Rail News

U.S. sales of new automobiles are strengthening for all the largest car manufacturers, and generating sharp increases in shipments for materials, car parts and finished vehicles.

Intermodal services firm Pacer International is replacing its chief financial and commercial officers as it continues a transition in its business plan after major shifts in 2009.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood tapped 10 leading analysts representing the freight industry, state highway agencies and academia to advise his Department on data it gathers.

Trade using surface transportation between the United States and its North American Free Trade Agreement partners Canada and Mexico soared 19.5 percent from January 2009 to January 2010 in the largest

Rail and construction industry supplier L.B. Foster bought key bridge-building assets of Interlocking Deck Systems International for nearly $7 million.

Union Pacific Railroad “will continue to generate core price increases of roughly 4-6 percent over the next few years,” said stock analyst Lee A. Klaskow of Longbow Research.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.