The quest to concoct a workable rubber-tired replacement for steel-wheel light rail transit (LRT)—on standard steel rails—seems eternal. Several variants of running a “tram on tires,” typically with some configuration of a center guiderail, have been developed.
Each year, hundreds of executives, technical experts, engineers and safety officers from across the railway supplier universe engage in an activity that, while largely unheralded, is enormously important to our industry and the North American economy.
Railroads and their customers must not leave fate in the hands of a misinformed public.
As United Airlines is learning, the grabbing by the arms of a fare-paying, law-abiding 69-year-old passenger, and forcibly dragging him through the aisle for removal from an aircraft for no reason other than United having overbooked the Chicago-Louisville flight and wishing to put a more favored fanny in the seat, is a public relations nightmare—and not to be treated as any less offensive than the preferred method of body-part grabbing by the current President of the United States.
I have stressed many times in this blog, and in my monthly magazine columns—at times in harsh terms that may have offended some people who, for reasons I can’t quite figure out, took my remarks personally—that the Trump Administration’s extremely nationalistic ideology, if it morphs into law, will critically injure the railroads and the railroad supply community.
What has been will be again; what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them. Ecclesiastes 1: 9-14.
One of Keith Creel’s first acts upon becoming Canadian Pacific CEO in February was a call to his counterpart at the union representing the railway’s train and engine (T&E) crews. It was time, CP’s top brass hat told the Teamsters senior rail boss, to restore respect and fairness to the railroad’s treatment of its engineers and conductors.
The Georgia Ports Authority commissioned the first of four new neo-panamax ship-to-shore container cranes at its Garden City Terminal, Savannah.
Now that Michael Ward has retired as CEO of CSX, he will remain in Jacksonville and continue the work that he loves as much as running a railroad—giving back to the community.
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.