RAIL

More than three years after a Norfolk Southern derailment turned East Palestine, Ohio, into shorthand for everything the public fears about freight rail, CSX is betting that the answer to that fear runs through a Jacksonville classroom. The Jacksonville-based carrier announced this week the opening of its Hazardous Materials Training Institute, which it bills as the nation's first railroad-operated hazmat training facility. The site opened June 30 at Florida State College at

A federal judge has permanently barred the Trump administration from withholding money for the Gateway Hudson Tunnel Project, delivering a decisive win to New York and New Jersey and lifting the legal cloud that had hung over the largest federal rail investment in modern history. In a June 29 ruling, U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas vacated the administration's September 2025 funding suspension and permanently enjoined the U.S. Department of Transportation from relying

The clock is running on the biggest railroad deal in American history, and the next three weeks will tell everyone a great deal about whether it survives. Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern face a July 27 deadline to hand the Surface Transportation Board a fresh trove of supplemental data, the price of admission the regulator set when it accepted their revised $85 billion merger application in late May and promptly parked the proceeding in abeyance. The Board wants sharper an

The largest railroad merger in American history is inching toward a decisive summer, with Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern racing to satisfy federal regulators before a late-July deadline that could shape the future of freight across the continent. The Surface Transportation Board accepted the companies' revised application on 28 May, clearing a procedural hurdle that had tripped them up twice before. But acceptance came with a catch: the Board ruled that key portions of th

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern spent the week pressing their case to skeptical federal regulators, racing to shore up support for a tie-up that would create the first coast-to-coast freight railroad in American history. The two carriers are campaigning intensely to resolve the Surface Transportation Board's doubts that the merger's promised benefits will materialize. The board last month accepted the revised application for consideration but held the proceedings in abeyan

The American freight rail industry is enjoying its strongest run of volume in years, even as the sector braces for a merger that could redraw the national map. Total U.S. rail traffic for the week ending June 13 reached 520,406 carloads and intermodal units, a 7.2 percent jump year over year, according to the Association of American Railroads. Intermodal led the charge, climbing nearly 11 percent to 289,447 units, while carloads rose 2.8 percent on gains in grain, metallic or

The proposed union of Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, a deal that would create the first true transcontinental railroad in American history, is grinding through a regulatory review that increasingly looks like its biggest obstacle is the calendar. The Surface Transportation Board granted conditional acceptance of the revised merger application earlier this month, but stopped well short of a green light, requesting further information on the environmental impact of combini

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