Railroad News

A group of rail suppliers and eight United Kingdom universities have partnered to secure $118 million to perform rail research in the U.K.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England will provide $36 million, while a group of 17 industry partners will pick up the remaining $82 million. The latter group includes Alstom, Siemens and Bombardier Transportation.

The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) rail system is on track to serve a record 80 million passengers in 2017, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) announced late last week.

For the first six months of 2017, PATH logged just over 40 million riders, marking a 3.6 percent increase over the same period last year. Through June's end, the system averaged 227,000 riders each day.

President Donald Trump yesterday announced his intent to nominate Ronald Batory to serve as administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA).

Batory has more than 45 years of rail industry experience and most recently served as president and chief operating officer of Conrail. Batory joined the company in 1998 as vice president-operations and was appointed COO in 2004. He retired from Conrail on March 31.

— By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Editor

As we reported in our Daily News late last month, former airline industry exec Richard Anderson will be Amtrak’s next president and CEO. As of press time, Anderson — who most recently was executive chairman of Delta Air Lines after serving as its CEO from 2007 to 2016 — was to begin his new duties on July 12. Amtrak President and CEO Wick Moorman will be co-CEO with Anderson until Dec. 31. After that, Moorman will serve Amtrak in an advisory capacity.

BNSF Railway Co. has designated a transload facility operated by Sands Spring Railway Co. in Oklahoma a "premier status" location.

The designation means the short line provides superior performance, markets a comprehensive service offering and maintains a minimum capacity level at the Tulsa facility. BNSF bestows a limited number of premier status designations during the course of a year, said officials at OmniTRAX Inc. — which owns Sands Spring Railway— in a press release.

Caltrain logged 62,190 average weekday passengers during its yearly on-board ridership count in February and early April. The figure marked a 0.4 percent decrease over last year's on-board ridership count.

The news follows six years of consecutive ridership growth, Caltrain officials said in a press release.

Representatives from a coalition of six rail labor unions and the National Carriers' Conference Committee (NCCC) met for three days in late June but were unable to reach a new national agreement.

Known as the Coordinated Bargaining Group (CBG), the union coalition includes the American Train Dispatchers Association; Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen; Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen; International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers; National Conference of Firemen and Oilers/SEIU; and SMART Transportation Division. The unions represent more than 85,000 railroad employees covered by various national agreements, while the NCCC represents the labor interests of the Class Is.

Rapid City, Pierre & Eastern Railroad (RCP&E) leaders recently joined state and local officials in Huron, South Dakota, to ceremoniously mark an upcoming mainline upgrade project.

The $12.4 million project calls for building a 7,000-foot siding in Philip halfway between Fort Pierre and Rapid City, and upgrading 10 miles of mainline track east of Huron.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) has begun its search for a new president and chief executive officer.

The association has tapped executive recruiting firm Krauthamer and Associates Inc. to perform the search, according to APTA's Passenger Transport newsletter.

The province of Alberta will provide CA$1.53 billion to support the first stage of Calgary's Green Line light-rail project.

The funds will come from Alberta's "Climate Leadership Plan," which includes a carbon levy. The province's contribution will cover about a third of the $4.65 billion project; Calgary's municipal government and the Canadian federal government will fund the remainder.

By This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Senior Associate Editor

Union Leasing Inc. has appointed Todd Heemsoth president. Before joining the company, he was partner-in-charge for the strategic technologies division at Sikich LLP, a public accounting and technology consulting firm. Heemsoth also served as president of Hale Solutions Inc., an information technology consulting firm he founded in 2004 and sold to Sikich in December 2016. Heemsoth's successful track record in information and business systems, software implementation and strategic technologies makes him "uniquely suited for his new role," said Jeff Walsh, chief executive officer of Sasser Family Holdings, the parent company of Union Leasing, in a press release.

The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) has awarded Kapsch TrafficCom a contract to design, develop, implement, support and maintain a turnkey regional mobile ticketing system. The new system will enable MARTA riders to purchase and electronically validate tickets using their mobile smart devices, as well as directly through the mobile ticketing site. The project is valued at just under $11 million. Kapsch and its partners Bytemark Inc. and TransTrack Systems Inc. will deliver a mobile ticketing app and website, a customer service tool for account management, electronic validators, and account-based back-office solutions for MARTA to manage the new system.

Great Western Railway Ltd. (GWR) has announced it won a bid to purchase 150 grain hoppers from the Saskatchewan government. The largest short line in the province, GWR operates 450 miles of track and serves shippers in the agriculture, energy, aggregates and potash industries.

"This is the first purchase of its kind since our inception, when the line was first purchased from Canadian Pacific in 2000," GWR officials said in an announcement.

Amtrak next week will begin running Empire Service trains to and from Grand Central Terminal in New York City as the railroad gears up for emergency repairs to Penn Station.

In coordination with the New York State Department of Transportation, Amtrak will provide six trains between Albany-Rensselaer and Grand Central during the renewal work period, which runs from July 10 through Sept. 1.

On Wednesday, Cummins Inc. executives, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, and other state and local leaders announced plans for a $30 million railroad overpass on State Road 46 in downtown Columbus, Indiana.

The overpass is necessary as CSX continues to advance about $100 million worth of upgrades to a line shared with the Louisville & Indiana Railroad between Louisville and Indianapolis, Cummins officials said in a press release. When the work is completed in mid- to late 2018, CSX expects to begin increasing the number, weight and length of trains on the line.

Port Freeport has awarded a more than $21 million contract to Primoris Heavy Civil to build rail infrastructure at the southeastern Texas port.

Part of Primoris Services Corp., Primoris Heavy Civil will construct a rail spur and yard that includes 21,000 linear feet of track, as well as complete associated high-mast lighting, paving and drainage work. The rail spur will tie into a Union Pacific Railroad line and support an ongoing expansion at the port. Work is scheduled to start in the third quarter and conclude in second-quarter 2018.

The National Mediation Board (NMB) appointed Harry Hoglander chairman, effective July 1. He succeeds Linda Puchala, who will continue to serve as a board member.

An NMB member since August 2002, Hoglander previously was chairman in 2004-05, 2007-08, 2010-11, 2012-13 and 2014-15. The chair serves a one-year term running from July 1 in a given year to June 30 in the succeeding year.