Northeast Corridor

The first of 70 new energy-efficient locomotives destined for Amtrak's East Coast service rolled off Monday morning from a Sacramento, Calif., assembly line. The locomotives, called Amtrak Cities Sprinters and built by Siemens Rail Systems, will replace Amtrak equipment that has been in service for more than two decades and has logged an average of 3.5 million miles. The new engines, costing $466 million, will be used on the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston and on the Philadelphia-to-Harrisburg Keystone Corridor.

The first of 70 new energy-efficient locomotives destined for Amtrak's East Coast service rolled off Monday morning from a Sacramento, Calif., assembly line. The locomotives, called Amtrak Cities Sprinters and built by Siemens Rail Systems, will replace Amtrak equipment that has been in service for more than two decades and has logged an average of 3.5 million miles. The new engines, costing $466 million, will be used on the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston and on the Philadelphia-to-Harrisburg Keystone 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.

Affable Barry Alvarez is back coaching the Wisconsin Badgers football team, and we're all better for it. Speaking the university's athletic board Friday, he revealed another motivation for the Big Ten to go after Maryland and Rutgers: keeping Penn State. The fear was that shifting conference footprints might leave Penn State feeling alienated on the East Coast and tempted to join another conference. With Pitt to the west and Syracuse to the north, it doesn't take much imagination to see that Penn State could have looked at the ACC. Here's Barry: “That northeast corridor, all the way to the south, continues to grow…[Big Ten commissioner]

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.

Sometime after 8 p.m. Thursday, a train will come roaring out of the north from Delaware toward Perryville at 165 miles per hour, matching the fastest speed ever attained on a U.S. rail line. After putting on the brakes, the Acela Express will make the 13-minute run back to Wilmington before sprinting down the track for seven more round trips by 2 a.m. Similar tests also are to be carried out this week and next on three other sections of track - in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts - the first step in upgrading passenger service in those areas to 160 mph. Federal regulations require tests of 5 mph above maximum operating speeds.

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.

Absolutely. Amtrak, the nation's passenger rail system, isn't about to expire. Efforts by congressional conservatives to kill its $1 billion federal subsidy have run into unexpected opposition from unexpected sources. Two rounds of steep cuts, including one last week, improve Amtrak's immediate outlook. Yet the long-term picture isn't rosy.The basic problem is that members of Congress want to have it both ways: They crave a first-rate rail system but they don't want to pay for it. Ever since Ronald Reagan targeted Amtrak for elimination, the railroad's fiscal situation has gotten progressively worse.

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.

As of 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has imposed mandatory travel restrictions on city roads until noon Tuesday. Restrictions do not apply to uniformed personnel, hospital employees, other medical providers and Corporate Emergency Access System partners. "We need folks to stay off the roads so that our first responders can focus 100 percent on real emergency accidents as they may occur," the mayor said. "We are working closely with our hospitals and medical providers to ensure that their employees have safe routes to work.

For most of us, a trip to New York City means there will be rides on the Subway. Visits to Washington, D.C., are much more palatable when parking problems are traded for train rides on the Metro. Go to San Francisco or Oakland, Calif., and odds are a ride on the BART (short for Bay Area Transit) will be part of the itinerary. Chicago has its L (short for elevated). Boston has the T (short for transportation). Here in the greater Baltimore region, though, train transport is a realistic option only for commuters whose schedules are as regimented and predictable as the days of the week.

Sometime after 8 p.m. Thursday, a train will come roaring out of the north from Delaware toward Perryville at 165 miles per hour, matching the fastest speed ever attained on a U.S. rail line. After putting on the brakes, the Acela Express will make the 13-minute run back to Wilmington before sprinting down the track for seven more round trips by 2 a.m. Similar tests also are to be carried out this week and next on three other sections of track - in New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts - the first step in upgrading passenger service in those areas to 160 mph. Federal regulations require tests of 5 mph above maximum operating speeds.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.