A Portrait of BC Rail
Northern Light
From its locomotives (including steam, diesel, and electric) to its unique Budd RDC passenger operations, BC Rail was a railway like no other. With 303 full color photographs and 12 lavishly illustrated maps, this volume presents a retrospective of the entire BC Rail system during its 20-year life span between June 1984 and July 2004.
Dale Sanders $
79.95 PLUS S&H • ITEM NLBC
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berger’s position (in an interview with this column a couple of months back, and later in a Wall Street Journal piece, and then in an- other op-ed in the Washington Times) is that most of the deadlines will be missed because of evolving technology and radio spectrum problems. On Capitol Hill, politicians are saying, as
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said recent- ly, that “further unnecessary delays are un- acceptable and irresponsible.” With all due respect to the California senator, we should occasionally remind our readers that PTC is an “unfunded mandate.” Translation: We command you to do this, but don’t look at us if you want us to cough up the money for it.
So PTC: 2018?
Bowing to what he and others see as “inevita- ble” anyway, South Dakota Sen. John Thune (R) has introduced legislation that would give the railroads until 2018 to install PTC. His legislation is given some reasonable chance of enactment, barring a veto by the presi- dent and the failure of Congress to override the veto. Herewith, some possible causes for the success of Senator Thune’s bill: (1) He chairs the Senate Commerce Committee; (2) His state is one of the few without direct in- ter-city passenger service, thus less focused on the Amtrak May 12 disaster; (3) Some law- makers agree that the PTC status as an un- funded mandate (referenced above) has lent some credibility to arguments that it will take longer to come up with the money by the end of this year. We’ll see.
Speaking of Urgently Needed Funding Amtrak has said if more money is not in place Southern Pacific
Official Cars Business, Private, Instruction,
Hospital, and Company Service Cars By Donald M. Munger & Jeffrey Alan Cauthen
have combined efforts once again in this massive volume which details the history of Southern Pacific and its Subsidiaries’ (both Pacific Lines and Texas & Louisiana Lines) Official Cars, as well as Sud Pacífico de México Official Cars and those of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway and Pacific Electric Railway. Since many of these cars were renamed and/or renumbered—often many times—a Name and Number Finding Aid is included to guide the reader to a specific car of interest. An additional chapter cov- ers Southern Pacific Company Service Cars. Library bound, 8½ x 12 horizontal format, 528 Pages, lavishly illustrated with 590 photos—176 in color—and 110 plans, Rosters, Appendix, Color Gallery, Bibliography, Glossary of Terms and Index. This volume is a must have for the Southern Pacific historian and modeler. $135.00 plus Shipping & Handling
A
Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society 1523 Howard Access Rd. Suite A Upland, CA 91786-2582 •
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uthors Munger and Cauthen, with many credits to their names in all matters regarding Southern Pacific passenger equipment,
soon, it may fall even farther behind on ac- quiring resources to pay for the Gateway Project, the huge tunnel under the Hudson River that links New Jersey with New York’s Penn Station. That tunnel, of course, is the all-important connection without which the NEC — by far Amtrak’s busiest — would be extremely compromised. Amtrak Chairman Anthony Coscia tells
Crain’s Business that Amtrak could begin the required environmental review process for Gateway this fall. The rail service has paid its $300 million to cover the tab for that very preliminary portion of the job. Now all that needs to be done is to produce the $15 billion to cover the point of the exercise — the tun- nel itself. So is this a case of spending mon- ey on a project “we don’t have the money to build?” Coscia asks. “A silly decision, or a very critical one.” Let’s hope the latter; another analysis by
Amtrak President Joe Boardman a couple of months ago sounded (intended or not) more dire. We will continue to follow this hanging- by-a-thread story.
Meanwhile, Freight Side
Amtrak’s public relations problems on the ac- cident (deserved or not) have diverted atten- tion (momentarily) from the freight railroads’ misfortunes in that same area. FRA statistics indicate that freight rail accidents are actually down; and that comes despite all those horror stories about bad ac- cidents on the rails compounded by oil spills on shipments generated by the big oil rush. That began with the “fracking” of shale oil, linked to the boom in crude from North Dako- ta, Montana, and elsewhere. Nonetheless, the
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