locomotive

July 24, 2015

Following the Northstar – Minnesota’s Commuter Rail

During my first visit to Minneapolis several years ago, I took lots of photos of the new Hiawatha light rail line (now known as the Blue Line), but completely missed out a chance to check out their commuter rail. On my more recent trip to the Twin Cities, I made sure to see the Northstar. A few trains in the state have used variations on the name Northstar, including a now-defunct Amtrak train, a name which derives from Minnesota’s nickname as the North Star State, as it is the northernmost of the contiguous US states. Although it might not be...

Valladolid, Mexico’s Abandoned Station, and the High-Speed Trans-Peninsular Rail Project

As an escape from New York’s winter cold, I recently spent a week in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Considering that I like to visit diverse places such as Alaska in the winter, and Chernobyl, a beach locale like Mexico sounds relatively normal trip. The area doesn’t have much in the way of trains, either, which sounds really normal. However, a few hour trek toward the ruins at Chichén Itzá on the libre (free road), as opposed to the cuota (toll road), will yield you an encounter with a lone grade crossing just west of the city of Valladolid. This rail...

#GEInstaWalk – Touring GE’s rail locomotive production facility, Fort Worth, Texas

It’s not every day that a railfan gets to visit the place where mighty railroad locomotives are born (forged of steel and bound together by lots and lots of welding)… Recently, however, I got an invite to tour GE’s new locomotive manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas. Right now they’re producing the Evolution Series Tier 3 locomotive (ES44C4) for BNSF, and I got an up close and personal view of the process from start to finish. The entire locomotive creation process takes about 60 days, and the facility had various locomotives in all stages of that process. Every week six...