Free Republic

As odd as it might seem, a train conductor confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that grizzly bears and other wild animals frequently get intoxicated on fermented grain spilled from rail cars, and too many of them end up getting killed as a result. Paul Summers told Cowboy State Daily he’s seen it with his own eyes. “Especially in the summertime, it’s common to see bears, including grizzlies, drunk on grain. You will see them wobbling,” he said. “You will see them staggering.” In fact, he said the bears’ own stubbornness often works against them, as they don’t want to move...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom clarified this week that when he called criminals accused of stealing packages from cargo trains in the state "gangs of people" he wasn’t implying the thefts were gang-related. This is not one-off," Newsom said in a news conference near Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the Washington Times. "This is organized theft. These are organized gangs of people that are coming out." "Forgive me for saying ‘gangs,’ that’s not a pejorative," he clarified. "They’re organized groups of folks that move from site to site."

Seattle – A 28-year-old Bellingham, Washington woman was convicted Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle of violence against a railroad carrier. Ellen Brennan Reiche, was one of two people arrested on the BNSF Railway tracks near Bellingham, near midnight on November 28, 2020. Reiche was convicted of placing a ‘shunt’ – a device that interferes with train signals – on the tracks. The jury deliberated about three hours following the two-day trial. Reiche faces up to 20 years in prison.

Federal authorities in Seattle on Monday charged two women with a terrorist attack on train tracks, suggesting they were working with an anarchist community to stand in solidarity with a Native American tribe to oppose the construction of a natural gas pipeline across the Canadian province of British Columbia by trying to derail trains in Washington state.Samantha Frances Brooks, 27, and Ellen Brennan Reiche, 23, were arrested Saturday night in Bellingham, located in Whatcom County, which borders Canada, as they allegedly placed “shunts” on Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in...

The Twin Ports Interchange reconstruction project through Lincoln Park soared $100 million over budget this month, forcing planners to defer indefinitely portions of the work scheduled for 2020-23. The $343 million project is scheduled to begin in May. Minnesota Department of Transportation figures released Monday at a regular public meeting about the project showed a $443 million price tag. "This is what happens with every big project," Duane Hill, district engineer based in Duluth, said Monday. "You have to manage it as you go along. We thought we did a good job initially coming up with a budget for this...

A disgruntled customer who was escorted out of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in south Lincoln on Tuesday afternoon and then drove his pickup into the building, was shot and killed by a railroad officer, Lincoln Police said. Officers were called to the restaurant at 6810 S. 27th St. shortly after 1 p.m. on an initial report that a vehicle had driven into the business, police said at an afternoon news conference.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc has been sued by a New York bicycle courier company over an alleged illegal scheme to cheat employers buying workers' compensation policies. The complaint, filed late Friday by Breakaway Courier Systems, came as Berkshire's Applied Underwriters unit faces scrutiny over its workers' compensation policies, including some that have been banned by California, Vermont and Wisconsin. Breakaway, with about 300 employees, accused Berkshire and Applied of "siphoning" premiums through a web of illegal shell companies, with diverted premiums going to unlicensed out-of-state insurers. The plan amounted to a "reverse Ponzi scheme" where unsuspecting employers expecting to buy affordable...

<p>Investigators said Wednesday they believed three missing crew members aboard two freight trains that collided head-on in the Texas Panhandle did not survive.</p> <p>Emergency personnel have moved from a rescue effort to a recovery operation, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Dan Buesing said.</p>

When President Obama announced he was killing the Keystone XL pipeline, he said he was agreeing with the State Department’s assessment that the pipeline from Canada “would not serve the national interests of the United States.” The fact is that it would not have benefitted the personal financial interests of friend and economic mentor, Warren Buffett, who can rest assured that oil from Canada and the nearby Bakken formation in North Dakota will continue to be transported by a railroad he owns. As Investor’s Business Daily noted in a 2011 editorial: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of...

"Operations across our entire network will likely be compromised by congestion and effectively shut down," warned Carl Ice, the president of BNSF. Widespread disruptions of freight and passenger rail traffic are likely if Congress doesn't extend a deadline to start using certain safety technology before the end of the year, railroads are warning. Freight and passenger railroads have said in letters to the Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., that they won't have the technology — known as positive train control, or PTC — in operation by Dec. 31, the deadline set by a 2008 rail safety law. The...

Exactly two months after the latest Warren Buffett-owned BNSF train derailed near the spot where the Galena river meets the Mississippi, resulting in a huge fire and the evacuation of all homes in a one mile radius, moments ago another of Buffett's BNSF oil trains derailed, this time near the town of Heimdal, North Dakota, resulting in the same outcome. According to the Bismark Tribune, the town in Wells County was evacuated Tuesday morning after a train full of oil tanker cars derailed and burned about a mile and half east of here. ... For those concerned that these countless...

Witness John Hill saw the whole thing unfold. He was working nearby when he had a feeling something was about to happen. He went to his car to grab his camera and before he knew it, the 100 slope next to the freight train started fail! “I saw the hill start to go. It went down and hit the first car and it tipped over, then more cars kept tipping over. It was crazy how loud it was and how slow it all happened,” he said. There had been “activity” on the rain saturated slope earlier in the day which...

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....

BNSF Railway Co., one of the country's biggest consumers of diesel fuel, plans this year to test using natural gas to power its locomotives instead. If successful, the experiment could weaken oil's dominance as a transportation fuel and provide a new outlet for the glut of cheap natural gas in North America. The surplus, spurred by new technologies that unlock the fuel from underground rock formations, has sent natural-gas prices plummeting. That has prompted industries from electric utilities to tugboat operators to switch to gas. If freight rail joins the parade, it would usher in one of the most sweeping...

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accused Union Pacific and BNSF Railways of price fixing. Oxbow Carbon & Minerals LLC said in its lawsuit that the two biggest railroads in the western U.S. worked to avoid direct competition with each other to keep rates high, and that Union Pacific has refused to ship coal from its Oxbow’s Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado to avoid competing with BNSF. The lawsuit brought by Oxbow and six of its companies also said the railroads’ fuel surcharges aren’t based on actual costs and simply raise shipping rates. But U.S. District Court...

Vancouver, WA - BNSF Railway is offering a reward for information in connection to the suspected tampering of railroad tracks that delayed nine trains in Southwest Washington on Monday. The railroad is offering an up to $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of person or persons responsible for tampering with tracks between Vancouver and Chehalis on Monday, spokesman Gus Melonas said. Anyone with information should call the crime tip hotline at 1-800-832-5452, he said. Informants aren’t required to give their name to get the reward. Officials discovered the tampering just before 11 a.m. Monday near the...

It turns out the state Department of Transportation has already paid $5 million for nearly 200 miles of northern New Mexico train track it has no plans to use, but is resisting taking title to the rail line because of potential environmental problems. That revelation came during a legislative hearing Monday in which DOT officials estimated the cost of routine maintenance on the stretch of train track would cost the state nearly $6 million a year — money that would have to come from the fund the state uses for road repair and maintenance. In addition, DOT officials said Monday...

Just as state officials grapple with a huge budget shortfall, here comes a multimillion-dollar bill for 200 miles of railroad track the state of New Mexico has no plans to use. Records show that the state Transportation Commission voted in August to set aside $2 million in next year's budget for capital improvements along the stretch of train track from Lamy to the Colorado border. That's on top of the $5 million the state promised to pay BNSF Railway Co. to purchase that same stretch of track. State Department of Transportation spokeswoman Megan Arredondo told the Journal that the additional...

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway upped its stake in Burlington Northern yesterday, paying about $26 billion for the rest of the big railway system. Is the purchase all about playing with trains? Not really. Buffett said it's a bet on the U.S. economic recovery, that moving goods around will surge when things pick-up again. It's also seen by some as a big bet on coal. B&N's system goes through Wyoming's Powder River Basin, which is the primary source for a lot of the low-sulfur coal many U.S. power plants rely on these days to keep down their emissions (including the W.A....

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...