Following construction season track improvements, new West of Hudson schedules went into effect on Sunday, November 8, 2009. On the Port Jervis Line: With the completion of work on the interlocking at Harriman, travel times have been reduced by one minute on westbound trips from Harriman to Port Jervis.

Koppers Inc., a subsidiary of Koppers Holdings Inc., and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation have agreed to a seven-year extension of an existing contract for railroad crossties and various other products and services. The agreement extends the existing contract, which runs through December 31, 2010, for an additional seven years through December 31, 2017. Revenues from BNSF under this contract amounted to approximately $57 million in 2008.

At a ceremony in Oshawa, Ontario, Colin Carrie, Member of Parliament for Oshawa; Oshawa Mayor John Gray, and Mr. Pierre Santoni, VIA Rail's National Sales Director, announced VIA's plans for a new station with improved and expanded facilities. VIA estimates that it will invest as much as C$7 million for the new station and related improvements from recent capital funding for VIA announced by the Government of Canada. Of the project's total cost, $3 million will come from the government's Economic Action Plan.




CSX Transportation has placed RailComm's DOC^® Yard Automation System into production at their Selkirk facility in New York. RailComm's Domain Operations Controller server-based control system provides wireless remote control from the yard tower to 48 GETS HydraSwitch^TM machine locations. The DOC^® System features eNtrance and eXit routing and stacked route planning capability, providing the tower operator with complete control of all routes within the yard.

Plymouth, Wis., officials say that the city is now recruiting at least three startup manufacturers capable of creating hundreds of jobs thanks to a planned project to restore freight rail service from Plymouth to Sheboygan Falls, the Sheboygan Press reports. The companies, which city officials declined to name citing confidentiality agreements, include one manufacturer that could employ up to 500 people and two others that could create 150 jobs combined - and officials said more are expected to follow.

A nearly $850,000 million public and private effort to connect mid-Atlantic ports to Midwest U.S. population and manufacturing markets using double-stack trains has railroad improvement projects scheduled for Trumbull and Mahoning counties, according to the Warren, Ohio, Tribune Chronicle. What's going to be done locally includes bridge replacement and other projects necessary to provide the vertical clearance to allow train cars hauling two shipping containers stacked on top of one another.

The Port of Seattle will be joined by several local agencies in preserving the Eastside Rail Corridor and placing it in public ownership. King County, Sound Transit, the City of Redmond, Puget Sound Energy, and the Cascade Water Alliance will partner with the port in maximizing the corridor's benefit for the region.

There was an almost euphoric tone to the news last week when the nation's beloved sugar daddy, Warren Buffett, sprung for the rest of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., a big part of Lincoln's economy, Nebraska's and the nation's, the Lincoln, Neb., Journal Star reports. The guys on CNBC acknowledged they just couldn't get enough of their videos of BNSF trains chugging mightily across America's TV screens. A hard-headed business decision can pull at least a couple of carloads of railroad nostalgia, if the whistle is far enough away.

In the fall of 1934, several Buffalo businessmen joined forces to create the Osmose Wood Preserving Company of America, building on patents for a unique, non-pressurized wood preservation. During the following 75 years,  Osmose continued to advance the wood preservation science and grew into various related divisions serving the railroad, utility and consumer marketplaces. Close relationships with an evolving customer base encouraged Osmose to embark on infrastructure inspection, maintenance and repair solutions for the railroad industry.

Freight cars from Radio Island rolled over the Newport River to Morehead City Port on Nov. 5 for the first time since a ship knocked out the railway trestle on June 5, according to the Sun Journal.