Rail & Labor News from RWU
| | Weekly Digest Number 27 - July 1, 2025 | | Welcome to the RWU Rail & Labor News! This news bulletin is produced and emailed out each Tuesday morning. We hope you find each week's news and information useful. If so, please share with co-workers, friends, and colleagues. If you like, you can sign them up to get all the news from RWU HERE. Or forward them the link. Got a hot tip? Please forward the article and a link to raillabornews@gmail.com. Note: If you read over this news bulletin each week, you will be sure to never miss the important news of what is going on in the railroad world from a worker's perspective! | | THIS WEEK'S RAIL AND LABOR NEWS | |
High Speed Rail Alliance / July 11th
Engineer and writer Gareth Dennis will join us from the UK to discuss his new book How the Railways Will Fix the Future. In it, he looks at the history of railways (including the role they have played in extraction and exploitation) but focuses on their power to tackle issues facing us today and to shape a better future.
Topics for discussion include lessons to learn from global railway operations on what works best long-term, and what this might mean in the United States.
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Trains Magazine / June 24th
The Federal Railroad Administration has released a safety bulletin related to a June 9 close-clearance switching accident that killed a Union Pacific conductor in Nacogdoches, Texas.
“Based on FRA’s preliminary investigation, the locomotive engineer was shoving two locomotives and five covered hopper cars into a siding. The conductor was riding the consist and collided with cars that had been left fouling the siding after being set out on the main track. The employee had approximately two years of railroad experience, and qualified as a conductor in August 2023. While FRA’s investigation into this accident is ongoing, the circumstances raise concerns about whether the conductor was properly trained and qualified to perform switching duties,” the FRA said in its safety bulletin that was issued on Monday.
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The New York Times / June 26th
For decades, transit supporters in New York City have clamored for the Interborough Express, a passenger rail line that would wend through overlooked parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the city’s most populous boroughs, without entering Manhattan.
In April, the plan took a major step toward becoming a reality, when Gov. Kathy Hochul approved $2.75 billion for its funding, half of the project’s estimated $5.5 billion price tag. The light-rail line, the city’s first, is expected to make 19 stops, from Jackson Heights in Queens to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, in less than 40 minutes — a fraction of the time it would take with subway and bus routes. It will run alongside a 19th-century freight train route that winds past houses, beside highways, near factories and even under a cemetery.
Now, in a sign of its transformative potential, the project is gaining the attention of real estate developers, long before the first track gets laid.
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CDL Life / June 20th
On June 20, Houston-headquartered Green Corridors announced that the White House granted approval to construct, maintain, and operate an autonomous Intelligent Freight Transportation System (IFTS) corridor between Laredo, Texas and Monterrey, Mexico.
The project carries an estimate price tag of $10 billion, to be covered by Green Corridors in part through fees charged to customers moving freight through the system.
The IFTS system uses autonomous freight shuttles powered by hybrid electric motors to “relieve traffic congestion by moving freight off the road and onto elevated guideways connected to secure terminals,” the company says. “Our elevated guideway is a viaduct system that removes tractor trailer and container traffic from the public roadway, eliminating crashes and reducing traffic congestion."
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High Speed Rail Alliance
Implementing through-running trains via Penn Station represents a once-in-a-century opportunity to transform connectivity in the New York region, just as the subway did. It will benefit the region’s economy, environment, and quality of life.
Many leading proponents of the Gateway Tunnels project miss one of its greatest benefits: the ability make commuter operations through-running. The Gateway Tunnels should be seen as much more than a redundancy effort. By providing four Hudson River tunnels that connect through Penn Station to four East River tunnels, they will bring symmetry that allows through-running.
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Freight Waves / June 24th
Rail unions are raising concerns about the Trump administration’s plan to roll back protections for federal inspectors and investigators put in place in 2021 that they say could increase safety risks in the rail industry.
In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) issued in May, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed several changes to Biden-era regulatory policies, including how DOT oversees enforcement procedures at its modal agencies, including the Federal Railroad Administration.
The NPRM would allow the railroads, during the course of an enforcement action against them, to “petition the DOT General Counsel for a determination that responsible DOT personnel violated provisions of this rule with respect to the enforcement action,” according to the proposed rule.
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Progressive Railroading / June 27th
Transport Workers Union of America members (TWU) who work for Conrail in Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey have voted to ratify a new five-year contract, the TWU announced yesterday.
The new contract provides a 17.5% wage increase, with journeyman carmen making over $100,000 per year by the contract's end, TWU officials said in a press release. Effective July 1, the contract also calls for enhanced dental and vision benefits, establishes an employee-only health plan and improves vacation benefits. TWU will continue to negotiate for paid sick days at the local level with Conrail, union officials said.
“This ratified contract ensures significant wage increases without needing to resort to an extremely long and politically fraught mediation process,” said TWU Rail Division Director John Feltz.
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Trains Magazine / June 16th
Canada’s reportable rail accidents and other occurrences were down slightly in 2024, according to the Transportation Safety Board’s final 2024 statistics.
The final count of 1,198 occurrences — including 896 accidents and 302 incidents — was down 3% from 2023. Accidents which includes events with fatalities, those in which rolling stock is involved in a collision, fire or explosion, or otherwise damages track or rolling stock in a manner that affects safe operation. Incidents include situations where risk of more serious events occur, such as passing a stop signal or a switch left in an incorrect position.
The accident count was down 2% from 2023 and a 12% decrease from the 10-year average. That included 69 rail-related fatalities, up from 67 in 2023 and from the 10-year average of 52. The fatalities include 56 involving trespassers and 12 at grade crossings.
| | Editor's Note: Like its neighbor to the south - Amtrak - VIA Rail Canada has seen strong demand for service with increasing income and passengers served. Despite - like Amtrak - facing a half century of threats to its survival, endless budget cuts, train route eliminations, and running trains over the trackage of hostile "host" Class One railroads, both Amtrak and VIA continue to succeed in spite of all odds. Imagine what they could do in a friendlier environment?! | |
Progressive Railroading / June 16th
VIA Rail Canada reported last week that its total revenue rose 11.5% to C$480.2 million in 2024 compared to C$430.7 million in 2023 due to higher demand for its services.
Ridership last year increased 6.6% to 4.4 million passengers compared to 2023's ridership. Also in 2024, VIA Rail announced its new strategic pan, VIAction 2030, and received funding to replace its pan-Canadian fleet, VIA Rail officials said in a press release.
VIA Rail also faced significant operational challenges, particularly in the newly-operational Quebec City-Windsor corridor, agency officials said. In fourth-quarter 2024, infrastructure regulations impaired on-time performance, they added.
| | NEWS FROM AROUND THE LABOR MOVEMENT | | Each week, RWU includes a few articles about advances and developments in the larger labor movement that are of interest to railroad workers. Got an artcile to submit for possible inclusion next week? Email it along to raillabornews@gmail.com. Thank you! | |
In These Times / June 10th
As federal agents strapped on their tactical gear and picked up rifles to sweep workplaces, parking lots and streets in Los Angeles, workers and residents mounted what is shaping up into the boldest organized defiance to the Trump administration yet. And when a state labor leader observing the raids got swept up in the brutal immigration crackdown, it sparked nationwide action by labor unions against federal raids, detentions and deportations.
When agents showed up at downtown garment factories on Friday and a Home Depot parking lot in the working-class suburb of Paramount on Saturday, everyday people’s anger at the Trump administration’s agents of repression boiled over into confrontation. Protesters hurled their bodies in front of armored vehicles and vans to stop ICE from spiriting away their loved ones and community members. The federal response was swift and asymmetrical. Federal agents in military gear fired flash-bang grenades against protesters who had thrown eggs or other objects, or just followed alongside federal vehicles. In Paramount, the air thrummed thickly rancid from tear gas and grenades.
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In These Times / June 16th
Millions of demonstrators across the country came out into the streets on June 14 at more than 2,000 protests in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Organizers estimated that the mobilization, called “No Kings Day of Defiance,” drew at least five million people nationwide, which would make it the largest single-day protest in U.S. history.
Indivisible, the ACLU and the 50501 Movement were key organizers of the nationwide rallies and marches denouncing the Trump administration, which were timed to coincide with a military parade in Washington, D.C., that President Trump co-opted as a 79th birthday celebration. Storytelling is part of all social movements, and the organizers chose the country’s founding as a touchstone to organize the resistance against what they describe as an authoritarian regime.
| | WEEKLY DERAILMENT DEPARTMENT | | Each Tuesday in this news bulletin, RWU does our best to present a picture of what has been happening over the course of the previous week in terms of derailments in North America, and investigation determinations of previous accidents. NOTE: This list is by no means comprehensive. Smaller and less consequential mishaps are generally not reported here. If the wreck results in injury or fatality, or is especially damaging/extreme, a full article will appear as a feature in the dozen or so rail articles above. Know of a train wreck? Please feel free to forward a link to raillabornews@gmail.com for possible inclusion next week. Thanks! |
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