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Railroad Newsline for Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Compiled by Larry W. Grant

In Memory of Rob Carlson, 1952 – 2006

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RAIL NEWS

BNSF RAILWAY STREAMLINES FUEL MANAGEMENT

The BNSF Railway Co., which pulls freight through 193 stations in New Mexico, said Thursday it is using a new fuel management system.

The system is a product of FuelQuest, an on-demand software and services company for the downstream energy industry.

With approximately 1.5 billion gallons of fuel being purchased each year, manually managing complex diesel fuel supply chain processes while taking into account inventory management, fuel procurement, delivery and financial reconciliation was a task BNSF was eager to streamline, according to a FuelQuest news release.

The goal of the fuel management system implementation is to improve controls and maximize efficiency through streamlining operations, reducing paperwork and maximizing employee value.

"With volatility high and fuel prices at a premium, BNSF is looking for every possibility to reduce our overall fuel spend, and a key objective is ensuring that fuel contract pricing is strictly adhered to," said Casey Gourley, director of fuel management for BNSF.

A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (NYSE:BNI), BNSF Railway Co. operates a North American rail network of about 32,000 route miles in 28 states and two Canadian provinces. - New Mexico Business Weekly

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RAIL WORKERS BLAME WOES ON EARLIER CUTS

When Shayne Brighton started his job 28 years ago at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., he didn't have to worry about toiling nights and weekends -- shifts he has often worked in the past three years.

Mr. Brighton, 49, makes $24.24 an hour as a welder-fabricator at CPR. He went on strike with his 3,200 Teamsters union co-workers on May 16.

"CP Rail isn't offering us much in return for our hard work," Mr. Brighton said from Revelstoke, BC.

He said his quality of life has been eroded by work demands that increasingly cut into what used to be his family time.

While he can make nearly $60,000 a year, including overtime, he said he and his colleagues are underpaid, given the growing work load for employees remaining after many years of layoffs.

CPR and Canadian National Railway Co. are running into union resistance to management attempts to broaden duties for employees, who would rather reap bigger rewards from the industry's prosperity.

After last year's record profit of $2.1-billion at CN and $796-million at CPR, employees complain that their ranks have been depleted by job cuts even as the rail sector thrives.

From 1994 to 2005, railway industry employment across Canada fell 35 per cent to about 35,400 people, or a loss of 19,000 jobs.

Average wages during the period rose 46 per cent to $72,000 a worker in 2005, says the Railway Association of Canada. The wage hikes average 3.5 per cent annually, outpacing the yearly inflation rate of 2 per cent.

The downward trend in jobs has continued, dipping below 35,000 positions last year, while the railways try to keep a lid on further wage increases.

Amid wage restraints and ongoing job cuts, 2007 has become the year of labour unrest in Canada's efficiency minded railway industry. A 15-day strike hit CN in February, and the CPR strike enters its 13th day today.

The CPR strike by track maintenance workers came just three months after 2,800 conductors and yard staff at CN staged their strike, upset at what they view as onerous demands to meet CN's quest to be a "precision railroad."

CPR has a different name for its efficiency drive, dubbing it an "execution excellence" campaign.
The corporate slogans refer to management's focus on forming daily schedules for rail cars, setting targets for departures and arrivals.

Other goals include reducing "terminal dwell time," where workers get trains ready to roll; part of the mission is to transport more freight in speedier fashion.

In the late 1990s, Montreal-based CN began emphasizing the importance of getting trains to leave at scheduled times.

CN has become the leader in the shift away from the common industry practice of a decade ago, when locomotives were forced to wait for enough goods to show up before moving on the rails.

Following CN's lead, Calgary-based CPR and other North American railways have embraced the concept of departing at specified times, even with light loads.

David Scott, 54, a CPR carpenter who makes $24.24 an hour, said wages aren't the only sticking point in the strike against CPR. Pensions, health benefits and work rules (notably management's proposal to expand work districts) are also contentious issues, he said on his cellphone, shortly before reporting for picketing duties in Montreal.

Mr. Scott has worked at CPR for more than 30 years, supporting his wife and their two daughters, now in their early 20s and still living at home.

"CP Rail is making money hand over fist, and they should share with us," he said.

Escalating imports of Asian goods, notably from China and India, and rising commodity exports have created bustling times in the railway sector over the past three years.

As the train business booms, unions are clashing with management's attempts to keep costs under control, said BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. analyst Randy Cousins.

He said that as baby boomers retire over the next decade, the railways will be able to shave labour costs further through natural attrition.

The industry has become more efficient, taking advantage of improvements in train technology and productivity gains such as growth in handling intermodal goods that are transferred in large containers between trains and ships, said Edward Jones & Co. analyst Daniel Ortwerth.

He said there was bound to be labour resistance to the railway sector's transition to becoming 24/7 operators.

"Change is hard," Mr. Ortwerth said. - Brent Jang, The Toronto Globe and Mail

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RAILROADS FEEL PROFIT PINCH AS U.S. AUTOMAKERS TRIM PRODUCTION

WASHINGTON, DC -- Norfolk Southern trains rumble to and from Ford Motor's factory in Norfolk, Virginia, delivering fenders, frames, axles and engines and then hauling off finished F-150 pickups. That is about to change.

When Ford shuts the plant in June and moves production to Dearborn, Michigan, trucks will fetch parts from suppliers nearby. Only completed pickups will travel on Norfolk Southern trains.

The shift is part of a historic transition for U.S. automakers and a profit drain for railroads, especially Norfolk Southern, the largest auto carrier. As Ford and its peers cut output, Asian automakers led by Toyota Motor are adding U.S. factories that rely less on rail shipments.

"This auto slowdown is significantly sharper than what we usually see," said Tony Hatch, an independent rail analyst in New York. Carrying Asian automakers' U.S.-built cars "is less overall business," he said.

Norfolk Southern and its rivals BNSF Railway Company and CSX all cited declining auto shipments as a reason for lower profit in the first quarter, along with harsh weather and weakness among home builders. Union Pacific was the only major U.S. railroad to increase earnings in the period.

Auto cargoes are down this quarter, too, the companies say, and railroads do not predict a rebound this year.

Investors might have reacted more harshly to the decline had Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, and TCI Fund Management, a British hedge fund, not revealed their rail holdings in April.

"Fundamentals likely do not matter as much," as purchases by Buffett and others buoy shares, Edward Wolfe, an analyst at Bear Stearns in New York, wrote last month in a note to investors.

The Standard & Poor's 500 railroads index has gained 23.8 percent this year, extending gains from 2006 when profits grew.

The carriers' first-quarter decline in auto carloads -- down 14 percent at Norfolk Southern -- extends a trend of steeper declines over the past few quarters amid a more gradual long-term slide. Shipments of parts and finished autos generated 10.2 percent of U.S. railroads' revenue in 1990, according to the Association of American Railroads, the industry's trade group in Washington. By 2005, that share was down to 8.1 percent.

U.S. automakers' production plans this year suggest that the drop will continue, as Ford, General Motors and Chrysler pare output after a collective loss of more than $15 billion in 2006.

Any production cut "gets shot through the entire supply chain," said David Andrea, a vice president of the Original Equipment Supplier Association in Troy, Michigan, a trade group for U.S. auto-parts makers. "Engines and transmissions and body parts and suspension parts would be down in a similar manner."

The drop is felt most at Norfolk Southern because its tracks traverse the eastern half of the United States, including Michigan and Ohio, the states with the most auto-related jobs.

The country's two biggest railroads, Union Pacific and BNSF serve fewer auto factories while hauling more imported Asia-made vehicles from West Coast ports.

When the Dearborn factory takes over pickup production from Norfolk, the flow of parts trains will dwindle.

Detroit's automakers once built cars "near where people actually lived and wanted to buy them," said Thomas Klier, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. "Then your parts kept being made in the Midwest and you shipped them. It's now back to what it was very early on in the early days of the industry where each model gets made in only one place."

Expanding F-150 production at the three-year-old Dearborn factory while shutting the Norfolk plant will shorten some supply lines for Ford.

The automaker also builds the pickups in Kansas City, Missouri. "There are many business decisions that go into the decision-making process, and one of them can be logistics," said a spokeswoman, Anne Marie Gattari.

For Norfolk Southern, the lost business has been among its most lucrative. Auto-shipment revenue averages $2,400 for each carload, compared with $1,201 for all types of shipments, according to Banc of America Securities. Total freight shipments at the railroad are down 4.7 percent through May 19.

Geography has helped Union Pacific and BNSF keep more of their auto business.

"That's because we're more impacted by the 'new domestics,' " BNSF's chief executive, Matthew Rose, said during an interview, using the industry term for foreign automakers with assembly operations in such states as California and Texas.

The two western carriers benefit from access to California ports, where trains pick up imports and haul them to regional distribution centers.

Along with the eastern rails, Union Pacific and BNSF also have added business as Toyota and other Asian automakers build factories in the United States. Output at those plants surged to 3.46 million vehicles in 2006, compared with 1.5 million in 1990, according to data from the trade publication Automotive News and the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

What is missing -- for railroads, at least -- is a stream of parts comparable to those flowing into Ford, GM or Chrysler factories. Toyota's new truck plant in San Antonio, Texas, illustrates why.

The six-month-old factory eventually will have 21 parts suppliers on the same property as the assembly plant, with a parts work force of 2,100. That is more than the 2,000 Toyota employees who build full-size Tundra pickups at the plant, which is served by Union Pacific and BNSF. - Angela Greiling Keane, Bloomberg News, The International Herald Tribune

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PROVOANS HOPING TO HUSH TRAIN WHISTLES

Photo here:

[deseretnews.com]

Caption reads: Sherrie Spencer, left, Ingrid Sorensen and Sandy Rowe are pushing for train crossing gates that will allow trains to pass through without horn blasts. (Stuart Johnson, Deseret Morning News)

Map here:

[deseretnews.com]

Provo, UT -- A 2-year-old federal regulation regularly jolts Sherrie Spencer from her sleep at night.

The regulation requires trains to use more and longer horn blasts at road crossings -- day and night -- upsetting the lives of Spencer and others who live near the railroad tracks that cut through central Provo and then snake north along I-15.

The problem will only intensify when commuter rail comes to town in the future, possibly tripling the number of trains.

Silencing the horns could be expensive.

"We're being very aggressive in trying to resolve this issue," Provo Mayor Lewis Billings said. "The early estimate is that it could cost $1.5 million."

The money would be spent on additional gates to meet safety regulations that can trigger quiet zones established by the Federal Railroad Administration in 2005.

The city is setting aside $250,000 in the budget and is applying for a federal grant to help offset the costs, city council member Cindy Richards said.

Spencer spurred the city to action in March when she spoke passionately during a city council meeting on behalf of a group called "Quiet Trains for Provo."

The group of more than 150 residents has printed T-shirts with the logo of a friendly little train they named "Hush."

Hush has a twofold mission -- to quiet locomotive horns and to do so without raising a racket against the city or the railroads.

Quiet Trains wants "to work in a cooperative, professional and relentless manner with the city" to ameliorate the "noise nuisance" that has "made life for those living closest to the tracks difficult and miserable," according to an e-mail sent to residents.

Billings, a champion of commuter rail service to Provo, sent the city's public works director to Irving, Texas, to learn how that city established quiet zones.
Provo is also trying to learn from Salt Lake City, which established train quiet zones near The Gateway.

Weber and Davis county communities are trying to do the same. They are asking the Federal Railroad Administration to approve quiet zones where UTA's FrontRunner commuter rail line will run at 79 mph between Weber County and Salt Lake City beginning in 2008, according to the Associated Press.

Billings hopes commuter rail will reach Provo by 2012 or sooner.

Spencer and the rest of the Quiet Trains group want to be sure Provo has quiet zones long before then.

Railroad crossings at 200 West, 500 West, 700 West, 900 West and 820 North are all in residential neighborhoods and all have two gates, one on each side of the tracks.

Those gates lower across only one lane of traffic. Federal regulations state that locomotive horns must blow two long blasts, one short blast and another long blast at each intersection.

The blaring horns are intended to reduce the more than 4,000 annual train-car accidents reported in 2003.

To establish a quiet zone, Provo would have to pay for so-called quad gates, or four gates at each crossing instead of two.

Quad gates block both lanes of traffic on both sides of the tracks, preventing cars from skirting around a single gate and attempting to beat a train across the tracks.

A quad-gate system costs $300,000 to $500,000, according to estimates provided to the FRA by Union Pacific.

Train conductors who approach a railroad crossing with quad gates see a different light signal that indicates they should not blow the horn unless there is an emergency.

Spencer and Richards said the horn blasts not only grew in number when the federal regulation went into effect but also grew louder.

"It's not in the rule that they have to be louder," Spencer said. "We don't understand why some horns seem more intense and have more of an electronic sound to them.

"They wake us up, they interrupt our conversations and they're also annoying to the businesses downtown." - Tad Walch, The Deseret Morning News

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LOCAL ARTISTS TO UN VEIL REPLACEMENT ART DURING LITTLE BIGHORN DAYS

Photos here:

[www.billingsgazette.net]

[www.billingsgazette.net]

HARDIN, MT -- Montana's 1964 Territorial Centennial Train, a 30-car cross-county extravaganza that has been called "Montana's greatest publicity stunt," left relics scattered around the state at trail's end.

Rail cars that made the epic public relations journey, hosted presidents and governors and awed 380,000 people at the New York World's Fair were distributed to communities large and small.

Some were adopted by towns and used as offices for Chambers of Commerce. Some were abandoned in wheat fields, their huge painted panels fading in the sun.

Hardin never quite forgot its centennial car. For most of its afterlife, it was parked by the Lariat Motel on Center Avenue and served as headquarters for the Chamber of Commerce. After the town's old railroad depot was restored and the Chamber offices were established inside, the historic rail car was moved, too.

Tourist attraction

Now it stands ready for its second incarnation as a tourist attraction.

Inside the depot, in the great hall where waiting passengers once gathered, six area artists are preparing three massive murals to replace those that wowed crowds in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Washington, DC, 43 years ago.

The artists plan a marathon four-day painting session starting Thursday to finish the project begun last September. Their work will be unveiled during Little Bighorn Days, June 22-24.

The rail car was moved to the depot about two years ago. Original murals had pretty well lost a battle with time, and Friends of the Deport in conjunction with the Chamber discussed replacing them. At first, consideration was given to recruiting high school art classes, but the job was just too big. Two of the panels are 7 feet tall and 16 feet long. The third is 7 feet tall and 12 feet long.

Hardin artist Harry Koyama, who maintains a studio and gallery across from the depot in the historic Hotel Becker, volunteered to recruit some of the area's professional artists to take on the project.

"They were excited from the get-go about doing it," Koyama said. "I was overwhelmed with their enthusiasm."

Other volunteer artists

The volunteers included Dick Moulden, a Billings artist whose paintings are in private collections in the United States and South Africa; Bob Tompkins of Billings, who operates a studio and gallery in Rue D'Artistes on Montana Avenue and who won first place in the Greater Yellowstone National Art Exhibition in 2001; Berna Loy Ost of Powell, WY, an artist and instructor who has won national and state awards for her landscapes, wildlife and Western art; Mike Flanagan of Dayton, WY, whose works are in the collections of the late John Wayne, former Vice President Dan Quayle and current Vice President Dick Cheney; Koyama, an impressionistic painter, who focuses on wildlife, landscapes and American Indians; and Joe Trakimas of Roundup, a landscape and historical painter with a studio and gallery at Rue D'Artistes.

"My first rule was that it had to be fun," Koyama said of the venture. "And they are still having a lot of fun. It's been a good excuse to get artists together."

After an initial meeting in September, the artists reconvened in February to form a plan.

"We had our first group session in February to construct the panels," Koyama said.

They designed the three panels as a group and began by painting miniature versions.

The panels would not be reproductions of those painted in 1964 by Billings artists Lyman Rice and Bud Wert, Tompkins said, but they would keep to the original themes. Themes on the original train cars were intended to display Montana's history as well as its attractions. The three panels on the Hardin train car depicted Native Americans, frontiersmen and an early train depot -- in this case, the one at Hardin.

Painting began in March. Working weekends, the artists paired off on the three murals. Ost and Trakimas tackled the frontiersmen; Moulden and Flanagan took on the depot, and Koyama and Tompkins worked on the Native American panel.

While the artists volunteered their time, the community raised money for supplies and other needs. Motel rooms were donated for the artists and restaurants provided meals. The donor list has to be constantly updated.

"Everybody stepped up," Koyama said. "The entire community has been supportive."

Each panel has its distinctive style. The Native American panel reflects the more impressionist style of its creators, Koyama and Tompkins. Ost and Trakimas produced a classic Western landscape of the Montana frontier. Moulden and Flanagan's depot is still unfolding.

In less than a month, the panels will be coated with a protective UV varnish and mounted on the rail car. An awning will be constructed to provide additional protection from the elements.

"We know it will require maintenance every three to five years," Koyama said. "But as long as we're around, that won't be a problem."

Inside the rail car, exhibits are already prepared. Commemorative glassware and plates from the territorial centennial are on display along with treasures from Big Horn County's early history.

Promoters of the Centennial Train would be pleased with the efforts the artists and community have made in bringing the rail car back to its former glory. It was the grand scheme of Howard Kelsey, a dude rancher who felt Montana needed a higher profile in the rest of the country.

With the backing of then Gov. Tim Babcock and many of Montana's biggest movers and shakers, the outlandish scheme came to fruition just in time for the World's Fair in New York.

Rice was commissioned to paint 150 panels to adorn the train, and he hired Wert to help. In eight months, they had painted 14,000 square feet of plywood with scenes intended to lure tourists to Montana.

When it was finished, 300 Montanans boarded the train at Billings, at $500 a head, along with beauty queens, 75 horses, stage coaches and everything needed to put on a parade at every major city along the way. In Chicago, a crowd of 150,000 to 200,000 people lined the streets.

Banquets were produced, sometimes almost out of thin air, at stops along the way. In Washington, DC, 950 people attended the "Montana Banquet." The guest list included President Lyndon Johnson.

In New York City, 800 people, including many New Yorkers who came from Montana, were fed Montana beef specially shipped in for the event at the Commodore Hotel. Movie star Myrna Loy was among the guests, along with cowboy star Montie Montana and his horse, who rode the elevator to the banquet hall. - Lorna Thackeray, The Billings Gazette

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RAILROAD SHOW HAS FITTING PLACE TO START

Photo here:

[www.greenbaypressgazette.com]

Caption reads: Bev and Stu Smith, in costume, view a photograph of a vintage train station at the National Railroad Museum in Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, where the Heritage Players' "Ride the Rails" will premiere June 3. (Warren Gerds/Press-Gazette)

GREEN BAY, WI -- A harmonic convergence will take place next week.

A new local, story-and-song production about early railroads here will premiere at the National Railroad Museum.

The production has special meaning to Bev Smith, who with her husband, Stu Smith, leads the devoted ensemble of performers in the unique historical troupe, the Heritage Players.

"I am a railroader's daughter," she said the other day at the museum. "My father, Russell Weaver, worked on the New York Central Railroad all his working life. I grew up with the railroad very much a part of our existence."

Bev Smith's father was a mechanic on steam and diesel locomotives, as well as a gang foreman. Her brother Wayne was also a mechanic.

When her mother visited, taking a passenger train from her hometown of Elkhart, Indiana, the Smith daughters had a special name for her, "Mammy Choo-Choo."

Bev Smith brought her father to the museum before his death.

"It really meant a lot to him," she said.

The railroad also meant a whole lot to Green Bay.

"I say in the show Green Bay was a sleepy little town before the railroad steamed things up," Bev Smith said.

The show is "Riding the Rails: Songs and Stories of Railroading in Old Wisconsin." It covers 1862 through the first days of the 20th century.

For 12 years, Heritage Players has made a habit of bringing a facet of area history to new life. There's no other troupe like it locally.

This year's all-volunteer ensemble, aside from the Smiths, as director/performers, is comprised of Deidre Baumgart (costume designer), Lyle Becker, Craig Berken, Lee Bock, Myrna Dickinson, Mary Eisenreich (music director) Julie Gast, Randy Gast, Kathy Hardtke, Bill Jones, Nancy Jones, Katie Lange, Roger Lawyer, Gretchen Mattingly, Colleen Miner, Kathy Nelson, Dennis O'Donnell, John Phillipson, Steve Stary, Mike Troyer, Dave Zochert and Sandy Zochert.

Eisenreich wrote or arranged the music, including "The First Train to Green Bay" and "The Orphan Train," as well as German songs associated with a festival, Saengerfest. One story is about a train wreck in De Pere.

The show includes personal reflections and legendary tales that the troupe researched.

"It's like a treasure hunt," Bev Smith said. "It's so exciting to go back to the old newspapers -- full-page headlines about the railroad coming to Green Bay and what it's going to mean."

Prior to the arrival of the train, most travel and commerce was by water. Talking about this, the Smiths slipped into a give and take:

Bev: "When the freeze came, Green Bay buttoned up and went into hibernation."

Stu: "With the advent of the train, the city had a whole new personality. We went from being a pokey little one-horse town to being a hub of industry and commerce."

Bev: "And business meant new jobs."

Stu: "The population increased, and that meant more houses, meant more business, meant more people."

Thus, "Riding the Rails" unfolds in telling about an important part of local heritage.

Four of the performances are at the National Railroad Museum.

"The atmosphere is unique here," Bev Smith said.

"You couldn't ask for better backdrop than the big trains in the Lenfesty Center," Stu Smith said. "You couldn't build a set that would look quite as good as that." - Warren Gerds, The Green Bay Press-Gazette

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BOBCAT, NPCC ARE OF CONCERN

BISMARCK, ND -- If it takes Gov. John Hoeven using the influence of his office to accomplish getting the railroad to the table to talk about local rail service, let it happen.

The stakeholders are many, but the main players are the city of Bismarck, North Dakota and the BNSF Railway. The Bobcat Co. also has much on the line.

At issue is what it will take to convince the railroad to agree to an intermodal rail contract to serve the Northern Plains Commerce Centre. Intermodal is a fast connection for freight shipping in containers, the service to connect with the BNSF facility at Dilworth, Minnesota, and thence to Minneapolis.

Not long ago, BNSF was holding firm to a requirement that the freight shipped from the commerce center justify a minimum of 75,000 railroad cars a year.

Here’s the glitch: There’s only one outfit yet established at the NPCC, the Bobcat Co.

And its future is uncertain. The North Dakota company is for sale by its owner, the giant Ingersoll-Rand.

Bobcat may be able to use 3,000 to 4,000 railroad cars annually.

There have been unofficial indications that the railroad company may be willing to start intermodal service on a scale smaller than its minimum at first, to get the ball rolling. As it is, Bobcat, does limited shipping by rail boxcar to and from its warehouse at the NPCC. But that certainly doesn’t include the fast, direct service.

The only other announced possibility to this date is that a pulse loading company with roots in Canada is interested in shipping containers of peas and lentils. The company, Saskan Trading, is in a holding pattern when it comes to the commerce center, waiting for BNSF to agree to a solid intermodal contract.

So the 243-acre location, which could handle 10 to 15 companies’ installations the size of Bobcat’s, the whole facility set to cost $14 million, is far from reaching its potential. The NPCC project has many pressing needs, not the least of which is for its management company to make several specific announcements that there are real tenants ready to open shop there, not just dropping cryptic hints that there are interesting nibbles.

This is where the governor could do some arm-twisting -- which he may well already have been doing behind the scenes.

How the sale of the Bobcat Co. will sort out, who knows? It would put a much better complexion on its future if the NPCC shipping deal were in the bag.

Bobcat, dating from the Melroe days, has been an important presence in North Dakota. Its 2,600 jobs in the state of its birth juices several economies, local ones and the state one.

We want to have it be as advantageous as possible for a buyer to keep Bobcat’s operations in North Dakota, for one thing, at the level of production it is and then be increased in the future.

Maybe the company will be spun off to its employees and be a stand-alone company once more, though it’s hard to picture that it would have the buying power for materials that being part of a conglomerate may offer.

Let’s hope that Ingersoll-Rand does the selling of Bobcat in good faith. Not only jobs but also an aspect of North Dakota’s psyche is wrapped up in Bobcat. - Editorial Opinion, The Bismarck Tribune

CP RAIL PLANS TRACKS TO SERVE OIL SANDS UPGRADERS

CALGARY, AB -- Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. plans to lay tracks to counties near Edmonton, Alberta, to serve billions of dollars worth of oil sands upgrading plants being built in the area, it said on Monday.

CP Rail, the country's No. 2 railroad, is seeking approval to construct rail lines to Sturgeon and Strathcona counties, and has made arrangements for 26 km (16 miles) of right of way northeast of Edmonton, it said.

The company, whose unionized track maintenance and expansion workers have been on strike since May 16, said it will spend $15-million (US$14-million) immediately to bolster distribution and logistics capacity.

The two counties are the site of several under-construction and proposed upgraders, which turn tar-like bitumen from northeastern Alberta's oil sands into refinery-ready light crude.

Developers such as BA Energy, Northwest Upgrading, North American Oil Sands, the Fort Hills partnership and Total SA have chosen the region in efforts to avoid surging costs around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray. - Reuters

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JOB LED HIM OUT OF THE SOUTH

OMAHA, NE -- When Atlanta native Kenny Rocker was wooed by Union Pacific Railroad out of college, he didn't hesitate to move to Omaha.

Sure, he grew up in a city sometimes called a black mecca, a city where black business leaders, culture and entertainment opportunities abound.

But the chance to work for the nation's largest railroad seemed pretty intriguing, too. And the company really seemed to want him in Omaha.

"Coming out of college, what you really look for is opportunity," said Rocker, now a manager in the railroad's automotive marketing group. "I was focused on that, whether in Atlanta, Omaha, the East Coast or the West Coast."

He's enjoyed more than a decade with the company, most of that time in Omaha. And he's deepening his roots here, recently becoming engaged to a fellow Union Pacific worker.

Rocker's story shows Omaha is capable of competing for educated and mobile black workers, people who can contribute to expanding Omaha's black middle class.

And it all started with a company that made a real commitment to increasing the diversity of its ranks.

Union Pacific recruited Rocker, who grew up in Atlanta, out of Alabama's Tuskegee University, part of the railroad's longtime efforts to seek job candidates from the nation's historically black colleges.

Rocker said "affinity groups" the railroad has established for blacks, Hispanics and women also contribute to UP's efforts to recruit and retain minority workers. The groups meet regularly and provide networking and mentoring opportunities for minority workers. The groups are supported by the company and, in turn, help UP reach its goals.

UP's Black Employee Network, created almost three decades ago, helps employees not only professionally but socially, said Barbara Osborne, the group's president. Junior employees can meet like-minded people, connect to black churches or other social institutions or get a recommendation of a place to get their hair done.

"You can network, meet other people and see there is a (black) middle class here," Rocker said. "I know as a company, at the highest levels of the company, we are committed to making sure we have a diverse work force."

Rocker, now a vice president in the black employee group, said there are more entertainment offerings appealing to blacks in Omaha than many outside the city would think, including an abundance of good restaurants. With the Qwest Center Omaha and other new entertainment venues, he said, things are getting better.

And he doesn't have any complaints about his Omaha social life these days. Rocker met his future wife - April Welbon, a design engineer with the railroad - through a friend he knew from the railroad's black networking group. - Henry J. Cordes, The Omaha World-Herald

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RAIL TRESTLE FIX COULD COST $17.7 MILLION

KELOWNA, BC -- The bill for restoration of the Myra Canyon trestles burned in the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire could reach $17.7 million.

However, spokesman Ken Campbell says the Myra Canyon Trestle Restoration Society is hoping to keep it under $17 million.

Kelowna-Mission MLA Sindi Hawkins announced an additional $3 million in funding last week, since construction costs have escalated from the initial $13.5-million estimate in 2004.

The official figure is $17.67 million, she said, with 90% of the funding coming from the federal government and 10% from the province.

The former Kettle Valley Railway trestles were declared a national historic site seven months before the Okanagan Mountain Park fire destroyed 12 wooden trestles and damaged wood decking on two steel spans.

The KVR linked the southeast part of British Columbia to the main Canadian Pacific Railway line at Hope.

"The society has been very judicious with the funding," Hawkins said.

"I'm very pleased to make this announcement. This is something that is very important to people in our community, but it is also a huge tourist draw.

"The trestles are a Canadian treasure." - The Edmonton Sun

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HALF-SPEED AHEAD FOR CALIFORNIA BULLET TRAIN

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Travelers in Anaheim, Los Angeles and the Bay Area will be first to ride the state's multibillion-dollar bullet train if it ever gets built.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority board, which is pursuing the project in several segments, decided last week to build first in areas that could have the highest ridership and generate the most revenue.

That means that while the first segment could open by 2017, stops in San Diego, Irvine and Sacramento -- which have been in earlier plans -- will be postponed for years.

"If we wish to do something, we need to figure out how to start moving forward in bite-sized pieces -- pieces that have true ends," said board member and Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle. "I think this is an appropriate way to focus and move forward."

Under the plan, the first segment would start in Anaheim, then stop in downtown Los Angeles, Burbank, Sylmar and Palmdale, before heading up through the Central Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area.

With bullet trains operating at speeds up to 220 mph, the express travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco is roughly 2-1/2 hours, according to the authority.

High-speed rail in California -- now estimated to cost $40 billion -- has struggled for decades to gain public support and funding, and once again is facing the threat of a setback.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to slash the authority's operating budget and postpone a $10 billion bond measure that is tentatively slated for 2008. The bond measure had originally been scheduled for a vote in 2004, but the Legislature has already postponed it twice.

Schwarzenegger has said he supports the concept of high-speed rail but thinks more planning is needed before it can receive major funding.

In fact, authority members on Wednesday discussed a financing plan that they acknowledged was very general and lacked commitments from the private sector or the federal government.

The authority was divided 5-2 in its decision to pick an initial segment.

Board member Lynn Schenk, a former congresswoman from San Diego, objected to her city being left off the initial route. Member Jeff Crane, an adviser to the governor, opposed the plan because he felt the project should have a more specific financing plan first.

Schenk, who has been involved in high-speed rail since the 1970s, said the San Diego-to-Los Angeles segment would be heavily traveled and should be part of the first stage. - Harrison Sheppard, The Los Angeles Daily News

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HIGH-SPEED RAIL NETWORK CAN'T BE BUILT PIECEMEAL

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Traveling in California this holiday weekend, it certainly would be convenient, even fun, to step aboard a 200-mph bullet train and zip around in quiet comfort.

It definitely would beat suffering through long, inane security lines at oppressive airports -- or enduring a daredevil, but dull, drive along Interstate 5 through the San Joaquin Valley.

The long-dreamed-of California bullet train, however, keeps encountering difficulty leaving the station.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to sidetrack it, offering a medley of rationales for his efforts to again delay a $9.9-billion rail bond proposal slated for the November 2008 ballot.
The governor and Legislature already have twice postponed the bond vote -- the last time, in 2006, because it would have competed with their $37-billion public works package.

One month ago, Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn told Times reporter Marc Lifsher that the governor and the public still had higher priorities than creating a bullet train. "Right now, the voters are crying for relief from congested freeways," he said. "That's the immediate priority." The spokesman also mentioned the need for building dams and prisons.

But the governor soon began spinning his delaying effort another way, contending that the project needed a "comprehensive financing plan" before being submitted to the voters.

Many believe that's a bogus argument and Mendelsohn's explanation was closer to the truth: The governor continues to have higher infrastructure priorities, including water storage.

Schwarzenegger's go-to guy for the bullet train is David Crane, a San Francisco financial services executive who advises the governor on economic growth and recently was appointed by him to the California High-Speed Rail Authority board.

Crane, a political novice, is expounding on the need for a concrete financing plan.

As currently envisioned, the cost of creating a $40-billion high-speed rail system would be shared one-third by the state and one-third by the federal government. The final third would come from local governments and private entrepreneurs.

Crane insists all this should be laid out in detail. Somebody in Sacramento, he says, should get potential investors and the feds -- such as California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco -- into a room and wring out financing commitments.

Most everybody outside the governor's office considers this naive. Until California voters commit to the project, seasoned pols note, no private investors or government officials will. Besides, no one knows who's going to be in charge in Washington after 2008. And about the only Sacramentan with the ability to coax Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi into a negotiating room is Schwarzenegger, who isn't lifting a finger for high-speed rail.

Indeed, he originally proposed a bare-subsistence annual budget of $1.2 million for the rail authority, which had requested $103 million for engineering work and rights-of-way buying. The governor recently upped his offer to $5.2 million, but that included $3.5 million contributed by Orange County for planning work on a line to Anaheim.

State Senate and Assembly budget subcommittees last week approved appropriations of $45 million and $55 million, respectively. But the governor could whittle that down.

Schwarzenegger did recently sign an Op-Ed piece in the Fresno Bee declaring that "a network of high-speed rail lines connecting cities throughout California would be a tremendous benefit to our state."

To which state Sen. Dean Florez (D-Shafter), a bullet train advocate, comments: "Obviously, the governor's budget writers don't read his Op-Ed pieces."

Quentin Kopp, a former state senator and retired San Mateo Superior Court judge who chairs the rail board, says the bullet battle "would be 80% over if Schwarzenegger would step up and be a champion."

Well, not quite.

There's another significant problem besides Schwarzenegger trying to apply the brakes.

The rail board last week adopted the "first-phase" route for the bullet train and it excluded some significant cities — and therefore some potential riders and supportive voters. They would be included in a "second phase" in some future lifetime.

Left standing on the station platform were San Diego and Sacramento -- plus Riverside, San Bernardino and Stockton. Add to that the growing counties bordering Sacramento, and the excluded potential riders total 4.3 million registered voters, about 28% of the state's total.

The adopted route is from Anaheim to San Francisco, with stops in Norwalk, Los Angeles, Burbank, Sylmar, Palmdale, Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced and San Jose. There's a dispute about whether to enter the Bay Area over Pacheco Pass near Los Banos or Altamont Pass at Tracy. If board members decide on Altamont Pass, they could add stops in Modesto and Stockton.

And if they're going to Stockton, why not go another 40 miles north to Sacramento?

That wouldn't be cost-effective, rail authority officials say.

But it would be politically effective -- with voters and politicians.

"If the project actually has a life, it's going to have to include Sacramento," says Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Sen. Michael Machado, a Democrat who represents Stockton, strongly favors the Altamont Pass route to provide an option for San Joaquin County residents who increasingly commute daily to the Bay Area.

And why is this important? Because Machado soon will serve on the budget conference committee that will decide the rail authority's spending allotment. So will Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny (D-San Diego), who heads the Senate Budget Committee.

"I don't see how they could leave out San Diego and have this make sense," Ducheny says. "I can't imagine why anybody in San Diego would vote for it."

The entire project can be built for $40 billion, the authority says. The scaled-down first phase would cost $30 billion.

If there's voter support for a partial system, there'd be even more support for the full deal.

For the bullet train to fly, everybody will need to be on board -- the regions and the governor. - George Skelton, The Los Angeles Times

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HIS PASSION FOR TRAINS PRODUCED TREASURE TROVE OF PHOTOS

HARTFORD, CT -- Thomas J. McNamara of Bristol, CT, 80, died March 31.

Tom McNamara was a quiet man with a passion few can truly understand. He just loved trains and trolleys. He would sit for hours waiting for freight trains to go by and photograph as many as he could.
He knew rail schedules and train model numbers, dates and details of rail mergers and acquisitions, the name of each engine and the colors, symbols and noise of each train as it rolled by. Train passion was in his blood (he used to call it his "birth defect"), and his son John has inherited it.

"It's the sound, the sight, the scent, the feel" of a train, said John McNamara. "It's just a huge piece of machinery that glides by with that raw power. It's just magnificent."

Tom McNamara grew up in New Britain, where his father, Thomas F. McNamara, worked in manufacturing and his mother, Mary, did office work. He had a brother and a sister.

After high school, Tom attended Morse School of Business, doing two years' work in one, and began working in the employee benefits department of Aetna Life & Casualty Co. in 1947. He was on the men's duckpin bowling team -- the Aetna had its own bowling alley -- when he met May Flynn, an Aetna typist.

"Once in a while he'd stop by," May said. "He got the courage to ask me to go bowling." The tall, quiet young man seemed thoughtful and polite, and bowling strikes and spares at the Aetna alley with May soon led to other dates.

Their dates weren't always in a bowling alley. Tom, who had had a Lionel model train set as a boy, didn't maintain an elaborate train layout. He preferred to haunt the New Britain railroad tracks in search of the real thing, and many outings with May consisted of trips to freight crossings or freight yards, where they would park and wait for the trains to go by. They made occasional trips to New York or Massachusetts to watch trains.

A friend taught Tom how to take pictures, and soon a single-lens reflex camera accompanied him on all his train spottings. He began shooting in black and white but soon switched to color slides, which he sent off to Kodak for processing. He developed and perfected an impressive filing system that allowed him to retrieve pictures quickly and easily, even decades later.

"He did a great job of capturing the railroad," said Peter Lynch, author of two books about the New Haven Railroad. "The pictures were of exquisite technical quality."

Tom used to joke that one reason the pictures were good was that he threw out the bad ones, but he also was careful when he was shooting. "Film was expensive," said Lynch, "and we didn't take multiple shots."

May and Tom were married in 1955, and one of their honeymoon destinations was Altoona, PA, where they saw the famous track built in a horseshoe curve. They journeyed further south to hear country and western music, another of Tom's passions, but were never in so much of a hurry that they couldn't detour to see another special train.

Tom and May had two sons, and the family used to bundle up to drive Tom to the train he took daily from Bristol to the Aetna in Hartford, until the sad day when the train stopped running.

Before long, Tom discovered a world of like-minded train enthusiasts. After he retired from Aetna in the mid-'80s, he would go to Branford, don a motorman's hat and drive one of the old trolley cars of the Shore Line Trolley Museum back and forth from East Haven to Short Beach in Branford.

The cars were formerly owned by Connecticut Co., whose trolley lines used to crisscross the state, said museum vice president George Baehr, and they provided inexpensive transportation within and between cities. The last Connecticut trolley, which ran in downtown New Haven, ceased operation in 1948.

Tom's favorite train line was the New Haven Railroad, which at one time had 400 commuter trains running out of Boston's South Station, said Lynch, who lives in Old Saybrook. There were 1,800 miles of track, which amounted to only 1 percent of the nation's rail miles, but for many years carried more than 10 percent of the country's passengers. It was owned in the early years by tycoon J.P. Morgan, the founder of U.S Steel Corp., as well as a benefactor of the Wadsworth Atheneum.

To accommodate the needs of passengers, trains ran to the Bronx Zoo, to baseball games and flower shows. In summers, the line ran trains to New England children's camps. The New Haven line also carried a lot of freight, with lines going to the Bronx and Queens as well as Maybrook, NY. "It was a lot of railroad packed into a small area," said Lynch. "It had a rocky but very fascinating history."

Over the years, it became clear that Tom McNamara's thousands of train and trolley slides, taken over more than 25 years, had captured a slice of history -- an era of widespread rail use that will probably never return.

Tom's pictures have been used by many authors to illustrate articles and books about the railroads. He gave many to the New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association and to the Shoreline Trolley Museum. A book, "New Haven Trackside with Thomas J. McNamara" by Jeremy Plant, was published in 1998.

Tom McNamara died of heart failure, but his pictorial history of train images will endure for decades. So will the memories for his son John, who accompanied him on many expeditions. He remembers driving with his father on a Sunday to Amsterdam, NY, 2-1/2 hours away, as if it were yesterday.

"If you don't like trains, sitting there for six hours doesn't cut it," John said. "We'd pick a spot and camp out for the day with lawn chairs and lunch," he said. "See 30 to 40 trains, and come home and have dinner." - Anne M. Hamilton, The Hartford Courant

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TRANSIT NEWS

NO HORNS ALONG 44 MILES OF TRACKS

Photo here:

[deseretnews.com]

Caption here: FrontRunner will start running in spring 2008 -- with a 44-mile "quiet zone" where horns won't sound. (Laura Seitz, Deseret Morning News)

SALT LAKE CITY, UT -- When the FrontRunner commuter rail trains come online in spring 2008, making runs from Pleasant View, Weber County, to Salt Lake City, residents along the transit corridor will notice a unique sound, or lack thereof.

The 13 cities through which FrontRunner will pass are beginning to sign agreements to establish a 44-mile continuous quiet zone -- meaning trains will not be required to sound their horns when approaching the 34 street crossings in those cities.

Once established, it could be one of the longest such zones in the country.

Quiet zones are a convention governed by the Federal Railroad Administration, which requires safety measures to be in place for rail-street intersections if cities want to bar trains from sounding their horns, said Utah Transit Authority spokesman Chad Saley.

"We're converting all crossings so all of them meet the quiet-zone standard," Saley said.

The quiet-zone designation is contingent upon safety measures implemented and an application to the railroad administration, said Steve Kulm, Federal Railroad Administration spokesman.

Currently, trains are required to sound their horns when approaching street crossings to warn motorists and pedestrians.

In these locations, safety is heard loud and clear.

"A quiet zone tries to balance quality-of-life issues for residents who live near crossings while maintaining the safety of motorists who cross the tracks," Kulm said.

Safety measures include medians for some crossings to prevent cars from driving around crossing arms, Saley said. In other locations, where medians aren't feasible, four crossing arms will be installed -- on each side of the tracks -- to reach across all travel lanes, he said.

Woods Cross is the point city for the cooperative agreement among the cities for the commuter rail north quiet zone. The agreement states Woods Cross will receive and disseminate information about quiet zones to participating cities and that each city will reimburse Woods Cross $400 for administrative costs.

Woods Cross City Manager Gary Uresk said Clinton, Layton and West Bountiful have returned agreements to him so far, and he expects the rest of the cities to be on board by the middle of June.

"I haven't heard anything negative," Uresk said.

Saley said he expects UTA to work with cities to form quiet zones from Salt Lake City to Utah County when commuter rail is eventually extended southward.

The quiet zone formation will also apply to freight trains, which use the same crossings as FrontRunner.

Kulm said the Federal Railroad Administration doesn't keep data on the length of quiet zones other than the rule that states quiet zones must be at least one-half mile long.

"A (44-mile) quiet zone, we presume, would be the longest or certainly among the longest in the nation if that was to come about," Kulm said.

The $581 million Salt Lake-Pleasant View section of FrontRunner is expected to begin service in spring 2008. - Joseph M. Dougherty, The Deseret Morning News

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OAK CLIFF GROUP WANTS TROLLEYS, STREETCARS

Photo here:

[www.nbc5i.com]

Caption reads: South Dallas leaders are hope an old idea will spur some new development.

OAK CLIFF, TX -- A grassroots group hits the streets of Oak Cliff Tuesday night, laying the groundwork for a new transportation system.

The Oak Cliff Transit Authority wants to bring back trolleys to south Dallas by reusing some of the old tracks buried under the pavement.

One proposed route would go from the Dallas Convention Center and down Colorado Boulevard, Bishop Avenue and Tyler Street.

Planners said the idea is about more than transportation.

"Every area that has a trolley line has increased in value, more so than the rest of the town," Oak Cliff Transit Authority’s Harry Nicholls said.

The group still needs funding and the city's blessing. - KXAS-NBC TV5, Fort Worth, TX

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THE END