Following the Northstar – Minnesota’s Commuter Rail

July 24, 2015July 24, 2015 Emily Moser 5 Comments

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 glowing, this Northstar, is hard to miss, painted in an attractive blue, yellow, and red scheme.

In terms of transportation systems, the Northstar is relatively young, with passenger service starting at the end of 2009. Operating on an already-existing BNSF freight line, money was invested to purchase equipment, build stations, and to construct a maintenance facility near Big Lake. The line stretches from Target Field in Minneapolis, where it connects with the light rail, to Big Lake in the north. Although hopes were for the line to continue all the way to the city of St. Cloud, just north of Big Lake there is a several mile stretch of only single track, and it would be a significant expenditure to add another track so the line can continue to accommodate both freight and commuter traffic. Instead, bus service called the Northstar Link carries passengers from Big Lake to St. Cloud.

There are a lot of comparisons one could make with Metro-North – the most obvious being the overpasses used on the line. Along the Hudson Line there are severe limitations on the height of freight trains due to low bridges and overpasses. The line on which Northstar runs, being mostly freight, in contrast has very high overpasses to allow the plentiful freights to pass underneath. Another leg up the Northstar has over Metro-North is the fact that each passenger coach is equipped with wi-fi, something customers here have been wanting for years. On the other hand, service on the Northstar is very limited, focused around commuting hours with an occasional extra train for baseball games and concerts at Target Field. Much of this limitation is due to the frequent freight on the line, which can often delay trains (especially Amtrak’s Empire Builder).

All in all it was an interesting trip to see another one of the country’s commuter rail systems. Enjoy a collection of photos from Northstar:

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

January 23, 2015January 23, 2015 Emily Moser 3 Comments

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 line extends from Valladolid to Yucatán’s capital of Mérida, and although freight runs are semi frequent, regular passenger service is long gone. Many of the former train stations are abandoned and in disrepair, such as the one in Valladolid, which I found after a bit of poking around.

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

October 17, 2014October 20, 2014 Emily Moser 2 Comments

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 locomotives are completed… six gleaming, shiny powerhouses…

A shiny new locomotive, ready to be tested on GE’s test track…

My invite to GE Manufacturing Solutions came with their #GEInstaWalk program – which opens some of GE’s state-of-the-art facilities to Instagram photographers and fans. This was the third InstaWalk to be held, the first being at GE Aviation’s jet engine testing facility in Peebles, OH, and the second was to see the two GE wind turbines at the Cape Cod Air Force Facility in Massachusetts. Each event was a unique opportunity for the attendees to get a VIP experience “behind-the-scenes” of some amazing technology.

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