VERMONTER REROUTE WORK BEGINS: On October 20, 2011, Federal Railroad Admin- istrator Joseph C. Szabo andf Pan Am Rail- ways President David Fink joined state and local officials in Greenfield, Mass., to celebrate the official groundbreaking for the Knowledge Corridor Revitalization high speed rail project. Financed with a $73 million grant from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the project will upgrade 50 miles of Pan Am trackage between Springfield, Mass., and East Northfield, Vt., to 79 m.p.h. passenger train standards, allowing Amtrak's Vermonter to return to the route its predecessor, the Mon- trealer, left due to deteriorating track more than 20 years ago. Next spring Pan Am Railways crews will
begin to replace ties, rail, and signals. After the project’s completion in 2013, the Vermon- ter will save a half hour’s running time when compared to the current route via Palmer and Amherst, Mass., and will serve Holyoke, Northampton, and Greenfield. A separate $76 million project will upgrade Springfield Union Station into a regional transportation hub linking Amtrak passenger trains with local, regional, and intercity bus lines.
TO ACQUIRE CSX TRACK IN N.Y.: Next year, Amtrak will lease about 100 route miles of CSX trackage between Poughkeepsie and Sch- enectady, N.Y., an important link in the Empire Corridor serving New York, Buffalo, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Rutland, Vt. Amtrak runs nearly 30 trains a day over the route, com- pared to about five CSX freights. Under the agreement, the passenger carrier will be re- sponsible for operations, maintenance, and cap- ital improvements. Current projects under way on this route include the addition of a fourth track at the Albany/Rensselaer passenger sta- tion and the long-awaited double-tracking of the segment between Albany and Schenectady, a perennial operational bottleneck.
Cummins Diesel
NEW ENGINE FOR RAIL APPLICATIONS: Cummins, Inc., has introduced the 4000 h.p. 16-cylinder QSK95 engine, which will be built at its plant in Seymour, Ind., starting in 2014. This engine, along with the 5000 h.p. QSK120 (yet to be released), will meet EPA Tier 4 emis- sions standards through the use of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) aftertreatment in place of an exhaust muffler. The company has targeted the new engines for use in passenger and freight locomotives as well as marine use, heavy haul mine trucks, and power generation applications. The company says that in 2014 Ontario’s GO Transit commuter system will repower eleven locomotives with the QSK 95.
Electro-Motive Diesel
HOOSIER ASSEMBLY PLANT OPENS: On October 28, 2011, Electro-Motive Diesel’s parent Progress Rail Services announced the grand opening of its new locomotive assembly plant in Muncie, Ind., just one year after an- nouncing that it intended to build the facility. The official “first locomotive” was Ferromex SD70ACe No. 4092, one of about two dozen units currently being assembled for the Mexi-
JEFF TERRY Soo SD60s Being Rebuilt, Repainted, Renumbered By Canadian Pacific
CANADIAN PACIFIC is having the fleet of Soo Line SD60s and SD60M’s rebuilt by Canadian Allied Diesel in Montreal, and in the process they’re being painted in CPR colors and renum- bered into the CPR 6200 series to avoid conflicts with CPR’s remaining SD40-2s. No. 6250 was the first to be finished, having been released from CAD in September 2011. Looking redder than red, it was leading Soo 6023 on the St. Paul Transfer at St. Paul, Minn., on October 31, 2011.
MARK MAUTNER Locomotive Decked Out for Port Celebration
SPECIALLY PAINTED AND LETTERED FOR AMERICA’S CENTRAL PORT, SD40-2 No. 1000 was decked out to commemorate the signing on October 28 of an $8.5 million TIGER grant which will partially fund the construction of a new South Harbor on the Mississippi River at America’s Central Port (formerly Tri-Cities Port) in Granite City, Ill. The unit actually belongs to Respondek Rail’s Port Harbor Railroad, which provides contract switching services to the port. It’s ex-Union Pacific 2962 and was built as Chicago & North Western No. 6813.
can railroad and for the BHP Billiton iron ore railroad in Australia. The new factory will allow EMD and Progress to participate in the passenger market, since “buy American” re- quirements left EMD, with its main assembly plant located in London, Ontario, unable to bid. To that end, in October EMD announced that it is developing a passenger locomotive for the North American market and it expects to have a demonstrator on the road by 2014.
Grenada Railway
IS END NEAR FOR CASEY JONES LINE? The Grenada Railway has filed with the STB to abandon 81 miles of the former Illinois Central trackage between Grenada and Canton, Miss.; the route includes Vaughn, site of the famous Casey Jones train wreck of 1900. Grenada Rail- way’s parent company V&S Railway, a sub- sidiary of A&K Railroad Materials (yes, a
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