Railroad News

Positive train control (PTC) is fully operational on all Virginia Railway Express (VRE) trains as of yesterday, the railroad's chief executive officer announced today.

Each of VRE's 32 inbound and outbound trains on the Fredericksburg and Manassas lines ran under PTC operation for the first time yesterday, said CEO Doug Allen in a press release.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has announced the details for its May 22 public hearing on railroad demurrage and accessorial charges.

The board will receive information from railroads, shippers, receivers, third-party logistics providers, and other interested parties about their recent experiences with demurrage and accessorial charges, including matters such as reciprocity, commercial fairness, the impact of operational changes on such charges, capacity issues and effects on network fluidity.

By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Associate Editor

BNSF Railway Co. last week was granted exemptions from the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016, which will help lay the foundation for expanded drone operations, according to an FAA grant of exemption document. 

By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Associate Editor

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) will end switchbacks on the T Third Street light-rail line in an effort to provide more reliable service to southeast San Francisco, agency officials announced this week.

To accommodate the elimination of switchbacks, a train will be on standby along the route to fill gaps of service and the agency will provide updated schedules with more accurate travel times.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has formed the Surface Transportation Security Advisory Committee, which will advise the agency on security issues related to rail and other modes of surface transportation.

The committee's makeup includes representatives of freight and passenger railroads. Voting committee members will represent surface transportation providers and users, and nonvoting members represent federal departments and agencies with surface transportation oversight.

Ontario government officials yesterday unveiled a new transportation improvement plan that calls for a CA$28.5 billion expansion of Ontario's transit network.

The amount is the "most money ever invested to get shovels in the ground and get new subways built," government officials said in a press release.

Union Pacific Railroad will host a celebration May 9 in Ogden, Utah, to mark the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad's completion.

The ceremony will be held at Ogden Union Station, a day ahead of Utah's celebration at Promontory Summit where the "golden spike" was originally tapped into place, according to a UP press release.

Grade crossing collisions and fatalities related to rail trespassing in the United States increased in 2018, Operation Lifesaver Inc. (OLI) announced yesterday.

Citing recent but preliminary Federal Railroad Administration statistics, OLI officials said crossing collisions in 2018 rose to 2,214 to from 2,122 collisions in 2017 — a more than 4 percent increase. Total casualties — injuries and fatalities — related to rail trespassing climbed 2.8 percent last year, according to an OLI press release.

U.S. railroads reported a 2.8 percent decline in carload and intermodal volume for the week ending April 6 compared with the same week a year ago, according to Association for American Railroads (AAR) data.

Combined, the railroads logged 510,192 carloads and intermodal units during the week. The total number of transported carloads fell 3.9 percent to 251,417 units, while intermodal dipped 1.6 percent to 258,775 containers and trailers versus year-ago levels.

Sound Transit yesterday received approval from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to advance its light-rail extension project to the engineering phase — a step toward securing a critically important federal grant. 

With FTA's approval of Sound Transit’s Federal Way Link Extension project into the engineering phase, FTA locked in the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) funding at $790 million, the amount requested by the transit agency, according to a Sound Transit press release

By Michael Popke

Trackmobile LLC, Zephir SpA and the LEAF locomotive commercial business have joined to form the Global Railcar Mover Group under Marmon Holdings Inc.’s rail product and services sector. The group will provide solutions for industrial operations, shipping and receiving materials and finished goods via rail shipping transportation, according to a Trackmobile press release.

The Greenbrier Cos. reported net earnings of $2.8 million on revenue of $658.7 million for its second fiscal quarter that ended Feb. 28. In comparison, net earnings attributed to Greenbrier in the first fiscal quarter were $18 million.The quarterly result change includes $4.7 million related to loss accruals on rail-car contracts and facilities closure costs in its rail-car repair operations. Greenbrier expected the quarter to be the least profitable of fiscal 2019 due to planned product line changeovers temporarily reducing manufacturing efficiency, officials said in a press release. Greenbrier's backlog of 26,000 units valued at $2.7 billion will produce sustained rail-car deliveries through fiscal 2019 and provide good visibility into fiscal 2020, they said.

The Railway Association of Canada (RAC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Transport Canada to establish voluntary reduction targets for locomotive-produced emissions.

The MOU is the fourth such agreement between the RAC and Canadian government since 1995, according to an RAC press release.

Utah Transit Authority (UTA) officials earlier this week marked the completion of construction on a new section of double tracking on the S-Line streetcar route, which connects the Fairmont Station in Salt Lake City to the Central Pointe TRAX light-rail station in South Salt Lake City.

Begun in 2018, the project was designed to reduce the amount of time riders wait for trains, reduce congestion, improve air quality and provide better connections with UTA's other modes of transportation, officials said in a press release. 

The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) last week released final recommendations for a transit service plan that will be implemented when Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service begins later this year in Santa Clara County, California. 

The plan proposes to create a new Orange Line light-rail route, change two service line names and replace the Ohlone/Chynoweth-Almaden light-rail route in San Jose with bus routes. 

Ironhorse Resources Inc. (IHR) has acquired the Sequatchie Valley Railroad (SQVR) and the Walking Horse and Eastern Railroad (WHOE) in Tennessee, the company announced earlier this week.

The short lines will be renamed the Sequatchie Valley Switching Company (SQSC) and the Walking Horse Railroad (WHRR). Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

A CSX conductor and conductor trainee died in a 2017 accident after they were struck by an Amtrak train while walking on active track, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced yesterday.

The accident, which occurred June 27, 2017, in Washington, D.C., prompted the NTSB to issue a safety alert calling on railroads to prohibit employees from walking or working too closely to adjacent track of another railroad unless the employees are protected by communication between the two railroads.