Railway

BEIJING -- Chinese railway authorities have launched an all-out attack on "yellow bulls" in and around their 5,700 train stations nationwide. While the term evokes some new strain of hoof-and-mouth disease, it is, in fact, a century-old Chinese term for ticket scalpers. "Even the cooks on our trains have been called to the front lines to fight yellow bulls," said Jiang Zhanlin, director of the Railway Ministry's police department. "We're prepared to fight as long as it takes." The Railway Ministry has announced an anti-yellow bull "Blue Shield Action" campaign, in and around Chinese New Year, the busiest holiday of the year, which begins tomorrow.

It is incredibly frustrating, not only to myself but to many residents of the Elkridge/Hanover area, that CSX claims to elicit public involvement in the site selection process (for a new railway facility) yet continues to refuse to release details on how they arrived at their cost estimates for each of the proposed sites. Cost estimates for the proposed sites are not the only concern surrounding this issue but, in my opinion, CSX is being brazenly deceptive at this early stage of the process and I have a deep concern that CSX will continue to operate as such, if not more so, as the process continues.

Paul D. Denton's new headquarters in Union Bridge will portray the same image he projects for his railway -- a Victorian romance of trains combined with the modern efficiency of a 1990s freight carrier.Construction on the Maryland Midland Railway's new 4,500-square-foot general office and crew headquarters should begin in June, Mr. Denton, president of the railroad, said at the Carroll County Economic Development Commission meeting yesterday."We wanted to have that Victorian exterior, but it will be all modern inside," he said.

A company partly owned by the French railroad will have to detail the railway's role in transporting Holocaust victims to Nazi death camps before it can compete again to operate Maryland commuter trains, according to legislation that Gov. Martin O'Malley is scheduled to sign today. The law will make Maryland the first state to require that a company seeking government rail contracts provide all records about Nazi victims it transported and any personal belongings taken from them, supporters said.

Maryland Midland Railway Inc. has closed part of its freight line after workers discovered a 40-foot by 12-foot sinkhole about 6 feet from its tracks behind McGregor Printing Corp. between Westminster and New Windsor.Work crews were scheduled to return today to begin filling the hole with crushed stone."It could have been dangerous if more of it [soil] had given way under the tracks," Maryland Midland President Paul D. Denton said.The hole was among the deepest sinkholes found recently in Carroll, county hydrogeologist Thomas Devilbiss said.

Most motorists speeding along St. Paul Street probably haven't the faintest idea who that heroic bronze figure is, the one with the Prince Albert frock coat and Vandyke whiskers atop a granite pedestal staring at Mercy Hospital.Only the occasional pedestrian through Preston Gardens learns that this figure, in a grove of young crape myrtle trees, is that of John Mifflin Hood, railroad president and philanthropist. Its inscription hardly begins to tell the story of a man who helped rescue not only a business but a city.

Those who have always wanted to play engineer on a speeding locomotive can realize their ambition, thanks to a five-day course offered by the Fairbourne and Barmouth Steam Railway in Wales.The privately run narrow-gauge steam railroad offers a five-day package course for about $680 that includes accommodations in a local hotel with breakfast and dinner. An intensive one-day course, with a guarantee that each student drives the engine the full three-mile length of the line, costs $85.Trainees learn how to run a steam locomotive, how one works, and safety regulations, an official says.

WHEN PLESSY v. Ferguson sprang from the Supreme Court, it met with mild surprise and routine coverage by the white press in Maryland. The following day, there was a brief mention on the front page of The Sun, a short story on page two, but no blaring headlines to mark the legal stamp of approval given Jim Crow laws.An editorial titled "Separate Coaches for Colored Passengers" appeared on page four. It was a masterpiece of myopia which suggested that "[t]he necessity for such a law exists only in the South."

Since Sept. 11 I have driven to the beach, flown to New York, served on jury duty downtown. I am trying to live my normal life, but with a backdrop of anxiety, there's something comforting about exploring new places close to home, sometimes very close to home. I live and work in the Roland Park house where I was raised. I know this community intimately -- the people, the houses, the schools. The neighborhood itself feels as familiar as home, yet because of its size and landscape, a walk through it still offers me new perspectives and pleasant surprises.

BERLIN -- Herbert the Saw failed to cut train service in Germany yesterday, but police say they are still on their guard.Herbert, the pen name of a saw-wielding extortionist who wants $2.5 million or he will derail trains by cutting out sections of track, set yesterday as the deadline for the railway to agree to his terms.While the railway said it is ready to pay, police refuse to accept Herbert's plan for handing over the money by throwing it out of a train window in a suitcase.During an earlier attempt to give Herbert money, the suitcase hit an oncoming train and sent more than $1 million in deutsche-mark bills wafting through the north German countryside.

Questions of guilt and atonement that are usually the province of historians and moral philosophers arose in Annapolis during hearings Thursday on a bill that would hold a subsidiary of the French national railway responsible for the parent company's role in transporting deportees to death camps under Nazi occupation. Holocaust survivors and their relatives asked Maryland legislators to impose broad disclosure requirements on Keolis America, a Rockville-based company controlled by the French company SNCF, before it can compete for a contract to operate the MARC Camden and Brunswick lines.

It's been about 50 years since smoke-blowing steam locomotives chugged along the rolling mountainside in Petersburg, W.Va. But this weekend, steam trains will be center stage at West Virginia Rails 2010, a festival that celebrates 100 years of a railway line carved into the Appalachian Mountains by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The event will feature two steam locomotives as well as several diesel trains, similar to those that traveled the rails of the state's pastoral Eastern Panhandle in the early 1900s.

Clifford Cole Bruck Sr., a retired Western Maryland Railway executive and longtime opera buff, died Wednesday of complications from Parkinson's disease at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland in Towson. The longtime Guilford resident was 93. Mr. Bruck was born in Baltimore and raised in Forest Park. After graduating from Forest Park High School in 1932, he earned a bachelor's degree from the Johns Hopkins University in 1936. Mr. Bruck also attended the University of Maryland School of Law at night, earning a degree in the 1960s.

Maryland Midland Railway Inc., a 70-mile short-line railroad that primarily serves Lehigh Cement Co. in Carroll County, is being sold for about $29.1 million to Greenwich, Conn.-based Genesee & Wyoming Inc., operator of close to 50 short-line and regional freight railroads worldwide. Situated near the York Railway that Genesee & Wyoming already owns, Maryland Midland could eventually link up with that southeastern Pennsylvania line, executives from Maryland Midland and Lehigh, its biggest shareholder, said yesterday.

Richard Edward Costello Sr., a retired sales manager for the old Western Maryland Railway, died of congestive heart failure Saturday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 84 and lived in Timonium. Born in Baltimore and raised on Linwood Avenue, he was a 1941 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School, where he played baseball and soccer. He served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II aboard the USS Akutan, a ammunition transport vessel. After the war, he joined the Western Maryland Railway as a stenographer.

TOKYO -- The Japanese government plans to offer Shinkansen bullet train technology in assisting Russia's planned improvement to its national railway networks, including the Trans-Siberian Railway, government sources said. The Tokyo government will work out concrete details of the assistance program by autumn, establishing a working group of government officials and corporations from both countries, they said. By offering railway technology to Russia, the government hopes to expand business opportunities for Japanese firms in the rapidly emerging economy, the sources said.

BERLIN -- A man called Herbert the Saw, three derailed trains, a bombed-out luggage locker and a million dollars scattered in the air like confetti make up what police say is a bizarre but real threat to Germany's 2.8 million daily rail passengers.As police only now have made public, Herbert the Saw has been trying to blackmail the German railway for 18 months. But due to a series of odd developments, he hasn't received his money. He is still at large, holding the railway hostage and becoming the talk of the nation.

Sykesville will highlight its heritage at a centennial celebration from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday along Main Street. Activities will include a parade, the dedication of the centennial fountain in Old Main Line Park, historical displays, walking tours, an appearance by town father James Sykes and school musical performances. Family events will include a dunking machine with town officials, games and model train displays. An evening event also will be held. Town centennial memorabilia will be available, featuring commemorative cups and a limited-edition print by Wiley Purkey.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- W.R. Grace & Co. asked the judge overseeing its bankruptcy case to bar asbestos-related lawsuits against Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. over the railroad's objections to the legal protection. Grace's effort to resolve more than 100,000 asbestos claims it faces would be more difficult if Burlington, known as BNSF, starts defending itself against 113 lawsuits involving the railroad's transportation of vermiculite ore in Libby, Mont., Grace attorney David M. Bernick contended yesterday in court.

THE RED CENTER, AUSTRALIA / / Ten days, one wallaby, no kangaroos. My fantasy -- adorable 'roos galumphing around every bush in the Outback -- was just that. Camels -- wild ones -- were another matter. About 60,000 of the feral beasts roam the Outback that unfolded outside the picture window of my train compartment. I had come to Australia to ride the Ghan, the legendary train that bisects the country, traveling from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north. It's sometimes called the "Hundred Year Dream" -- the last track was laid just two years ago, capping nearly a century of struggle to connect one end of this great emptiness to the other.