Freight

L.A.'s renegade, nomadic architecture school is finally putting down roots. The Southern California Institute of Architecture, one of the top-rated schools in the country for design, bought itself a home in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday. SCI-Arc, as it is commonly known, paid $23.1 million for a highly unorthodox school building. SCI-Arc bought a century-old rail freight depot that is a quarter of a mile long and about 37 feet wide. The school has been a tenant in the building for 10 years, having failed in an earlier attempt to buy the property.

International trade is surging again at the major local ports, suggesting that economic strength is building despite stubbornly high unemployment. In January, the neighboring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together make up the country's largest freight complex, handled 13% more cargo containers than a year earlier. Other signs of recovery: Longshoremen are getting more dock work, some Southern California warehouses are hiring again, and trucking and railroad freight movement has increased.

They called the railroad overpass their "kick-it spot. " High above the freeway and out of sight of their families, neighborhood youths could do whatever they pleased. They could drink, smoke, listen to music and add their tags to the jumble of graffiti on the concrete walls. Whenever they heard the distant whistle of a train, they moved out of its path. But at 9 p.m. Monday, three friends apparently were not able to escape on time. Police said Tony Sandoval, 15, Gilbert Correa, 17, and Joseph Hernandez, 27, were killed as two trains charged down the tracks in Commerce.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest cargo complex, posted double-digit growth in freight traffic during November, usually a month in which cargo movement is winding down for the year. It was another unexpectedly good showing, although trade experts don't expect the pace to continue. "I'm watching with bemusement like everyone else," said Nancy Sidhu, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. "We will continue to grow next year as the economy grows, but I don't think we'll keep seeing these double-digit increases.

After an unwelcome reprieve caused by the global recession, employers in international trade again are growing concerned about whether there will be enough qualified candidates to fill the next generation of cargo and logistics jobs. A spate of reports over the last two years has conjured up images of ships with too few seafarers to operate them, truck-ready freight with too few drivers to do the hauling and warehouse and distribution centers without enough qualified administrators to run them.

Britain and Germany stepped up their aviation security measures Monday to try to close gaps exposed by last week's airplane bomb scare. Both countries were layover points for one of the two U.S.-bound aircraft from Yemen found to be carrying powerful explosives in booby-trapped computer printers. One of the bombs was intercepted in central England after the plane first stopped in Cologne, Germany. The federal German aviation authority announced that it was immediately suspending all passenger flights to Germany on Yemenia Airways, the Yemen's national airline.

Sabotage by Maoist rebels was suspected after an Indian passenger train derailed early Friday, sending railroad cars crashing onto an adjoining track. An oncoming freight train slammed into many of those cars, killing at least 65 people and injuring 200. The area of West Bengal state where the disaster occurred, near the city of Sardiha and about 90 miles southwest of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, is a known Maoist stronghold that has seen several recent attacks. There was initial confusion on the exact cause of the disaster, with some officials and the engineer on the passenger train blaming an explosion, some uninjured passengers saying they heard no blast, and police saying metal parts used to hold sections of track together were missing and apparently removed in an act of sabotage.

A bomb exploded on a railway track in Russia's Dagestan province on Sunday, derailing a freight train days after suicide bombers killed 12 people in the region, Russian news agencies reported. Nobody was hurt. The pre-dawn blast on a line leading from Moscow to the ex-Soviet republic of Azerbaijan caused eight carriages of a train carrying construction materials to derail, ITAR-Tass and Interfax reported, citing police and emergency officials. Russia is on edge after suicide attacks in Moscow and Dagestan killed more than 50 people in the past week.

To most people, videotaping a passing 3 1/2 -mile freight train would be about as appealing as . . . well, waiting for a 3 1/2 -mile freight train to get out of the way. But to Joe Perry, an information network engineer for a downtown Los Angeles bank and a railroading enthusiast since childhood, the arrival of perhaps the biggest train ever in California last weekend was an opportunity not to be missed. "It's time to pack up again. We're heading out to the Salton Sea," the San Bernardino County resident recalls announcing to his wife Jan. 9, just after returning from a trip to photograph trains near Needles.

The nation's railroads had their worst year in decades in 2009, a dramatic reminder of the brutality with which the recession damped demand for coal, lumber and other goods that make up the backbone of the economy. Freight trains carried 20% less cargo last year than in 2008, according to a report by the Assn. of American Railroads, and the industry shed nearly 21,000 jobs. The 12-month period was the slowest since the association began keeping records in 1988. Among the most dramatic declines was a 33% drop in lumber and wood products carried by train, a key indicator of demand for new construction.