Rail News

Conflict is swirling around the crash-avoidance technology known as positive train control.

It may not be clear when the Senate might vote on a committee bill to tighten competition rules for freight railroads, but a key lawmaker says disgruntled rail executives know the legislation is

Leadership takes many shapes and forms. It can be controversial and unpopular. It can be innovative and revolutionary. It can be understated or in-your-face aggressive.

A Maine railroad’s plans to shut down 233 miles of track has state and federal officials scrambling to find ways to keep it operating for 22 freight shippers.

Mid-March loadings of basic road and site construction materials by the largest U.S.-owned railroads reached their highest levels since August.

North America’s short line railroads saw traffic ebb slightly for the week ending March 20 from the prior seven days, but carriers reporting to the RMI RailConnect index still had their third co

Germany's Deutsche Bahn, Europe's biggest railway, reported steep declines in 2009 income and revenue from a year ago driven by a slump in rail freight volume.

The Supreme Court may have to decide whether or not ocean carriers will be considered “railroads” for cargo liability purposes after oral arguments on Wednesday morning.

The Department of Transportation’s second-highest official told senators that DOT’s preference for freight shipping is keep goods on waterways and rail as much as possible, getting them aw

Employment grew slightly in February among the seven largest U.S. railroads, for the first time since last July and only the second time since October 2008.

Amtrak is asking Congress to approve another $446 million this year for the nation’s passenger rail system to order new locomotives and rail cars, on top of a $2.1 billion budget it previously o

The Department of Justice’s antitrust division made a second formal request for information and materials in the planned acquisition by rail supplier L.B. Foster of Portec Rail Products.

Unionized locomotive engineers at Canadian National Railway will get an initial wage hike of 1.8 percent under a federal arbitrator's ruling setting wages and other terms for a three-year labor c

Congress appears on track to renew a tax break for rail repairs by short-line railroads, but first must sort through issues of “black liquor” and “carried interest.”

Executives from major North American railroads are clearly feeling better these days about traffic and pricing trends.

The largest U.S. railroads pushed their volume up another notch in the week ending March 13, as steady factory activity combined with demand for construction materials.

The Association of American Railroads quickly pushed back Thursday against the Chlorine Institute after the chemical shippers’ group urged regulators to fix a “faulty” study over the

Recovery is spreading solidly among North America’s regional and short line railroads, as the latest RMI RailConnect index shows week-to-week traffic mildly higher for the second week of March b

Sen.

The Chlorine Institute, fearing freight railroads could pass along potentially large costs for new crash-avoidance technology to shippers, is asking the Federal Railroad Administration to fix what it

Portec Rail Products, whose offerings range from track spikes to data management, saw fourth-quarter earnings fall 4.8 percent from a year earlier to $1.44 million.

Rail equipment supplier Wabtec bought the signal engineering and design services firm Xorail for $40 million in cash, equal to about one year’s worth of Xorail sales.

Thirteen shipper groups, hoping the Senate will keep a rail competition bill alive in the face of sharp criticism by top carriers, told lawmakers they want to see it through.

Several months of congressional skirmishing and one large flare-up over funding tried the nerves of the most steadfast advocates for transportation reform.

With February’s snowbanks melting away and the economy warming up, the flow of rail freight is thawing out across North America.

North Carolina awarded a $14.3 million contract to a Kentucky company to build a 5.6-mile rail spur to connect an aircraft parts manufacturing site to the Port of Morehead City.

North America’s regional and short line railroads are steadily adding traffic and setting new highs almost weekly in their recent volume levels.

Large U.S.

U.S. freight railroad operations had their safest year ever in 2009, said the Association of American Railroads.

Norfolk Southern Railway will pay a $4 million penalty to settle alleged Clean Water Act violations, the government said, in connection with a catastrophic 2005 chlorine spill from a train accident in

Kansas City Southern bought the Puerta Mexico intermodal terminal facility about 40 miles west of Mexico City at Toluca, and plans soon to start running trains to it from the Pacific Ocean container p

Small railroads across North America are seeing their new freight loadings reach the highest levels in nearly a year, fueled by demand for a broad range of cargoes.

At a time when there is a huge oversupply of idled freight railcars and ocean ships, Canada’s Nova Scotia provincial government is drawing from those industries to aim at another that has growin

Union Pacific Railroad and CSX Transportation say customers will get the most out of their new UMAX domestic intermodal service in the form of faster, more efficient service across the country.

New loadings of the type of bulk materials and equipment that ride in regular railcars pushed to its highest level in more than a year for major U.S.-owned railroads.

Edward Rodzwicz, who had been national president until Nov.

American Railcar Industries managed to boost its profit in the fourth quarter, to $10.5 million from $7.6 million a year earlier, but it wasn’t from building freight cars.

The House is expected to take up the Senate’s version of a jobs bill on Thursday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Wednesday.

Competition between West and East Coast ports for Asian cargo has hit a point of equilibrium and market share probably won't change much in the coming years.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services gave a “BBB” rating to new CSX long-term debt notes, saying the eastern-U.S.