The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,200 miles (51,800 km) routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, with which it shares a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and West South Central United States.
CSX Transportation, known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates on approximately 21,000 route miles (34,000 km) of track. The company operates as the leading subsidiary of CSX Corporation, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The company operates 19,420 route miles (31,250 km) in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Norfolk Southern Railway is the leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation.
Graniteville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Aiken County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 2,614 at the 2010 census. It lies along U.S. Route 1, five miles (8.0 km) west of Aiken in Horse Creek Valley, which originates in the nearby town of Vaucluse.
The Weyauwega derailment was a railroad accident that occurred in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, United States, in the early morning hours of March 4, 1996. The derailed train was carrying a large quantity of hazardous material, which immediately caught fire. The fire, which involved the train cars and an adjacent feed mill, burned for more than two weeks after the actual derailment, resulting in the emergency evacuation of 2,300 people for 18 days, including the entire city of Weyauwega, with about 1,700 evacuees.
On March 15, 1999, Amtrak's southbound City of New Orleans passenger train collided with a semi-trailer truck in the village of Bourbonnais, Illinois, United States. Most of the train derailed, killing eleven people. A National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation into the accident attributed the cause to the truck driver trying to beat the train across a grade crossing. The NTSB's recommendations from the accident included increased enforcement of grade crossing signals, the installation of train event recorders at all new or improved grade crossings, and procedures to provide emergency responders with accurate lists of all crew members and passengers aboard trains. The city of Bourbonnais erected a memorial near the site to commemorate those killed in the accident.
The San Bernardino train disaster, was a combination of two separate but related incidents that occurred in San Bernardino, California, United States: a runaway train derailment on May 12, 1989; and the subsequent failure on May 25, 1989, of the Calnev Pipeline, a petroleum pipeline adjacent to the tracks which was damaged by earth-moving equipment during the crash cleanup.
The main line, or mainline in American English, of a railway is a track that is used for through trains or is the principal artery of the system from which branch lines, yards, sidings, and spurs are connected. It generally refers to a route between towns, as opposed to a route providing suburban or metro services. It may also be called a trunk line, for example the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, the Trunk Line in Norway, and the Trunk Line Bridge No. 237 in the United States.
The 2008 Chatsworth train collision occurred at 4:22:23 p.m. PDT on September 12, 2008, when a Union Pacific Railroad freight train and a Metrolink commuter rail train collided head-on in the Chatsworth neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States.
Horse Creek Valley is a geographic area along Horse Creek, a tributary of the Savannah River. It lies within present-day Aiken County, South Carolina. The area is alternately referred to as "Midland Valley". Rising near Vaucluse, South Carolina, Horse Creek enters the Savannah two miles downstream of downtown Augusta, Georgia. Other communities along Horse Creek include Graniteville, Warrenville, Gloverville, Langley, Burnettown, Bath, and Clearwater. While Horse Creek itself is rather insignificant, its potential for water power led to early examples of Southern industrialization, including a textile mill at Vaucluse (1830) and William Gregg's Graniteville Mill (1845). The textile industry continued to play a primary role until the Graniteville Train Derailment and final closure of the Graniteville Mill in 2006.
On the morning of December 1, 2013, a Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line passenger train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Four of the 115 passengers were killed and another 61 injured; the accident caused $9 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan, and the first accident in Metro-North's history to result in passenger fatalities. The additional $60 million in legal claims paid out as of 2020 have also made it the costliest accident in Metro-North's history.
The 2015 Philadelphia train derailment of a New York City-bound Amtrak train in Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States resulted in multiple passenger injuries and deaths and disrupted Amtrak service for several days afterward due to the resulting investigation and removal of the wrecked train cars.
The Avondale Mills were a system of textile mills located predominantly in Alabama, but also in Georgia and South Carolina, with headquarters in Birmingham, and later in Sylacauga, Alabama. The Birmingham neighborhood of Avondale was chosen to be the site of the first mill, hence the naming of the company. Founded in 1897, the mills employed thousands of Alabamians throughout its 109-year history until they closed in 2006. Avondale Mills was founded in 1897 by a consortium of investors including the Trainer family of Chester, Pennsylvania, the future governor of Alabama, Braxton Bragg Comer, and a group of Birmingham civic leaders including Frederick Mitchell Jackson Sr.
On December 18, 2017, Amtrak Cascades passenger train 501 derailed near DuPont, Washington, United States. The National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) final report said regional transit authority Sound Transit failed to take steps to mitigate a curve at the accident location, and inadequately trained the train engineer. The train was making the inaugural run of the Point Defiance Bypass, a new passenger rail route south of Tacoma, Washington, operated by Amtrak in partnership with state and local authorities in Oregon and Washington, on right-of-way owned and operated by Sound Transit. The bypass was intended to reduce congestion and separate passenger and freight traffic, and was designed for faster speeds and shorter travel times, saving ten minutes from Seattle to Portland compared with the previous route used by Cascades.
On February 4, 2018, the southbound Amtrak Silver Star No. 91 passenger train from New York City to Miami collided with a stationary CSX Transportation freight train in Cayce, South Carolina, just south of the state's capital of Columbia on CSX's Columbia Subdivision. Two Amtrak crew members were killed and 116 other crew and passengers were injured.
On the night of Wednesday, June 21, 1905, the New York Central Railroad's flagship passenger train, the 20th Century Limited, derailed in Mentor, Ohio, on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway line, killing 21 passengers and injuring more than 25 others on board. A switch from the mainline to a freight siding was open, causing the Limited to leave the mainline and overrun the siding at high speed. The cause of the accident was never officially determined, but overwhelming evidence points to an act of rail sabotage. The 20th Century Limited connected New York City to Chicago; its running time had just weeks earlier been reduced from 20 hours to 18.
