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Railroad Scenic trip

BNSF Railway donated a historic SD70MAC to the Illinois Railway Museum. Locomotive 9400 was built in 1993 and is notable for being the first production locomotive (i.e., non-demonstrator) to feature modern AC traction, making it the precursor to thousands of units with this groundbreaking technology. BNSF made the donation earlier this summer, and IRM announced it on July 31. IRM plans to eventually restore the unit to its as-delivered appearance, Burlington Northern’s green and cream “Executive” livery from the early 1990s. Following testing of freight diesels equipped with AC traction motors in the early 1990s, BN ordered the first production...

A merger would create a 52,000-mile system spanning the U.S. but would face regulatory obstacles. Combining Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern into the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. would create a 52,215-mile colossus that could offer seamless service from coast to coast, bypassing longtime interchange choke points in Chicago and at gateways along the Mississippi River. The two railroads confirmed today that they are in advanced merger discussions. The talks, they said, may not result in a deal. Plus, there’s the potential for a bidding war if BNSF Railway, UP’s Western rival, decides to make a move for NS....

Florida operates three separate rail systems: Tri‑Rail, Brightline, and FEC Freight. Tri‑Rail currently runs on the old CSX corridor to the west, while Brightline and FEC Freight share the Florida East Coast (FEC) main line. But now, Tri‑Rail is actively testing on the FEC tracks — with dozens of daily tests into downtown Miami Central on the same rails used by Brightline and freight since June 2023 . Moreover, under the Coastal Link plan, Tri‑Rail is slated to begin regular passenger service along this corridor — effectively merging all three rail services onto one aging track . Picture this: 110...

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) submitted a report to Congress urging action to restore passenger train service. The report proposes a daily Amtrak route from Portland to Denver, with stops in Baker City, Oregon. This was reported by the railway transport news portal Railway Supply. Amtrak ended its Pioneer Route in 1997, and efforts to revive it have occurred sporadically since then. Oregon’s senators have endorsed the idea multiple times, advocating for the route’s return. In 2021, Congress instructed the FRA to evaluate potential new long-distance train routes, including the Pioneer Route. The recent FRA report highlights the Pioneer Route...

Mexico is building the Interoceanic Corridor railway to compete with the Panama Canal and ease international trade. The new railway would aim to relieve the burden on the Panama Canal, which is struggling to receive shipments due to a drought. The Panama Canal has raised toll prices nearly eight-fold, and water levels at an all-time low make ship passage through the canal challenging. Mexico’s Interoceanic Corridor The $7.5 billion dollar project will stretch 188 miles across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The railway will move containers from ships to the train and transport them to ships on the other side that...

A derailment of a mile-long freight train that injured two crew members overnight is under investigation. It happened in the eastern part of Boulder near Foothills Hospital, close to the intersection of Arapahoe Avenue and 48th Street. The train workers were taken to the hospital and were released on Friday morning. The crash destroyed a rail bridge and some trees were knocked down, but there was no other damage aside from the damage to the train cars. The derailment stretches across a wide area and is expected to take a while to clean up.

The Tren de Aragua rose to power in Nicolas Maduro’s anarchotyranny. Now they’re in Florida. Last week, El American broke the news that members of the Tren de Aragua, the largest criminal organization in Venezuela (after the government), had crossed the southern border and were living in Orlando, Florida. The news came a week after Breitbart had claimed that Venezuelan criminals were crossing the border to live in the U.S.—more than likely continuing their criminal enterprises. The source told El American that the criminals were living in Bogotá, Colombia, and were able to change their identity by bribing Venezuelan officials....

A very senior Republican is running for election. Prosecutors are determined to take him out, and are willing to compromise the integrity of the criminal justice system to do so. They indict their target on accounting matters. They cannot prevent him from being a candidate, but malicious prosecutors hope to damage that candidacy. Am I writing about Donald Trump? No. As this column never tires of shouting about the descent of the American criminal justice system into a playground for prosecutorial abuse of power: Remember Ted Stevens! If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone, although with...

The Biden administration could allow California to implement a rule designed to push green locomotives, but a growing list of stakeholders are warning that the regulation would severely impact the state’s economy and the national rail industry. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could soon determine whether it will allow the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to move forward with a state regulation that would ban the use of locomotives that are more than 23 years past their manufacturing date unless they run using zero-emissions technology, according to Progressive Railroading. The rule could disrupt supply chains and saddle the state’s railway...

SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico jury found "Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed guilty of involuntary manslaughter and not guilty of tampering with evidence on Wednesday after deliberating for about two and a half hours. The 26-year-old faces up to three years in state prison and will be sentenced at a later date. A judge ordered that Gutierrez-Reed be taken into custody and held until her sentencing. The nearly two-week criminal trial centered around the 2021 shooting on the "Rust" film set in which actor Alec Baldwin held a prop gun that fired a live round of ammunition, killing the...

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that the Department of Transportation has “taken so many steps on rail safety policy” since the East Palestine derailment and is “doing everything we can with the authorities that we already have,” but accidents have gone up despite this because Congress needs to act. Buttigieg said, “For our department, the process mainly has to do with making sure things like this can’t happen again, which is why we’ve taken so many steps on rail safety policy and are pressing Congress to do more with the power that it has.”

Today, California was notified that the Biden-Harris Administration is awarding $6 billion to the state to build high-speed rail, investing in the whole system – San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Central Valley, creating connectivity north, south and with our neighbors to the east. California High-Speed Rail Authority will receive nearly $3.1 billion for construction in the Central Valley, supporting the overall end goal of connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. Another important rail project, Brightline, will receive $3 billion to connect Los Angeles to Las Vegas with 80% of the project’s construction in California benefiting the state’s economy and...

The city of San Francisco is in the process of constructing a downtown-area railroad extension that is estimated to cost in excess of $4 billion per mile of tunnel, The San Francisco Standard reported. The extension, known as The Portal, is a tunneled rail service that would connect the Salesforce Transit Center in the city’s downtown corridor to Caltrain and future high-speed trains, according to the Standard. The project’s overall cost estimate was recently revised up from $6.5 billion to a total of $8.25 billion, which makes for a per-mile cost of over $4 billion, ... “[Y]ou’re seeing some whopping...

OMAHA, Neb. -- Norfolk Southern became the first major North American freight railroad with deals to provide paid sick time to all of its workers Monday, but the other railroads are making progress, with nearly 65% of all rail workers securing this basic benefit since the start of the year.

In theaters the week of July 4th Claim a free ticket to a theater near you or buy a ticket and pay for a ticket for someone who needs to see this but can’t afford it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the site of the devastating train derailment in Ohio is a “potential crime scene,” blasting House Republicans for not holding a hearing on the incident. “This committee needs to hold a hearing on the derailment in East Palestine,” the New York Democrat said during a House Oversight and Accountability hearing Thursday, as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee grilled the CEO of Norfolk Southern. “This is not just a disaster site. It is a potential crime scene.” The federal government continues to deal with the fallout of the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals...

The Left is enjoying the moment, chuckling as residents near East Palestine, Ohio, are gripped with fear after the toxic train crash. To liberal America, these people deserve to live in fear, and without a doubt—some hope a few die. ‘This is what they voted for’ is the mantra which explains the woefully inadequate response from the Biden administration, which dithered for nearly three weeks before releasing federal resources to the area. It’s no coincidence that Biden authorizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deploy to the site came from Donald Trump’s announcement that he’d visit the town. East Palestine...

The heads of a dozen US railroad unions said Wednesday that workers are getting sick at the site of the toxic Ohio train derailment. The meeting comes after labor leaders claimed that workers at the site of the Norfolk Southern derailment have fallen ill with “migraines and nausea.” “I have received reports that [Norfolk Southern] neither offered nor provided these workers with appropriate personal protective equipment, such as respirators that are designed to permit safely working around vinyl chloride, eye protection and protective clothing such as chemical retrain suits,” the American Rail System Federation wrote in a letter to Buttigieg...

A source told The Ohio Star that her husband, a wildlife biologist and consultant for the federal forestry, received hundreds of calls on both Sunday and Monday from colleagues who say forestry workers have found hundreds of dead animals in Ohio’s parks. Several labs across the country have received specimens of whole minks, deer, elk, worms and livers of such animals and they are finding toxicities that are off the charts, she said.