Amtrak said that effective Dec. 15, it will accept unloaded guns in checked baggage at stations and on trains operating within the United States that offer checked baggage service. This change in the Amtrak checked baggage policy is required by the Consolidated Appropriation [...]
Railroad Retirement payroll taxes will remain at 2010 levels in 2011, reports the Railroad Retirement Board. For Tier I, carriers and employees each will pay 6.20 percent on a maximum of $106,800 of wages. For Medicare, carriers and employees each will pay 1.45 percent on all [...]
Shippers are increasingly abandoning all-truck movements for their freight in favor of rail intermodal (trailers and containers atop rail flat cars), reports the Journal of Commerce. Journal of Commerce trucking editor Bill Cassidy writes, “Supermarkets and shopping mal [...]
WASHINGTON – When the lame-duck Congress returns to the House and Senate floors Monday, Nov. 29, they will have until midnight Tuesday to prevent a lapse in federal long-term unemployment benefits. If lawmakers in the House and Senate do not extend those federal unemployment [...]
An agreement was reached with the carriers’ National Railway Labor Conference to extend until Dec. 31, 2010, the deadline for enrolling eligible dependent children for coverage under the National Railway Carriers and UTU Health and Welfare Plan (NRC/UTU) or the Railroad [...]
WASHINGTON — The outgoing chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee – Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), who was defeated in the Nov. 2 elections – fears increased polarization along party lines when the new Congress is seated in January. In an interview [...]
We need your attention. Because your family needs you for the holidays. Because your family needs you for the new year. Because your family wants you home tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that — alive and with all four of your limbs, your two hands and two f [...]
Toys for the holidays are helping to bring furloughed train and engine crews back to work. The Journal of Commerce reports that the number of containers (atop rail flat cars) carrying imported toys have increased by 20 percent this year compared to 2009. The busiest ports for [...]
An educational website focusing on sleep, sleep disorders and fatigue management is being created in a collaborative effort among the UTU, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Federal Railroad Administration, sleep medicine experts at Harvard Medical Scho [...]
UTU member Larry Daniel Talley (Local 1933, Washington), a conductor on Virginia Railway Express, died Nov. 21 when he lost control of his motorcycle in Montgomery County, Md., reports The Washington Post. Talley, age 33, began his railroad career in September 2006.
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