Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) General Manager and CEO Paul J. Wiedefeld has ordered the prompt removal from service of all 4000-series railcars from the lead position of trains following the identification of a possible safety issue.
11/18/2016
Rail News: Mechanical
New York-based global manufacturing company ITT Inc. has announced an agreement through which it will acquire Axtone, a leading manufacturer of highly engineered and customized components for railway and other harsh-environment industrial markets.
11/18/2016
Rail News: Union Pacific Railroad
11/18/2016
Rail News: Union Pacific Railroad
11/17/2016
Rail News: Supplier Spotlight
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board has approved a design-build contract for Halmar International Inc., an engineering and construction company based in Nanuet, N.Y., to replace a new bridge carrying the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tracks at the Westbury LIRR station.
11/17/2016
Rail News: Passenger Rail
The Chicago Transit Authority’s (CTA) Board has approved a $1.524 billion operating budget that maintains current fares and preserves bus and rail service levels.
11/17/2016
Rail News: CSX Transportation
11/17/2016
Rail News: CSX Transportation
A new report from the OneRail Coalition highlights the decline in rail accidents during the past decade and calls for more people and goods to travel by rail to continue the positive safety trend.
The report, "Rail Safety in the United States," highlights a 31-percent decline in rail accidents during the past 10 years, which OneRail says makes rail transport significantly safer than other transit modes. The coalition notes that the positive safety trend occurred even as passenger rail traffic grew and freight rail traffic remained steady over the same time frame.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has found a broken rail, due to an undetected defect led to the October 2014 derailment of a Canadian National Railway (CN) freight train near Clair, SK, Canada.
The investigation determined that the train derailed when a sudden and catastrophic failure of one of the rails occurred under the train, due to the presence of an undetected defect. Poor rail surface conditions had masked the presence of this defect and reduced the effectiveness of visual inspections and ultrasonic inspections. Including this occurrence, the TSB has investigated seven occurrences in the past 10 years involving a rail break due to a pre-existing rail defect that was not detected by ultrasonic testing.
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) is calling on Congress to appropriate funds toward the commuter rail industry’s positive train control (PTC) implementation initiatives in light of the progress the association says the industry has made in these efforts so far.
11/17/2016
Rail News: PTC