NOTE: For each of the next few postings, I’m going to pull a few paragraphs from the 5th edition of my book, ALL ABOARD–The Complete North American Train Travel Guide, due to reach the bookstores about mid-February. * * * Railroads have been around for a long time. As far back as the 16th century,…
NOTE: Don’t click on any words or phrases in blue appearing here or in the text below. That will lead you to ads. It’s an insidious bug that has somehow crept into my laptop and which I will have exorcized at the first opportunity. In the meantime, I have invoked a Hawaiian curse on the…
There’s almost no end to things that can go wrong on a railroad. Locomotives break down; boulders tumble down rocky slopes and block the tracks; several cars on freight train slip off the rails; an earthen embankment gives way and six feet of mud covers the tracks; heat kinks twist the rails out of alignment;…
Norfolk Southern, one of the country’s largest freight railroads, has just filed suit against an Alabama company for selling the railroad almost five million defective wooden cross ties. And, yes, that’s “million”, with an M! The ties were supposed to be cut to size, then treated with the well-known wood preservative, creosote. But according…