NOTE: In addition to my indispensable notebooks, for many years I also took a scanner on my rail ventures. The scanner searches for and finds the radio frequencies used by the operating crews (conductors and engineers) when they talk back-and-forth to themselves and to the host railroad dispatchers. The following notes were taken several years…
VIA Rail’s premier train, the Canadian, gets most of the press, and deservedly so, but there’s another VIA train that is almost always overlooked. The Skeena runs from Jasper in the Rocky Mountains to Prince Rupert, on the Pacific Ocean. There’s an overnight stop more or less halfway at Prince George, where everyone piles off…
We have a houseguest here for a couple of days and that was her first question when the subject of train travel came up. (It always does … and sooner rather than later.) Short answer: Yes, absolutely. Train travel is a very safe mode of transportation. When you spend any time around trains and…
At the rate of about one-a-day, collisions occur between cars and trains somewhere across the U.S. There are two absolutes when it comes to these incidents: (1) every one if them is avoidable, and (2) the train always wins. In addition, there are a tragic number of injuries and deaths when people walking on train…