, might have begun with the train operator dozing off toward the end of her shift, according the union representing transit workers. But Tuesday's announcement that a piece of emergency safety equipment might have failed was the first indication the accident could have been caused by human error...

A 21-year-old from southern Spain died on Saturday after being electrocuted when he climbed on to a train to take a photo of himself with friends. The young man from the Andalusian town of Andújar suffered the fatal blow when he touched a high-voltage wire on a train he and his friends had assumed was not electrified. They'd clambered on top of the parked wagon at Andújar train station to take a picture of themselves when they suffered the severe electric shock. Spanish online daily Ideal reported that a 3,5000-volt discharge killed the young man as he went to take...

Joe Biden is visiting Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station today, and Delaware’s favorite son showed up to sit in Amtrak’s new locomotive. Veep Joe Biden sits in the front of Amtrak's new locomotive at 30th Street Station in Philly. Story upcoming. pic.twitter.com/Vb9xviCleH — Kathy Matheson (@kmatheson) February 6, 2014   Biden is in town to celebrate Amtrak’s Cities Sprinter electric locomotive, which will power trains along the Northeast corridor and from Harrisburg to Philadelphia.

A Canadian National Railway Co train carrying fuel oil and other hazardous materials derailed and was leaking in southeast Mississippi on Friday, forcing the evacuation of nearby residents, officials said. No one was injured in the incident which involved the derailment of 21 railcars, eight of which have spilled their contents, a Canadian National Railway spokesman said. Several of the cars were carrying hazardous materials including fertilizer and methanol, but there was no fire, he said. The accident, the latest in a string of North American train derailments over the past year, occurred in the city limits of New Augusta...

Regulations that could force oil companies to use stronger rail cars to move crude likely will be ready in 2015, according to a schedule released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Oil companies have increasingly used rail cars to move crude, but recent disasters, including a derailment and massive explosions in North Dakota last month, have drawn attention to the cars’ vulnerabilities. New regulations that could force older tank cars to be upgraded or phased out are under development, but will not be proposed until Nov. 12 and will be subject to a public comment period until Jan. 12,...

The railway industry wants to “aggressively phase out” older model tank cars that have been implicated in several recent accidents, the head of CN Rail’s safety division told an industry forum Monday. But the consensus at the day-long workshop was that there’s no quick fix for a decades-old problem that has almost 80,000 sub-standard DOT-111 tank cars carrying flammable liquids on North American tracks. And whatever the solution, the cost eventually will be borne by consumers. Sam Berrada, director general of safety and occupational health services for CN, told an overflow crowd of industry types, regulators, lobbyists and local first...

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said he thinks President Obama will approve the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. In the wake of multiple crude-by-rail train accidents in North Dakota -- leaving railcars ablaze and nearby residents at risk --Hoeven said on "Platts Energy Week" that the U.S. needs more pipelines. The U.S. needs pipelines "not only to improve conditions in terms of rail, but trucks," Hoeven said on Sunday. "With the Keystone pipeline, we'd take 500 trucks a day off our roads in western North Dakota." "So clearly pipelines are a part of the solution. But also we have to do everything...

Officials in Canada said a derailed freight train carrying crude oil and propane continued to burn Wednesday morning, while they prepared to launch aerial surveillance and more than 100 residents remained evacuated from their homes. There were no deaths or injuries. “The biggest concern is the propane cars,” the fire chief of the nearby community of Plaster Rock, Tim Corbin, said Wednesday morning, according to CBC News. “That’s our biggest concern because if they happen to explode, we’re looking at major damage.” The derailment late Tuesday in a sparsely populated region of New Brunswick again raised concerns about the increasing...

The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 ended the federal government's financial support of many passenger rail routes. The federal subsidy for the operational costs for the Wolverine passenger rail service running from Pontiac-Detroit-Chicago, for example, has ended. The Michigan Legislature, however, included an extra $19.3 million in the budget for the 2013-2014 fiscal year to replace the lost federal funds. This sum represents a tripling of the state subsidy required to cover Amtrak's operating costs compared to the previous year. Michigan taxpayers will provide a $98.11 subsidy per roundtrip passenger in fiscal 2014. Two other Amtrak lines,...

A Union Pacific train carrying 70 tanker cars of crude oil from Colorado rolled into the Port of Beaumont’s Orange County Terminal last week — the first to arrive at a new facility built for such shipments. Called a unit train because it carried a single cargo to one destination, it brought 43,000 barrels of oil from the Niobrara Shale in Colorado to the Jefferson Transload Railport for use by an area refinery.

SNIPPET: "A federal grand jury has issued an eight-count indictment against a central Arkansas man accused of damaging electric cooperative and other power facilities. Jason Woodring, 37, was indicted on charges relating to sabotage of high-voltage power lines and power stations earlier this year in several cities. Among them: a terrorist attack against a railroad carrier and destruction of energy facilities, including a 115,000-volt transmission line owned by First Electric Cooperative in Jacksonville. Woodring faces up to 20 years in prison on the energy facility destruction charges, and life in prison if convicted on the terrorism charge. According to an...

"...CBS New York, citing FDNY sources, is saying there are "several injuries." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/metro-north-train-derails-in-the-bronx-2013-12#ixzz2mEOvVQNG ..."