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Wellllll: I have proven myself not to be a prophet. When Texas got started on their planning and after me being a few years in California, I was of the opinion that Texas would be up and running before California got through talking. While the most significant parts of California are yet to...

Unfortunately, a near fact free article somewhere between a dream and a hallucination. None of the issues involved in making this happen were even mentioned. Hard to see this city as a point of termination of a train, and if return to a point on through trains to Asheville as it was in the...

Yes. it is Knoxville. Up thorough the 50's there was a lot of Midwest to Florida traffic through there on the L&N on the Flamingo and Southland. There was a gathering of trains to/from Detroit, Cleveland, etc. at Cincinatti for these trains, which went south of Atlanta on CofG or ACL or some...

Most interesting. Note this is existing condition for a very specific time and date, 10:45pm eastern time, August 6, 2023. Since it is late at night there is no solar heating of the rails, so as could be expected the rail temperature is within a a couple of degrees of the air temperature...

Like the CNO was very lightly loaded south of Jackson MS. This sort of thing is typical of many trains. Prime example, most commuter trains when you divide passenger miles by train miles you will probably fine a load factor of around 50%, This, even though the train may arrive/leave the big...

Don't know if I would call it "weak" but the load was significantly heavier north of Memphis. Since my first couple college years were spent at UT Martin, in Martin TN, I was a fairly regular rider on Sunday afternoons Memphis to Fulton KY, 1962-1964. (I then hitchhiked the 10 miles south on...

Which is why Union Pacific (or was it Southern Pacific before their takeover by UP) gave up on maintaining signals on their line across the Great Salt Lake. It now runs without signals. The salt spray kept shorting it out. By the way, salt water also significantly shortens rail life.

Just a comment: Never have understood why neither NYC nor Pennsy ever ran a fast day train between New York and Chicago similar to ICRR's City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans. The ICRR ran a 16 1/2 hour schedule. Looks like either one could have done a 16 hour schedule between...

Unfortunately, I think you may be right on this one. I may be getting to be the crotchy old man on this, but it seems that too much in current engineering education, and practice has gotten to the point where it is to put input into program and accept results without thought. There were two...

Chances are he will be seen by another train's crew who will then get on his radio. Subsequent to that there are 2 possibilities. 1, he will be brought inside by the conductor and either passed off to police or simply deposited at a station or handy road crossing. 2. He will be left where he...

A far higher proportion of freight movement in the US is by rail compared to that in Europe and much of the rest of the world, so that government ownership of rail would increase the proportion of freight moved by rail is a fallacy. In general, the ton-mile cost of movement by truck is...

This line in the report is a classic showing the lack of reality of this discussion: "They said as a result, driving from Nashville to Knoxville would turn into a four-hour trip." The direct line, Tennessee Central to Harriman TN and then Southern the rest of the way into Knoxville was an 8 hour...

Much as I would like to see a resurrection of rail passenger service in Tennessee, most of these plans vary between being a dream and being a hallucination. Most of the routes are simply too slow due to alignments. The most likely to carry any worthwhile number of passengers would be to...

A huge factor in Conrail's "success" was the major change in federal and other regulations that constrained changes and increased costs for the various predecessors that disappeared with or shortly after the formation of Conrail. Also, the NEC lines and some of the other northeastern commuter...

Tried during World War 1. Some good standards were developed, but it general the results were on the order of, sounded good but let's not do this again. During WW2, the railroads stayed in the hands of the private sector and carried significantly higher levels of both freight and passengers...

One of the jokes about engineer's estimates as done by the Owner's engineer/consultant is that it is the cost of the job if it was being built in heaven. Reality is that many times the increased cost is due to changes in scope, changes in conditions, unanticipated conditions and events, etc...

Sometimes the bests option is, "If it works, don't fix it." I think this definitely applies to the Autotrain. Think about its first incarnation.

JIS, did not think there would be for you. However these terms have proven to cause confusion for some. Since these tracks are obviously connected to the railroad system, to have designed them for less than standard AREMA loadings I would consider to have been a very bad idea. To all...

There appears to be some confusion here between "Loading Gauge" and structural capacity. Loading Gauge means defined clearances. There are usually two parts to this: Structural outlines and distances to other facilities, and then such things as platform offsets. For structural capacity the...

What direct line Dallas straight to Texarkana? There is no such animal. The direct ex Cotton Belt line is now a short line west of Mt. Pleasant, plus the last portions into Dallas itself are no longer in place. The best that could be done to bypass Longview and Marshall would be the ex-Cotton...