Amtrak’s eastbound Lake Shore Limited meets a westbound CSX auto rack train beneath the bridge carrying Interstate 90 over the CSX Erie West Subdivision at the State Line exit on the border of Pennsylvania and New York just outside North East, Pennsylvania.
The auto rack train has Union Pacific motive power and a cut of manifest freight.
No. 48 was operating 43 minutes late when it left Erie, but the New York section made it to Penn Station in New York less than 10 minutes late.
Amtrak executives have pledged to the Rail Passengers Association that the carrier has no plans to discontinue long-distance trains.
The pledge came during a meeting last week between RPA CEO Jim Mathews and Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson and Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Stephen Gardner.
Anderson said during the meeting that Amtrak will always have long-distance trains and it plans selective upgrades to some long-distance trains. Amtrak will also work to improve meal service aboard all trains.
Writing on the RPA blog, Mathews said that in the wake of the meeting that long-distance trains are no longer targets for elimination for now.
The meeting yielded information about Amtrak’s plans, including selectively upgrading what Anderson termed “epic, experiential” trains such as the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight
Anderson and Gardner also said Amtrak will issue soon a request for proposals to replace the carrier’s diesel locomotives.
Amtrak plans to move quickly to award a contract and begin getting locomotives built and into service.
A similar request for proposals is expected this year about the availability of single-level train sets and diesel multiple units with the aim of getting that equipment under contract and under construction.
This equipment is expected to be used on corridor type service of less than 600 miles and ideally no more than 400 miles.
Gardner described this as a “sweet spot” in which multiple daily frequencies can be offered with an optimized number of train sets so that fares and trip times can be competitive with other modes of transportation.
Although no time frame was given, Amtrak is planning to replaced its Superliner fleet, which Anderson and Gardner described as having reached the end of its reasonable service life.
They acknowledged that Amtrak will not refurbish the interiors of Superliner cars as it has been doing with Amfleet equipment and Acela Express train sets.
Anderson said the Superliners need new frames and therefore management has decided to replace the cars rather than rebuild them.
In a side note, Anderson and Gardner said the refurbishment of Amfleet I cars is nearly finished.
RPA has pressed Amtrak about its food service in the wake of an announcement in April that the carrier would on April 1 eliminate full-service dining on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited in favor of cold meals for sleeping car passengers.
The Amtrak executives said that plan was always considered an experiment and the passenger carrier expects to introduce at least one hot meal offering at some point.
They said Amtrak wants to improve its food service system-wide and is prepared to spend money to do it.
Gardner said that in time Amtrak will upgrade its menus on the Capitol and Lake Shore and offer coach passengers the opportunity to buy meals from that menu in the diner or elsewhere.
In the meantime, Amtrak is seeking to renegotiate its food contracts, upgrade the quality of the food available, and implement a program for passengers to choose their meals ahead of time.
Once chosen, passengers will able to eat their meals when and where they want to eat, whether it be in a dining car, in their room or at their seat.
Amtrak also wants to go cashless, an idea that the carrier has discussed before but never implemented. On-board personnel will be given portable devices to charge passengers for food and beverages.
In a related development, Gardner said the new CAF diners sitting at the Hialeah shops near Miami will soon be in service. He said they are awaiting parts and modification.
Anderson and Gardner elaborated on their congressional testimony about the possibility that Amtrak will not operate on rail lines that are required to have positive train control by late this year but on which the equipment has not been installed.
Gardner said this is not a strategy to discontinue trains or routes, but rather a temporary action until PTC is installed.
Anderson indicated during the meeting that he is laser-focused on implementing an airline-style safety management system by the end of the year, which he said is required of Amtrak by FRA regulation following the National Transportation Safety Board’s implementation recommendation.
He said he has found that freight railroads have a “risk-tolerant” mindset by which “they’re perfectly willing to accept that they’ll wreck a train every three years.”
SMS has been used by airlines to assess individual risks to safe operation and identify specific mitigation steps for each risk.
Anderson said SMS has been proven in the aviation world to not only improve safety but to continuously drive down incidents and risk.
Amtrak plans to identify a range of ways to reach “PTC-equivalent” levels of safety in areas that aren’t fully PTC-compliant.
This includes such steps as issuing slow orders and spiking or blocking facing-point switches for mainline movement.
Different technologies will be deployed to assure accurate train location, sending the conductor up to the head end or, failing everything else, using buses to move passengers around an affected track segment.
Mathews wrote that his take away from the meeting is that that the nature of Amtrak service will evolve and change over time, but that the carrier is pursuing a growth strategy whose objective is to serve more Americans rather than fewer.
“In any case, the long-term shape of the national network will be determined by Congress, which makes the upcoming reauthorization of the surface transportation bill even more important to RPA and its members,” Mathews wrote.
CSX has hired DERKA, Incorporated, to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the railroad’s safety performance.
In a news release, CSX said the review is a “key component of CSX’s intensified focus on improving safety performance for its employees, customers and the communities in which it operates.”
The review will begin in June and is expected to be finished in the fall.
CSX CEO James Foote had announced at the annual meeting that CSX would be spending money on safety, including hiring a safety officer.
The Pennsylvania Trolly Museum will be conducting its annual Western Pennsylvania Trolley Meet on June 1-3.
Admission each day is $10 per person although a three-day pass can be purchased for $25.
Throughout the meet, cars from various transit companies and agencies will be in operation and on display.
A night photo shoot will be held on Saturday night and coordinated by Steve Barry, editor of Railfan & Railroad magazine.
There will also be model railway vendors, traction memorabilia dealers, presentations, demonstrations, a model contest, and hourly door prizes.
The museum is located at 1 Museum Road in Washington, Pennsylvania. Further information is available at patrolley.org
The Indiana-based Madison Railroad held a ceremony on Memorial Day to dedicate its “Memorial Fleet” of three locomotives painted in liveries that honor the U.S. Armed Forces and NASA.
The three locomotives painted for the fleet were placed at the stub end of a track once used to bring coal into the power plant at the Madison State Hospital.
The special units include two engines built by Baldwin Locomotive Works.
No. 4 was built for the Atlantic Coast Line as its No. 15, was rebuilt in the 1980s for the Crane Naval Weapons Support Center and is now known as Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, No. 65-00620.
No. 5 was built for the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis as its No. 30 and rebuilt in the 1980s for the Navy as No. 65-00530.
Nos. 4 and 5 have been designated as model VO-1000M units after being rebuilt with EMD 567-type prime movers. Both kept their Baldwin operating cabs.
Also present at the ceremony was former NASA Railroad SW1500 No. 3, built for the Toledo, Peoria & Western as its No. 306. It served NASA for decades at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Each locomotive was given emblems along with a quotation beneath its cab.
The 22.7-mile Madison Railroad operates between Madison and North Vernon, Indiana, and has seven employees.
A former Pennsylvania Railroad line that is now owned by the City of Madison, it is best known for its hill from the Ohio River in Madison to North Madison, a distance of 7,012 feet with a grade of 5.89 percent.
The railroad no longer operates over the grade, but the tracks are still in place.
Sixty-four CSX shippers were honored by the carrier for their commitment to the safe transportation of hazardous materials by receiving the railroad’s annual Chemical Safety Excellence Award.
CSX singled out two shippers who successfully reached 10 consecutive years of Safety Excellence:
They are part of a select group of customers with impressive safety records, including Azko Nobel Chemicals Inc. (14 years) and Kemira (16 years).
Shippers with five or more years of Safety Excellence improved upon their safety records in 2017, including Cargill (9 years), Celanese (6 years), CHS (7 years), ExxonMobil Chemicals Co. (6 years), Linde LLC (6 years) and SABIC Americas Inc. (9 years).
Additional honorees for 2017 include: Archer Daniels Midland Co.; Americas Styrenics LLC; Arkema Inc.; Arlanxeo Canada Inc.; Ascend Performance Materials; Ashta Chemicals Inc.; BASF Corp.; Blue Cube Operations LLC; BP Products North America Inc.; Cardinal Ethanol LLC; CF Industries; Chevron Phillips Chemical Co.; Chevron Corporation; Covestro LLC; Crestwood Services LLC; DAK Americas LLC; Delaware City Refinery LLC; Dominion Transmission Inc.; Dow Chemicals; Granite Falls Energy LLC; Iroquois Bio Energy; U.S. Ecology; Gibson Energy; Green Plains Renewable Energy; Hess Corp.; Huntsman International LLC; Husky Energy; INEOS Styrolution America LLC; Ingredion Inc.; International Chemical Co.; INVISTA; Kinder Morgan; Koppers; Kraton; Lyondell Bassell; Marathon Petroleum Corporation; Mosaic Company; Nan Ya Plastics Corp.; NGL Energy Partners LLC; NorFalco LLC; NOVA Chemicals Inc.; Pacific Ethanol Pekin Inc.; Pembina Pipeline Corporation; Philadelphia Energy Solutions; Phillips 66 Co.; RPMG, Inc.; SABIC Innovative Plastics; Shintech; Louisiana LLC; Southern States Chemical; Bunge North America; Stepan Co.; The Chemours Company FC LLC; The United States government, and Valero Marketing & Supply Co.
A consulting firm has been hired to conduct an operational audit of the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad at the behest of the Allegany County (Maryland) Board of Commissioners.
The board took the step in the wake of the WMSR requesting a $60,000 increase in its annual funding for 2019, which the tourist railroad said is needed for tie replacement.
WMSR General Manager John Garner said the railroad will cooperate in the audit.
The board usually allocates $140,000 to the railroad, but this year the WMSR asked that its appropriation be increased to $200,000.
Stone Consulting will conduct the audit, which the firm’s vice president for operations said will focus on the WMSR’s steam program.
Randy Gustafson said this will include reviewing the restoration of Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 steam locomotive No. 1309, which halted in late 2017 after the WMSR ran out of money.
Gustafson and Stone Consulting have reviewed several steam programs and in 2000 helped develop a master plan for the WMSR.
“I think it’s overall good news. I’ve been surprised and pleased by the fact that everybody I know that has worked at the WMSR is encouraging this,” Gustafson said.
County officials are open to continued funding of the WMSR, but want a third-party review of what is happening there.
County Administrator Brandon Butler said he has had “numerous conversations with interested citizens, former employees and enthusiasts who are singularly dedicated to one thing — the success of the scenic railroad.”
Due to construction on the Spuyten Duyvil bridge and Empire Tunnel on its route in New York City this summer, the New York section of Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited is being suspended between May 26 and early September south of Albany, New York.
New York-bound passengers are being directed to make an across-the-platform transfer at the Albany-Rensselaer station to an Empire Service train that will take them to New York’s Grand Central Terminal.
Of course back in the day the Lake Shore Limited as well as all New York Central Water Level Route passenger trains terminated at Grand Central.
No. 48, shown here near North East Pennsylvania, had just four more trips to make to Penn Station before the summer hiatus was to begin when I made this image from the Bort Road bridge.
And it will be a little over a week before changes are made to the food service being offered to passengers on Nos. 48 and 49.
Reportedly, a new Viewliner dining car will be assigned to the trains, but it will operate as a sleeping car passenger lounge rather than a dining car.
The immediate future of the Lake Shore Limited is as gloomy as the fog shrouding the surrounding hills of the Lake Erie escarpment here.
Norfolk Southern has joined the Blockchain in Transport Alliance, a trade association of 250 members created in August 2017 to develop standards and education in blockchain technologies, a field focused on the peer-to-peer recording of transactions through use of cryptography and distributed ledgers.
Blockchain technologies create a digital transactions ledger that can be shared among a distributed network of computers.
BiTA said this enables freight and transportation companies to work toward development of supply-chain efficiencies.”
“Norfolk Southern’s membership with BiTA will help us identify opportunities where blockchain can be used to improve the transportation supply-chain for our customers,” said NS Vice President Information Technology and Chief Information Offik cer Fred Ehlers.
The Federal Transit Administration is offering $25.8 million in grants for planning of transit-oriented development.
The grants are being distributed under a pilot program that provides funding to integrate land use and transportation planning along eligible transit projects.
In a news release, the FTA said the grants will fund comprehensive planning to support transit ridership, multimodal connections and mixed-use development near transit stations.
The FTA’s notice of the grant funding has been posted in the Federal Register.
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