The proposed $85 billion union of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, pitched as America's first single-line transcontinental railroad, ran into fresh resistance this week on two fronts: a skeptical federal regulator and an increasingly vocal labor movement. The Surface Transportation Board handed the railroads a complicated victory. It accepted the revised merger application but simultaneously paused both the merger and environmental reviews, ordering UP and NS to supply sig

Freight rail is enjoying the kind of spring it has not seen in years, even as the industry's defining storyline, the proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern megamerger, grinds through a regulatory holding pattern with no resolution in sight. The volume picture is genuinely strong. For the week ending June 6, total US rail traffic rose 7.8 percent year over year, the ninth straight week of gains, powered overwhelmingly by intermodal, which jumped 13.6 percent. Domestic intermo

The most ambitious railroad consolidation in modern American history is straining under the weight of regulatory scrutiny, labour opposition and a destabilising executive exodus, raising fresh doubts about whether the deal will ever reach the finish line. This week a key union came out swinging. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 19 said it opposes the proposed merger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern in its current form, citin

The most consequential railroad deal in a generation cleared a procedural hurdle this week, even as federal regulators signalled that any verdict on the first US coast-to-coast freight network remains a long way off. The Surface Transportation Board confirmed it has accepted for review the revised application from Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern to combine into a single transcontinental carrier. The Board's unanimous decision simultaneously held the proceedings in abeyance

Union Pacific filed its formal reply to the Surface Transportation Board on Tuesday, defending its revised application to acquire Norfolk Southern in the largest proposed rail merger in US history and setting up a high-stakes regulatory decision now expected by 30 May. The $85 billion deal, which would create the first transcontinental railroad in the United States, was rejected by the STB in January 2026 as "incomplete". Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern filed a revised app

In a revised $85 billion merger application submitted last Thursday, the country's largest freight railroad warned the Surface Transportation Board (STB) that it will walk away from its proposed acquisition of Norfolk Southern if approval comes loaded with widespread trackage rights or forced line sales. The hardline gambit sets the stage for the highest-stakes rail deal in a generation. The newly disclosed merger agreement reveals that UP and NS will tolerate regulatory cond

The U.S. rail industry is navigating one of its most turbulent stretches in recent memory, as a confluence of rising construction costs, federal funding uncertainty, and a renewed political fight over rail safety standards threatens to stall billions of dollars in planned infrastructure investment. A new maintenance-of-way spending report covering 47 freight and passenger railroads found that only 21 of those surveyed plan to spend more on infrastructure this year, while 18 e

The Long Island Rail Road is barreling toward a potential strike this spring after management rejected the findings of a second Presidential Emergency Board, defying a federal arbitration process designed specifically to prevent commuter rail disruptions from crippling the U.S. economy. A second Presidential Emergency Board sided with a coalition of unions in their ongoing contract dispute with the LIRR — but management rejected the recommendation outright, setting the stage

It began with an audacious premise: that Abraham Lincoln's original vision for a coast-to-coast railroad, signed into law in 1862, had never truly been fulfilled. More than 160 years later, Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are betting $85 billion that they can finish the job. The two companies submitted their merger application to the Surface Transportation Board in December, proposing to combine Union Pacific's vast western network with Norfolk Southern's eastern reach int

Three years after a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio — blanketing a small American town in a chemical plume visible for miles — Congress is making its third attempt to pass meaningful rail safety legislation. Advocates are cautiously optimistic. They've been here before. Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Jon Husted (R-Ohio) introduced the Railway Safety Act of 2026 on 24 February, mandating wayside defect detectors,

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are preparing to take a second run at the biggest railroad merger in American history, after their initial 6,600-page application was unanimously rejected by the Surface Transportation Board in January for failing to include basic required information. The two carriers confirmed on February 17 that they intend to refile a revised application by April 30, keeping alive an $85 billion deal that would create the country's first transcontinental

The Federal Railroad Administration has told Amtrak to prepare for a sweeping organisational overhaul that would carve America’s national passenger railroad into three distinct entities, triggering alarm from labour unions and leaving Capitol Hill scrambling to understand the downstream consequences. Under the proposal, which the FRA outlined to the Rail Passengers Association in a series of briefings this month, Amtrak would become an umbrella holding company overseeing one

Railroad giant asks STB to investigate rival's handling of intermodal trains on the Meridian Speedway — a 300-mile flashpoint where merger ambition meets operational reality Union Pacific is pressing federal regulators to open a formal investigation into Canadian Pacific Kansas City's handling of intermodal freight on the Meridian Speedway, a 302-mile joint rail corridor between Shreveport, Louisiana and Meridian, Mississippi that has become one of the most consequential chok

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern face a Monday deadline to tell federal regulators whether they intend to refile their merger application, as bipartisan opposition to the proposed $85 billion deal intensifies on Capitol Hill. The Surface Transportation Board rejected the railroads' initial application in January, deeming it incomplete and citing a lack of critical detail on competitive impacts and control of key infrastructure hubs. The agency gave the two carriers until 17

The Portal North cutover marks a turning point for the Gateway Program — and a month of misery for Northeast Corridor commuters Starting Thursday, Amtrak will begin transferring rail traffic from the 114-year-old Portal Bridge to the newly constructed Portal North Bridge over the Hackensack River in Kearny, New Jersey — a milestone that has been decades in the making and arrives at a moment when the broader Gateway Program faces an uncertain political future. The cutover, whi

The Surface Transportation Board is intensifying scrutiny of America's largest freight railroads as complaints mount over service disruptions linked to controversial operational changes implemented in recent years. At issue is Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR), a lean operating model that has swept through the industry, promising enhanced efficiency and profitability. Under PSR, railroads run longer, less frequent trains on fixed schedules while dramatically reducing loco

Amtrak has implemented sweeping service reductions along one of the East Coast's busiest rail corridors, eliminating a daily Norfolk-to-Washington train and replacing it with express buses as construction intensifies on Virginia's Long Bridge Project—a four-year effort to eliminate one of the region's most notorious rail bottlenecks. Effective January 12th, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority's construction schedule requires extensive daytime work windows that have forced A

Market-share data, lack of full merger agreement, TRRA transaction cited in STB ruling that application is incomplete The Surface Transportation Board on Friday 16 January issued a setback to Union Pacific’s effort to acquire Norfolk Southern, rejecting the railroads’ merger application as incomplete — although that move offers little clue to the eventual prospects for the first transcontinental merger. The decision will slow the merger process, requiring the two railroads to

Human errors and track defects caused more than 3,000 rail accidents over the last decade, killing 23 people and injuring nearly 1,200. Yet federal railroad regulators failed to implement most of the safety recommendations that emerged from accident investigations. That’s according to an original analysis by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. Behind those numbers, the Howard Center found, is a powerful industry that uses its money an

More than 18,000 Amtrak workers will receive a $900 bonus before the end of the year, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced on Thursday evening. Funding for the bonuses will come from Amtrak’s executive leadership team bonus packages, the statement said. The federal administration urged executive leadership “to forgo 50% of the bonus packages that would have been paid out under the misplaced priorities of the previous executive bonus structure.” Amtrak set all-time