For the Trump Administration to offer in a congressional election year a Cracker Jack box containing a prize of massive renewed infrastructure, yet absent a realistic funding source (as the Treasury cupboard is bare), is the equivalent of a Samaritan in a sinking boat offering a hand to a struggling swimmer.
CSX is a mighty fine line, with an equally illustrious railroad ancestry. That CSX has fallen on difficult times, service-wise, is regrettable.
We knew back in September 2017, when NTSB announced its board meeting to review and approve the findings of the investigations into the bumping block collisions at Hoboken and Atlantic Terminals, that come Feb. 6, 2018, NTSB was going to, ever so loudly, publicly hand FRA its head, a weirdly appropriate turn for a regulatory body still without a head.
As I understand it, communications and signals work was under way on CSX’s Columbia Subdivision at Cayce, S.C., when Amtrak 91, the Silver Star, collided with unattended locomotives and autoracks placed on the siding across from an automobile loading/unloading facility.
Those of you who know me know that I believe properly engineering a railroad means reducing the risk to safe train operations by properly configuring rolling stock, signals and track. Building the proper vehicles for running on the proper geometry is as important as properly operating that railroad. Almost.
As is the tradition in New Jersey, the state I’ve called home since birth, the incoming governor 1) trashes New Jersey Transit and 2) proceeds to “fix” everything by cleaning house and starting fresh. This political circus has been going on since the state took over a collapsing commuter rail system in the early 1980s. So what else is new?
Amtrak is “adopting a safety management system approach used by commercial aviation” as it responds to the Dec. 18, 2017 derailment of Amtrak Cascades train 501 that killed three people and injured more than 60, a railroad spokesperson told me Jan. 29.
After nearly three months of emotional courtroom proceedings and nine days of jury deliberations, three former employees of Ed Burkhart’s now-defunct Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway were found not guilty of all charges arising from the 2013 Lac-Mégantic oil train disaster.
At CSX over the past 12 months, there has been a series of tumultuous events infusing investors with paroxysms of “what next” worry and propelling the stock price on a roller coaster ride*:
Conrail’s Oak Island Yard in Newark, N.J., blew up at 12:14 AM on Jan. 7, 1983, some 35 years ago.
