You’ll find these articles in Railway Age’s latest issue:
- Mechanical Marvel — Contributing Editor Dan Cupper takes readers behind the scenes at Norfolk Southern’s Juniata Locomotive Shop in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains. America’s largest locomotive repair facility, a 70-acre complex, handles scheduled engine and truck overhauls, wreck repairs, and capital-upgrade programs that turn out rebuilt and updated units at half the cost of buying new locomotives.
- ‘Force Multipliers’ — Executive Editor Marybeth Luczak explores how drones are helping railroaders assess risk, reduce dwell, and boost efficiency and safety.
- A Future With Autonomous Trains? — This future is one the industry must consider if it wants to compete against trucking and its futuristic vision of autonomous truck platoons, according to those working to bring autonomous operations to freight rail, reports Contributing Editor Joanna Marsh.
- Force Control — Improved train dynamics, ease of retrofits, lower maintenance costs, increased safety: All these figure into draft gear and cushioning device developments, according to Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono, who provides a roundup of supplier offerings.
- MxV Rail R&D — Rail Research Week 2025, including an MxV Rail technical site tour, will provide a front row seat to rail innovation’s future.
Plus, Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner asks: Is shipper salvation performance standards? “Revenue adequacy, as defined by statute, means earning enough to cover total operating costs, including depreciation and obsolescence, plus a competitive return on invested capital sufficient over the long term to attract more of it to maintain a railroad’s large and costly infrastructure, including locomotives and rolling stock,” he writes. “It’s a mouthful, so no wonder railroads and their customers can’t agree on the determination process.” And Railway Age Financial Editor David Nahass discusses the Union Pacific+Norfolk Southern merger/acquisition and the inevitable fallout about what will happen next. “To be honest,” he writes, “the railroad merger dialogue is beginning to make North American rail feel a bit like Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ Not the best look.”
