Category: Top News

  GRAPEVINE, TX – The Grapevine Vintage Railroad announced today that “Puffy” will ride again. The tourist railroad’s 117-year-old steam engine No. 2248, affectionately known as “Puffy,” will return for a series of short excursions beginning Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. The locomotive, a former Southern Pacific 4-6-0, has undergone extensive repairs since being sidelined in December 2010. Puffy will head short excursion trains each Friday evening until Thanksgiving, when the North Pole Express begins holiday runs. GVR’s GP7 diesel locomotive will assist. GVR crews have been working in earnest for several months to return Puffy to the road. A piston, rings and cylinder cap were machined to fix damage during a run to Hodge Yard in Fort Worth almost three years ago. At the time, the failure was the second in two years that forced the locomotive out of service. In September, Puffy could be seen making short test runs from the shop in Grapevine. Puffy, built…

InterMountain Railway Co., a top producer in model railroad cars and locomotives, sustained only “minimal” damage to its corporate facility from floods that have ravaged Colorado in recent days, the company announced Tuesday. Executive Vice President and CFO Frank Angstead said floods damaged only the first floor of InterMountain’s three-story Longmont, CO, facility. Several homes and businesses in the city were damaged or destroyed by flooding that has affected 17 counties in Northern Colorado. On Wednesday, the foothills of central Colorado’s front range received 6-10 inches of rain in 12 hours. Water flowed eastward toward Longmont and other communities on the east side of the mountains. By midday Thursday the rivers and streams in the area had breached their banks and created a Federal disaster area. Waters crested in Longmont on Thursday night but additional rain continued to flood the area through Saturday. After waters had receded on Monday, InterMountain…

The demand for public transportation rose last year as Americans took 10.5 billion trips, the second highest ridership since 1957, and 154 million more trips than the previous year, according to a report released today by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). Light rail, heavy rail and commuter rail ridership each increased as U.S. public transportation recorded more than 10 billion trips for the seventh straight year. Ridership in 2012 was the second highest since 1957. “Every mode of public transportation showed an increase in ridership,” APTA President and CEO Michael Melaniphy said. “Public transit ridership grew in all areas of the country – north, south, east, and west – in small, medium and large communities, with at least 16 public transit systems reporting record ridership.” “Considering the devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy on some of the nation’s largest systems, this record level of ridership is truly significant,” said Melaniphy….