New Locomotives The Amtrak Cascades, which operate in the busy 310-mile long corridor from Vancouver, BC to Eugene, Oregon, by way of Seattle and Portland, have just taken possession of eight brand new Charger locomotives. These new beauties bring a lot to the table: they’re lighter and quieter than their predecessors, they accelerate…
If you were to stop a hundred people on the street and ask them who owns the tracks used by Amtrak’s long-distance trains, I’d guess that probably a third would say all that track is owned by the government, another third would say the railroads, and most of the rest would have no idea. …
Who’d have thought that the federal government—specifically the Surface Transportation Board—would publicly poke a finger in the eye of one of the Class I railroads? Who’d have thought that since the STB is, after all, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, a federal department run by Elaine Chao, a Trump appointee and wife…
In Washington, the Trump Administration has pretty much adopted the budget recommendations of the Heritage Foundation, one of the libertarian “think tanks” supported by the Koch brothers. As far as Amtrak is concerned, that means no federal dollars for the national network. The probable result, while perhaps not immediate, would be the loss…