Northeast Corridor

Amtrak will acquire 70 new power-saving electric locomotives as part of a plan to rejuvenate its aging fleet on the Northeast Corridor, the manufacturer Siemens AG is expected to announce Friday. The company has been awarded a $468 million contract to provide the new generation of locomotives over a six-year period. The engines are expected to eventually replace all of Amtrak's AEM-7 and HHP-8 locomotives — breakdown-prone models used by both the national passenger railroad and Maryland's MARC commuter service.

Amtrak will pay $466 million this year for 70 new locomotives to enhance the speed and reliability of rail service in the Northeast Corridor and invest $298 million on 130 new rail cars to serve the East Coast and Midwest. The new equipment will be a major upgrade for a system that now operates with locomotives that are 20 to 30 years old and some sleeper cars that are 60 years old, Amtrak President Joe Boardman said in announcing the federally subsidized passenger rail line's plans for 2012.

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. - When Fred Hassan wanted to prove that Pharmacia could become a globally powerful drug company five years ago, he moved it out of its London headquarters to an office park here in the state he considered "the medicine chest to the world." That shift of 380 of his employees into a gray one-story building that AT&T had abandoned to cut costs proved to be just the beginning. By 2000, Pharmacia had outgrown the space, and it took over a nearby group of buildings that was once occupied by an investment company.

Thomas Schreiber, a career railroader who had worked in both freight and passenger service, died Monday of pneumonia at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Sparks resident was 67. Mr. Schreiber, a third-generation railroader whose father and grandfather worked for the old Pennsylvania Railroad, was born in Altoona, Pa., and later moved with his family to Gray Manor, a southeastern Baltimore County community. When he was 15, his family moved to Sparks, where Mr. Schreiber graduated in 1962 from Hereford High School.

Amtrak will pay $466 million this year for 70 new locomotives to enhance the speed and reliability of rail service in the Northeast Corridor and invest $298 million on 130 new rail cars to serve the East Coast and Midwest. The new equipment will be a major upgrade for a system that now operates with locomotives that are 20 to 30 years old and some sleeper cars that are 60 years old, Amtrak President Joe Boardman said in announcing the federally subsidized passenger rail line's plans for 2012.

MTA buses and light rail: No service in the morning. May run by afternoon. Metro subway: Canceled MARC trains and commuter bus service: Canceled. MTA mobility service for people with disabilities: Canceled. BWI Airport: Open with limited service. Call your airline or check www.bwiairport.com Amtrak: Running in Northeast Corridor. Trains south of Washington may be delayed.

Amtrak passengers in Maryland and other Eastern states emerged as some of the biggest beneficiaries of Florida's decision to turn down more than $2 billion in federal high-speed rail funds, as the Obama administration redirected nearly $800 million of that money into Northeast Corridor infrastructure. The windfall includes $22 million sought by Maryland for planning and engineering of a replacement for the century-old bridge that carries Amtrak and MARC trains over the Susquehanna River between Havre de Grace and Perryville.

At a time when several newly elected Republican governors are turning their backs on President Barack Obama's ambitious plans to build a high-speed rail system, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the administration would press forward in a patchwork fashion if necessary — drawing on the support of other chief executives such as Gov. Martin O'Malley. During a wide-ranging briefing Wednesday, Obama's transportation chief said he had spoken to O'Malley this week about the prospects for further federal spending on several big-ticket projects in Maryland, including the century-old Amtrak tunnel in Baltimore that is an impediment to high-speed rail operations in the Northeast Corridor.

Amtrak has been mismanaged, ridiculed, financially starved and neglected over the years. What more insults can be heaped upon the nation's bedraggled intercity rail passenger service? How about ripping out its heart? That's essentially what Amtrak's own board of directors wants to do by splitting off the Northeast Corridor. And the surgery is being conducted quietly. The board's resolution to hand the corridor over to a consortium of the federal government and the states was approved last month - but the information wasn't widely disseminated until it was reported on by an industry newsletter Oct. 12. Congress needs to stop this before Amtrak gets railroaded out of business.

"Several thousand" Amtrak and about 2,000 MARC rail passengers were delayed for up to three hours yesterday morning after an Amtrak train pulled down railway electrical wires as it switched tracks in Baltimore.No one was injured when a northbound Metroliner switching tracks near MARC's West Baltimore station at 6: 15 a.m. hit overhead wires that provide power to the train, said Rick Remington, spokesman for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.The incident closed two tracks shared by Maryland Rail Commuter trains and Amtrak.

For the first time ever, Amtrak is expected to hit the 30 million milestone on Sept. 30. That's how many passengers it will have served over the previous 12 months, an annual increase in train ridership of 6.4 percent — a remarkably robust result given the nation's high unemployment rate and challenging economic circumstances. That's something to be celebrated. The public's embrace of passenger rail recognizes both improvements in Amtrak and the diminishment of alternatives, as highways and air travel become increasingly congested.

Three public groups are looking for a private-sector partner interested in building a transit-oriented development on a triangular parking lot just north of Penn Station. Amtrak, which owns the 1.5-acre development parcel, has set Aug. 5 as the deadline for groups to submit qualifications to serve as the master developer for the property, which is bounded by Lanvale, St. Paul and Charles streets and the Amtrak train lines. Amtrak issued the request along with the Maryland Department of Transportation and the City of Baltimore.

Amtrak passengers in Maryland and other Eastern states emerged as some of the biggest beneficiaries of Florida's decision to turn down more than $2 billion in federal high-speed rail funds, as the Obama administration redirected nearly $800 million of that money into Northeast Corridor infrastructure. The windfall includes $22 million sought by Maryland for planning and engineering of a replacement for the century-old bridge that carries Amtrak and MARC trains over the Susquehanna River between Havre de Grace and Perryville.

Amtrak is turning out to be a good neighbor after all. The railroad announced plans Friday to install a good fence, not the shoddy chain-link joke in place now, along its Northeast Corridor tracks in Middle River. It was along that 2-mile stretch, where ultra-quiet trains race by at speeds up to 125 mph, that 14-year-old Anna Marie Stickel was killed in January 2010 as she walked along the tracks and was hit from behind. Certainly Anna didn't belong there. She was a trespasser.

In the eyes of anyone who loves railroading, Norman L. Warfield Sr., a retired Amtrak locomotive engineer, was a lucky man. During his lifetime, he got to play with real locomotives and diminutive ones. Warfield, who had celebrated his 70th birthday in January, died less than a month later of cancer in Baltimore. The Baltimore native, who was raised in Hampden and graduated from Polytechnic Institute, became an apprentice tool and die maker and worked at his trade in machine shops in Maryland and New Jersey.

State transportation officials are trying to make sure Florida's loss is Maryland's gain as they prepare applications for about $450 million in federal high-speed rail grants for two projects along the Amtrak Northeast Corridor. Maryland is seeking a cut of the $2.4 billion Florida Gov. Rick Scott spurned when he pulled the plug on that state's plans for a high-speed rail corridor between Tampa and Orlando. Last week U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood formally took the money back and made it available to other states with high-speed rail projects — including those along the Northeast Corridor.

Amtrak said yesterday that it will move ahead with plans to build a 72-room hotel inside Baltimore's historic Pennsylvania Station at a time when it may be in danger of losing control of its Northeast Corridor real estate. Whether Amtrak might lose ownership of the local station and others in the corridor came into question yesterday after a federal oversight panel presented a report to Congress that called for sweeping changes in the operations of the nation's passenger railroad. The panel, called the Amtrak Reform Council, has been advising Amtrak on how it might improve service and wean itself from federal subsidies, which have amounted to billions of dollars since its inception in 1971.

WASHINGTON -- Being the president of Amtrak is not a position most mortals would covet.The railroad has aging equipment, an overhang of debt and up-to-the-precipice struggles for congressional funding. Its name gets hit by accidents on lines of private railroads from which it leases track space. A constant chorus of critics suggests its entire operation be liquidated.But Tom Downs, a 54-year-old career manager with an irrepressible sense of humor, loves leading Amtrak. And right now he's ebullient over a new $2.3 billion lifeline from Congress.

Seeking to capitalize on Florida Gov. Rick Scott's decision to turn down $2.4 billion in federal stimulus funds for a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando, Gov. Martin O'Malley has asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to shift much of the money to projects in Maryland and other places along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. In a letter dated Friday, O'Malley urged LaHood to move much of that money to projects such as the estimated $1 billion construction of a new tunnel to replace the century-old B&P Tunnel just south of Penn Station.