The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) has awarded a $1.37 billion contract to Tutor Perini/O&G Joint Venture to construct phase two of the Purple Line Extension Project.
First, let me make this perfectly clear: Two-time Railway Age Railroader of the Year E. Hunter Harrison (2002, CN/Illinois Central; 2015, Canadian Pacific) is one of our industry’s best all-time operating people. You can’t argue with what he’s been able to accomplish with his “Precision Railroading” methods.
News item: Republican Ann Dawn Begeman, 52, was confirmed by the Senate in December to a second term—expiring Dec. 31, 2020—on the five-person Surface Transportation Board (STB). Expect her to be named STB Chairman by President Trump, succeeding Democrat Dan Elliott, who was President Obama’s choice as Chairman.
Months before his previously announced official retirement as CEO, Hunter Harrison has abruptly severed all ties with Canadian Pacific, handing the company’s reins to President Keith Creel. According to numerous reports, Harrison will attempt to take control of CSX, which in 2014 had rebuffed a merger attempt by CP.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Joseph McMahon retired from Amtrak after 51 years of service as a locomotive engineer, beginning with the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in 1963 and concluding with Amtrak in 2014. His area of expertise is the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York City. McMahon operated trains in all classes of service—freight, commuter/regional and higher-speed Acela Express.
Notwithstanding this era of fake news, there remain stories you just cannot make up—instances where truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.
Helicopters, trains and trucks: That’s what it takes to harvest and deliver Christmas trees to big-box retailers like Home Depot that sell millions of trees every year.
When Herbert Hoover was President and Republicans controlled the White House and both congressional chambers, there was produced the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff boosting import duties to record levels, sparking a global trade war and contributing to the depth and length of the Great Depression.
The 115th Congress will soon be under way, and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) on Dec. 6 announced several senior staff changes.
William Rockefeller, the Metro-North engineer who fell asleep at the controls of Train 8808 on Dec. 1, 2013 and caused a derailment that killed four people and injured 61, is suing the railroad for $10 million.
