BLET News

The BLET’s National Legislative Office in Washington, D.C., scored a regulatory win for BLET members last week by blocking Union Pacific’s attempt to move trains across the border into the U.S. at Laredo, Texas without stopping under certain conditions. UP interchanges with foreign-owned railroads at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in Laredo. Under a previous administrator, the…

(Source: Trains.com, October 26, 2023) For more than a decade, British Columbia ports have won market share from U.S. West Coast ports for containers bound to Chicago and the Midwest — but that long-term trend has reversed in a matter of months due to the two-week dockworkers strike at Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The July…

(Source: Associated Press, October 26, 2023) To help quickly spot safety defects on moving trains, Norfolk Southern said on October 26 it has installed the first of more than a dozen of a new generation of automated inspection portals on its tracks in Ohio. The new portals, equipped with high-speed cameras, will take hundreds of…

Citing numerous recent accidents caused in part by excessively long trains, the BLET has urged the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to issue an Emergency Order establishing a maximum train length of 7,500 feet on the nation’s Class I railroads. BLET National President Eddie Hall made the request in an October 9 letter to FRA Administrator…