Rail stocks soared yesterday when it was revealed that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is now the largest single shareholder in BNSF. Apparently, people think he knows something. But rail stocks have been hot for a while. Former VIA Rail chairman Jean Pelletier won another court case last month, this one a wrongful-dismissal case against the […]
VIA Rail lost its case at the Supreme Court today, and as a result must spend as much as $48 million to make its Renaissance coaches more wheelchair-accessible — the cars only cost VIA $139 million to buy in 2000. VIA appealed a 2003 ruling by the Canadian Transportation Agency that the cars presented undue […]
The government of Canada will not appeal a federal court ruling ordering it to reinstate Jean Pelletier as chairman of VIA Rail. Back in March 2004, Pelletier was fired by then-Prime Minister Paul Martin over comments he made about former VIA employee (and Olympic gold medallist) Myriam Bédard. (I blogged about it at the time: […]
VIA Rail trains in the Corridor have had a spate of bad luck in the last 24 hours. Yesterday, train no. 85 from Toronto to Sarnia clipped a car at a level crossing west of Guelph: a child in the car was killed, and two women were hospitalized with life-threatening injuries; no one on the […]
A combination of a late train, a number of passengers suffering from gastrointestinal illness, and broken toilets made for a difficult ride on the Canadian last week, the Robson Valley Times of Valemount, BC reports: The train experienced a number of delays due to weather, several small mechanical problems, and CN freight train congestion. Some […]
I live about an hour outside Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and lately there have been a couple of local rail-related stories that you might find interesting. First, Ottawa’s city council voted last week to revise a proposed expansion of their experimental light-rail project, the O-Train, which currently uses diesel-powered trainsets on existing (former CP) track, […]
Train accidents happen all the time, largely because there are so many trains on the track at any given moment. Here’s a roundup of news about train accidents, just in North America, just in the last couple of days: Following up on yesterday’s Union Pacific derailment in Illinois, the track has been replaced and the […]
VIA Rail has announced that its wireless Internet service is available on most trains and stations in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, in all classes. It’s not free, though; there are per-minute, daily and monthly billing options. Internet access on its long-distance trains is made problematic by the fact that the trains — the Canadian and […]
VIA Rail has added a special “snow train” between Edmonton and Jasper. It will run in addition to the thrice-weekly Canadian, as trains #7 and 8 on Fridays and Sundays, which gives Edmontonians a Jasper-for-the-weekend-by-train option that I would frankly have loved when I was living there. But it’s winter-only, especially because it will use […]
Norfolk Southern reported third-quarter earnings last week: net income was $416 million, or $1.02 per share; from railway operations, income of $715 million (before interest and taxes, thus the discrepancy) on revenues of $2.4 billion. It was Kansas City Southern‘s turn yesterday: net income of $26.4 million (32¢/share) on revenues of $415.7 million. Net income […]
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