Rail News

Kansas City Southern started receiving the first of 27 yard locomotives and road switcher units that have gone through a re-power upgrade that cuts fuel use and emissions.

A train carrying liquefied petroleum gas derailed and exploded just before midnight Monday outside the seaside resort of Viareggio, Italy.

CSX is committing to cut its carbon dioxide emissions 8 percent by 2011 under a voluntary federal environmental program, the railroad said Monday.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is expanding its incentive program to get ocean shippers to use rail, offering $25 per container for new business booked on the authority’s ExpressRail sy

Short line railroads have posted their best three weeks of freight volume since March, suggesting a mild pickup may be under way after traffic slumped severely in the spring.

WATERLOO, Iowa — Dan Sabin stands atop a levee next to the Cedar River and recalls the dark days a year ago when it looked like his Iowa Northern Railway was losing a fight for its very existence agai

It’s not part of the stimulus money coursing from federal coffers through state highway budgets, but a Department of Transportation program just sent $5.2 million to 14 states to help pay for innovati

Class I railroad operations in the U.S. shed an additional 2,727 employees from mid-April to mid-May, putting rail employment at the major lines down to the lowest level in this decade.

When you look for green shoots, think scrap.

London – The slump in European rail freight traffic that began in the final quarter of 2008 is deepening as major shippers slash production and shutter plants and trucks cut freight rates to boo

President Obama plans to nominate aviation safety expert Christopher A. Hart to be a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Two key senators, who chair committees important to transportation infrastructure, urged the Senate to set aside at least $50 million for rail safety technology grants.

Canadian National Railway told regulators it made more progress last month in trimming the number of street-clogging train incidents on the Chicago-area short line tracks it recently acquired.

Federal officials are investigating the derailment of 18 tanker cars of a Canadian National Railway train that ran off the tracks and exploded near Rockford, Ill., killing a woman at a crossing.

Intermodal movements were a drag on rail freight traffic in the week ending June 13.

Just one year AGO, Michael J. Ward was in the fight of his career as chairman, president and CEO of CSX Corp., parent of one of the four largest U.S. railroads.

When Theo Zwygers went to the podium at a major rail industry conference in Chicago last month, the soft-spoken plastics industry executive hardly looked like a firebrand rising up against the nation’

European Union competition regulators on June 12 cleared the planned acquisition by Deutsche Bahn, the German state railway, of Poland's biggest privately-owned rail freight company.

The solution to freight corridor congestion may be through reducing commuter congestion, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

It may no longer be the worst of times in rail freight traffic, but it’s still close. U.S.

A key government measure of U.S. freight shipping fell to its lowest level in seven years in April, the government reported.

A Norfolk Southern Railway executive said his company is exploring the potential to eventually electrify some freight rail lines in connection with passenger rail corridors, but the chief executive of

As Union Pacific Railroad feels out today’s freight market and plans for when it might pull out of its downturn, Chairman, President and CEO James R. Young is cautious.

Leif Holm-Andersen, director of transportation and logistics at Arrow Electronics, has been using freight payment software for several years, and he wouldn’t dream of going back to old-fashioned proce

All that talk about the economy starting to turn around has a lot of rail industry officials scratching their heads, and wondering when they will be able to count on any strengthening in shipments tha

Railroads may have won one battle in their bid to fend off rail regulatory legislation, but shippers believe they’re closer to winning the war in Congress.

The decline in railroad jobs appears to have stalled in May, while trucking employment edged slightly higher.

The United States should quickly begin building high-speed rail systems for both passenger and freight systems, says a former head of the Federal Railroad Administration.

With a key holiday falling on what is usually the first business day of the week, major U.S. railroads posted their worst volume numbers of 2009 in the week ending May 30.

The Illinois state senate is now on record, formally asking President Obama to soon fill an empty board seat on the Surface Transportation Board with an experienced transportation hand who would also

BNSF Railway is touting recent gains for its intermodal service expansions in the wake of Hub Group’s decision to switch most traffic to rival Union Pacific Railroad, and a spokesman said BNSF d

Two of the Obama administration’s highest-level policy salesmen urged governors to push forward “bold” plans to develop high-speed passenger rail systems, and in the process unclog c

Intermodal shipper Hub Group will start shifting 8,400 domestic containers next week away from BNSF Railway and into the hands of rival Union Pacific Railroad, partly drawn by UP’s service of pr

Intermodal middleman firm Hub Group, one of the industry leaders, will shift the majority of its western-U.S.

Economic recovery will occur when consumer spending turns around, unemployment bottoms out and the business inventory-to-sales ratio improves, but that will take awhile, according to the chief economi

If there is good news for rail labor in the latest report on job cuts, it’s that the decline of freight railroad employment slowed from mid-March to mid-April.

A powerful shippers’ lobby, the National Industrial Transportation League, threw its weight behind a Senate bill to strip freight railroads of a limited antitrust immunity.

It is still early, but the signs aren’t looking good.

For anyone wondering if shippers and cargo carriers could work together toward common goals, the Freight Stakeholders Coalition is a rare example of idealism in public policy.

Truckload executives say volumes are firming and rates stabilizing. Less-than-truckload and rail executives say demand is weak. And shippers expect volumes to decline further.