Railroads

Federal safety officials called for railroads to install cameras and voice recorders in every locomotive cab in the nation as they publicly warned Thursday that cellphone texting by engineers and conductors was a growing and lethal danger. The call came as members of the National Transportation Safety Board publicly concluded their investigation into the deadly collision of a commuter train and a freight train in Chatsworth in 2008 -- a crash they blamed on a Metrolink engineer who passed a stop signal as he sent a message from his phone.

Culture Monster will occasionally visit museum exhibits dealing with history, anthropology, science or sociology. The show : "Visions of Empire: The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840-1880" at theHuntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. The goods : The Huntington archives supply 98% of the exhibits, from the resolutions of eight Eastern states to build it, to a railway worker's letter home to his mother and the ledgers workers signed (one with Chinese characters)

The railroad station where trains used to whistle by with food and other precious cargo is ghostly quiet. Somewhere over the brown hills of Azerbaijan, which rise just beyond this grape-growing village, thousands of Armenia-bound rail cars have screeched to an unscheduled halt. In its moment of national liberation, land-locked Armenia must scramble just to survive. "When they close down the railroads, Armenia gets nothing," said Babken Araktyan, the deputy chairman of Armenia's Parliament.

The Metrolink commuter rail service plans to increase fares as early as July to help reduce a $13-million budget deficit largely caused by rising fuel and labor costs, railroad officials said Thursday. If approved, the proposed increase of 5% to 9% will cover only part of the shortfall, making it necessary for Metrolink to seek additional subsidies from the five county transportation agencies that help fund the railroad. "The current economic climate, including soaring fuel prices, requires tough decisions by transportation leaders to fund operations at a level that will continue to meet the region's transportation needs," said John Fenton, Metrolink's chief executive officer.

When Laurie Greenquist volunteered to help out at the California State Railroad Museum here, she thought she'd probably just be showing visitors around, or maybe lending a hand with the paperwork. "Then they said I could work on the train," the 38-year-old government purchasing agent recalled with a grin. "It suddenly hit me: 'Wow! I can work on a real steam locomotive! I can learn to run that thing!'

Railroads paid the government $4.46 million in fines for safety violations during the last year, the Federal Railroad Administration has announced. The fines covered problems with track, locomotives, freight cars, signals and operating practices.

The union representing 40,000 engineers at Union Pacific Corp. and other railroads tentatively agreed to merge with the Teamsters, the largest transportation union, to raise bargaining power. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Teamsters this week set up committees that in the next six months will work out details such as dues, Teamsters spokesman Rob Black said. Members of the Cleveland-based engineers union still have to vote on the merger, said BLE spokesman John Bentley.

In 13 years of employment with the City of Commerce I witnessed the arrogance of the railroads and their lack of concern for the low-income residents of that city. Noise affecting residential neighborhoods, pollution from idling engines, rights of way littered with refuse, traffic jams and erosion of the city's infrastructure from massive truck traffic from rail yards are the community's daily dose. Now the railroads have added reckless endangerment to the list of outrages with the derailment of a runaway train in a residential neighborhood.

THOUGH fiercely buffeted by political crosswinds in 2005, Amtrak apparently has survived the political pressure that culminated with the firing of the company's president. As of now, the existing network will continue for 2006. On the plus side, the high-speed Acela trains in the Northeast are back after a service suspension, the Seattle/Portland-Chicago Empire Builder has refurbished equipment and new amenities, and the company carried the most riders ever in 2005.

A U.S. court has reinstated a lawsuit accusing the French state railroad of profiting in the 1940s from transporting about 70,000 Jews and others to Nazi Germany's death camps, lawyers said Thursday. An appeals court sent the class-action lawsuit back to the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., saying the judge wrongly dismissed it in 2001 on the grounds the railroad was immune under the U.S. Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act of 1976.

Wayne M. Hoffman, the retired chairman of Tiger International, the Century City-based parent company of the Flying Tiger Line, which was once the world's largest air cargo carrier, has died. He was 89. Hoffman died Saturday of natural causes at his home in Indian Wells, said Nissen Davis, a family friend. A former railroad attorney who rose to become executive vice president of the New York Central Railroad, Hoffman was recruited to become chairman of the Flying Tiger Line in 1967.

Archaeologist Deanna Jones couldn't believe her eyes as she hunched over a shallow pit dug next to railroad tracks in front of the San Gabriel Mission. She was inside the recently excavated foundation of a long-gone adobe building that once stood in the mission's 40-acre Bishop's Garden, first cultivated in the early 1780s. As Jones scooped a trowel full of dirt from what had been the adobe floor, a silvery glint caught her attention. "It looked like a piece of scrap metal at first," said Jones, a 29-year-old Van Nuys resident who has worked four years as a professional archaeologist.

In a positive sign for the U.S. economy, the nation's major railroads will invest a record $13 billion in various infrastructure upgrades this year, including a vital freight corridor that links Southern California's  seaports to Texas and the Southwest. That's according to an industry group that represents Amtrak and the nation's biggest rail freight lines. The Assn. of American Railroads also said that the railroads would hire 15,000 workers, replacing retired employees and adding new positions across the U.S. “Unlike trucks, barges or airlines, America's freight railroads operate on infrastructure they own," said Edward R. Hamberger, AAR president and chief executive.

Negotiators for 30 of the nation's railroads and labor representatives backed away from a strike that might have crippled the fragile U.S. economic recovery. Two more tentative agreements were reached, and the only remaining union without a deal agreed to keep talking at least through Feb. 8. The National Carriers' Conference Committee, which represents the railroads, and 13 unions representing 132,000 workers have been trying to hammer out differences over wages, benefits and job protection since talks began in January 2010.

MOVIES Like There's No Tomorrow A herald of winter sports season, Warren Miller's annual feature film showcases daring skiers and snowboarders carving up mountainsides and defying gravity across five continents. Participating athletes include Chris Davenport, Julia Mancuso and Daron Rahlves; Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley narrates. James R. Armstrong Theatre, 3330 Civic Center Drive, Torrance. 8 p.m. $20.50. (310) 781-7171. http://www.warrenmiller.com. COMEDY Groundlings Humor and holidays collide with an evening of good tidings, sketches and improvs thanks to a merry little bunch of Groundlings.

The historic Irvine Regional Park's festive holiday train will depart from the brightly lighted train station and drop off passengers at the North Pole for the Irvine Park Railroad's 16th Annual Christmas Train. Kids will have an opportunity to share their wish lists with St. Nick and pose for photos. Irvine Park Railroad, 1 Irvine Park Road, Orange. 5-8 p.m. Fri.-Sun. Through Dec. 23. Train tickets $10, children 2 and younger free. Activity tickets $4 each. Book of 15 activity tickets $50. (714)

A plan to ease the north-south traffic flow in the San Fernando Valley by connecting two dead-end segments of Mason Avenue got City Council approval Wednesday. Metropolitan Transportation Authority approval, a necessary step before the proposed railroad crossing at Mason between Nordhoff and Plummer streets can proceed, has been a stumbling block in the past.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson announced an agreement Wednesday with Southern Pacific Railroad to repair two railroad crossings that have generated dozens of complaints from motorists in Canoga Park. Later this month, city workers will make improvements to railroad crossings on Parthenia Street and Nordhoff Street near Canoga Avenue, Bernson said.

On the morning after the killings, Salt Lake City awoke to sensational headlines. "Father and Son Slain by Masked Murderers," the Herald-Republican bannered across its front page. The father, a 47-year-old grocer named John G. Morrison, and his son Arling, 17, had been shot to death on the night of Jan. 10, 1914. Within hours, the police had detained a prime suspect for the father's death: Frank Z. Wilson, an alias of one Magnus Olson, an ex-convict who had done time in the Utah state penitentiary.

"Hell on Wheels" is the latest original series from AMC, the cable network also currently committed to shows about zombies, ad men, a meth-making former high school teacher and the yet-unsolved murder of a Washington teenager. What they all share is a certain gritted-teeth tension and an air of incipient violence, except for when violence is actually occurring. There will be blood, literally or figuratively. The new series, which premieres Sunday, is set not long after the end of the Civil War in a tent city called Hell on Wheels at the advancing, westward edge of the Union Pacific railroad.