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The May Amtrak derailment outside of Philadelphia put the sorry state of passenger rail in the United States briefly back on the public agenda, leaving many people wondering not just about the specifics of the crash but about the more general issue — how is it that a rich and powerful country that was a pioneer in railroad adoption in the 19th century has such terrible trains? The United States is a big country, with lots of trains in it. So you can really think of this big generic question as composed of three separate questions with separate answers. One...

Everything you really need to know about the Constitution (and that’s barely an exaggeration) -- why it is structured the way it is, what led to it, its purposes -- is found in pages 2 – 12 of the March 9 concurring opinion by Justice Thomas in the Dept of Transportation v Assn of American Railroads case. Although it received little media attention, Justice Thomas has provided us a masterpiece of constitutional thinking, explaining why “administrative law” -- the practice of delegating to bureaucrats the making and enforcement of rules with the force of law – is so profoundly unconstitutional....

As a young reporter in the 1970s, I covered the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Created in 1887, the ICC regulated the nation's railroads and sought to protect the public against abusive freight rates. Congress deregulated the railroads in 1980 and ultimately abolished the ICC. The verdict was that the agency had so weakened the industry that a government takeover might be necessary. Deregulation was a desperate alternative to nationalization. I mention all this because there are obvious parallels between the Internet today and the railroads in the late 19th century. Like the railroads then, the Internet today is the great...

West Coast docks are paralyzed as employers and longshoremen continued to spat about contracts and congestion problems. There are plenty of losers. Exporters, like farmers and ranchers, can't get their perishables to Asian markets during the Lunar New Year when demand for fruit and meat is particularly high. And importers large and small are beginning to report shipment delays and inventory shortages. Are there winners? Kind of … Air Freight. Some importers, like electronics dealers and luxury retailers, can afford to put their cargo on planes, despite at least a ten-fold increase in shipping costs. ... East Coast/Gulf Coast ports....

As fracking accelerates in North American shale fields, oilfield services providers Halliburton Co and Baker Hughes Inc are stockpiling sand to protect themselves against rising costs and are buying more railcars to transport the haul.

The nation’s largest freight rail carriers announced Wednesday they will provide health care benefits to the same-sex spouses of their employees, one day after legally married, gay engineers filed a federal lawsuit in Seattle. Gus Melonas, a spokesman for BNSF Railway Co., read the statement from the National Railway Labor Conference to The Associated Press. The conference represents the railroad companies in dealings with labor groups, lawmakers and courts. Same-sex spouses will be eligible for dependent health care coverage starting Jan. 1, the statement said. …

The National Transportation Safety Board said it had dispatched a team to investigate the train crash. Two freight trains collided at a rail intersection in rural southeastern Missouri on Saturday, triggering the collapse of a highway overpass when at least a dozen rail cars derailed and struck a support pillar, authorities said. None of the seven people hurt in the fiery crash – two train workers and five people who had been in the two cars on the overpass – suffered life-threatening injuries, Scott County sheriff Rick Walter said in a statement. "One train T-boned the other one and...

Rail Traffic Confirms That The Economy Remains Sluggish Cullen Roche, Pragmatic Capitalism May 25, 2013, 7:54 AMThe good news from this week’s rail traffic report is that we’re not sliding into consistently negative readings that might lead us to a far less constructive position on the economy. The bad news is that the 12 week moving average has slid down to 2.4% and is consistent with an economy that remains sluggish. Here are the details on this week’s data from AAR: “The Association of American Railroads (AAR) reported an increase in traffic for the week ending May 18, 2013, with...

TORONTO — Canadian immigration authorities tried to deport the Toronto VIA Rail terror suspect nine years ago but never did so because, as a stateless Palestinian, he could not be sent to any other country, documents obtained by the National Post show. Raed Jaser was allegedly working illegally under several aliases when he was arrested in August 2004 on an outstanding immigration warrant. Officials wanted to deport him because he had a string of criminal convictions but were forced to set him free after two days. The government’s failure to deport Mr. Jaser allegedly proved costly for Canada: He and...

Canadian authorities announced Monday they have broken up an Al Qaeda-linked terror plot to attack a passenger train as it crossed over a bridge in the Toronto area. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday that two suspects have been arrested on terrorism charges. Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser, who live in greater Montreal and Toronto -- were conspiring to carry out an Al Qaeda-supported attack against Via Rail, but posed no immediate threat to the public. "It was definitely in the planning stage but not imminent," RCMP chief superintendent Jennifer Strachan told reporters at a news conference. Read more:...

Warren Buffett's company has sold two short-line railroads it recently discovered it owned to satisfy regulators who might have reviewed Berkshire Hathaway's 2010 acquisition of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad. Berkshire told the Transportation Department's Surface Transportation Board earlier this month that it had completed the sale of both short-line railroads ahead of schedule. If Berkshire had reported owning those railroads when it bought BNSF, the Surface Transportation Board would have had to scrutinize the deal. Berkshire first disclosed owning the railroads to the Surface Transportation Board in September. (snip)

Two live web cams went on line this weekend in Chama, NM showing the train yard of the steam-powered narrow gauge RR. As of the time of this posting, the daily eastbound passenger train from Antonito, CO has just arrived and stopped at the depot. After the passengers depart, the two other live steam engines will separate the cars for servicing and arranging for Sunday's departures. All of this under blue skies and autumn fall colors. Enjoy! http://www.coloradonewmexicosteamtrain.org/yard-cams.htm

Recent Chinese diplomatic maneuvers in Central Asia, both bilateral and multilateral, show that Beijing’s strategy treats the region as a corridor for reaching resource bases in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. Central Asia is thus part of China’s broader blueprint of securing strategic resources and supplies to feed its developing economy (Z. Saipov, China Oil & Gas Monitor, Week 21, Issue 396, News Base, May 31, p. 3–4). Hu Jintao (L) and Islam Karimov Illustratively, Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu’s two-week official tour of Congo, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on September 1–13 (English.sina.com, September 6) supports the premise that...

On this day in 1950, in anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order putting America's railroads under the control of the U.S. Army, as of August 27, at 4:00 pm. Truman had already intervened in another railway dispute when union employees of the Chicago, North Shore and Milwaukee Railway Company threatened to strike in 1948. This time, however, Truman's intervention was critical, as he had just ordered American troops into a war against North Korean communist forces in June. Since much of America's economic and defense infrastructure was dependent upon the...

CAMERON, WIS. - The last time a train crawled east out of Cameron, rolling through town at about 5 miles per hour, a railroad worker stood on the front of the locomotive, peering at the warped rail and broken ties to make sure the train wouldn't slip off the track. The railroad gave the line over to weeds and saplings for more than a decade. The state almost turned it into a bike trail. But now Canadian National Railway is spending $35 million to rebuild the track. Why? Frac sand. Voracious demand for the hard, round sand of Wisconsin and...

Metro officials on Saturday said excessive heat was the probable cause for a train derailment Friday in Prince George’s County. Investigators said a “heat kink” due to extreme high temperatures and direct exposure to sunlight likely caused the rails to expand, resulting in the derailment. The derailment was reported on the inbound stretch of the Green Line near the West Hyattsville Station around 4:45 p.m.

A new high-speed railway in northern Sweden has already claimed the lives of 200 reindeer since it opened three months ago, forcing the farm owner to move to safer pastures. The train line, which runs between Umeå and Lycksele, has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of reindeer over the last three months, when the unfortunate animals have wandered onto the tracks. Finding a dead reindeer or one that is injured and needs to be euthanized is a daily occurrence for reindeer owner, Per-Mikael Jonsson, who is forced to put down many injured reindeer fearing that their internal damages...

RAIL TRAFFIC – STILL NO RECESSION HERE 5 January 2012 by Cullen RocheRail traffic has remained a superb indicator over the course of the last 6 months and it’s been at least partially influential in my thinking that we were not headed for imminent recession (a call made 2 quarters ago). The latest data from the AAR continues to confirm this outlook. Year-end readings are always a bit bumpy due to the seasonal oddities that occur around the holidays and the new year, but the data is still telling a positive story. Via the AAR: “The Association of American Railroads...

New management at the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad could mean a more kid-friendly train. American Heritage Railways, which will begin running operations next year, owns the rights to both The Polar Express and The Little Engine That Could. “Events are very important to them,” said Randy Randall, Cumbres & Toltec’s commission chairman. “I think they’re going to be more creative in their approach to the railroad, but they’re also deeply committed to its historic components.” The switch was announced by train officials Thursday. For the past six years, the more-than-a-century-old railroad running between Chama and Antonito, Colo., has been...

Beijing - A passenger was beaten to death by staff on a train in eastern China, state media reported, dealing a fresh blow to the rail industry's reputation following a fatal crash in July. Three train staff seized the middle-aged man by the throat and savagely beat him after he intervened in an argument involving another passenger, Jiangxi Television, a local station, reported on Monday. Doctors were summoned from an emergency centre near the station in Jiangxi province where the train stopped, but the man died before they arrived, the report said, citing witnesses and the hospital. The television report...