Free Republic

Buffett's Big Bet: $34B On 2nd-Largest Railroad Freight expectations: Warren Buffett goes `all-in' with $34B bet on railroads and the economy By Samantha Bomkamp,November 3, 2009 NEW YORK (AP) -- The biggest name in investing is making what he calls an "all-in wager" on the U.S. economy -- $34 billion to own a railroad that hauls everything from corn to cars across the country. The acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, the nation's second-largest railroad, would be the biggest ever for Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway investment company. It's a natural fit for the Oracle of Omaha, a city with a...

HELENA, Mont. (AP) – Holiday travel for more than 3,000 Amtrak rail passengers was disrupted when 16 rail cars carrying new automobiles derailed over the weekend in northwestern Montana. Crews were still working Monday night to rerail the cars and reopen the Burlington Northern Santa Fe main line. The derailment caused Amtrak to cancel its eastbound Empire Builder passenger train between Seattle and Minneapolis on Sunday and the westbound train between those cities Monday, said Vernae Graham, an Amtrak spokeswoman in Oakland, Calif. She said other Empire Builder trains along the route were delayed, including one that was 22 hours...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

The developer of the first phase of the Trans Texas Corridor super highway toll system says Texas needs an addition: 600 miles of new rail line from Dallas-Fort Worth to Mexico for freight trains. That's the proposal from Cintra-Zachry, the Spanish and American partnership already working on the first section of toll road for cars and trucks, announced by state transportation officials Wednesday. The Trans Texas Corridor is the plan kick-started several years ago by Gov. Rick Perry to build 4,000-plus miles of tollways and railways that would incorporate oil and gas pipelines, utility and water lines, and even broadband...

AUSTIN -- For years, El Paso officials have studied the multimillion-dollar plan to move hundreds of acres of rail yards out of Downtown to make way for more-attractive development. Texas voters might give the officials help with their plan next month. Proposition 1 on the Nov. 8 constitutional amendment ballot would create a state fund of up to $2 billion to help move and improve rail lines statewide. Proponents of the measure say the fund would be the only way to generate billions of dollars needed to move rail yards out of urban areas. Critics contend that the fund would...

AUSTIN - The first of nine state constitutional amendments proposed on the Nov. 8 ballot would establish a fund through which taxpayers would help pay for relocating freight rail lines from congested urban areas. Like most of the ballot proposals, except for the ban on same-sex marriages, Proposition 1 has received little attention. But it is beginning to spark some debate and, depending on how it fares at the polls, could become an issue in the March Republican governor's primary. Proposition 1 supporters, including Gov. Rick Perry, think the new fund would be an important step toward easing traffic congestion...