Will Rail Runner use the shoe or get the boot?

New Mexico Rail Runner Express is the feisty commuter railroad that runs on a shoestring budget from Belen, NM, adjacent to BNSF Railway’s famed Transcon, through Albuquerque, NM, to the state capital at Santa Fe. In so doing, the railroad climbs over 2,000 feet in altitude. From Belen to a point just south (railroad west) of Lamy, NM, the line uses tracks that once belonged to the equally-famed Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, which never had a main line to it’s namesake city. Between there and downtown Santa Fe, it uses newly laid track, some in the median of Interstate 25, and, in Santa Fe proper, track that was once the AT&SF branch to Santa Fe that also connected with the narrow-gauge Denver & Rio Grande there.

Rail Runner was the political stepchild of New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. (You might know him as a sometime Democratic presidential candidate and as an occasional ambassador at large and expert on North Korea. He also served as Ambassador to the U.N. and Secretary of Energy under President Clinton.) In 2003, as governor, Richardson determined that a commuter rail line between Albuquerque (eventually Belen) and Santa Fe would be one of his legacies. Another would be spending on New Mexico roads. (GRIP or Gov. Richardson's Investment Partnership) The legislature went along, the project started in 2005, and the rest is both history and economics, as the train has been fully operational for years, has never made money or broke even, has falling ridership, and will be subject to a huge $110 million balloon financing payment in each of 2025 and 2026. (There's was also an underlying investment scandal that is irrelevant to this article.)

Then along came Congress and mandated Positive Train Control (PTC) for all passenger railroads, supposed to be operational by the end of 2015 and extended (by Congress) to the end of this calendar year. Rail Runner Express needs a reported $50 million to implement this, and even if suddenly given $50 million by an angel benefactor, would not be able to meet the implementation deadline. In fact, they haven’t even started. Going against Rail Runner is the fact that Congress is now under pressure to grant no further extensions unless certain conditions are met. Rail Runner has not met any, yet.

Remember I mentioned the old AT&SF line from Albuquerque to Santa Fe? It once hosted the Santa Fe’s crack named passenger trains. Those passengers were protected by a system developed in the 1920s called Automatic Train Stop. Seen from 2018, the system seems both simple and archaic. Simply explained, an induction device called a “shoe” is mounted at the edge of the track (see left), and a detection device on the locomotive truck picks up a signal that causes an automatic, full service brake application if the train crew does not respond within 15 seconds. Tied in with the signaling system and Centralized Train Control (CTC), ATS effectively does much of what PTC will do, eventually, and has successfully done it on passenger lines around the world for almost 100 years.

As reported in an April 6, 2018, Trains News Wire entry by William P. Diven, Rio Metro Regional Transit District, which runs Rail Runner, is hoping that the FRA’s (Federal Railroad Admin.) safety concerns will be met by using the existing ATS and CTC systems until PTC can be funded and built. Considering that the district has had over eight years to come up with a way to complete PTC, this writer finds it hard to believe that this is a low-risk gamble. The alternative appears to be to shut down Rail Runner altogether or severely curtail schedules until PTC is in place and fully operational to the FRA’s satisfaction. Or maybe just install a louder roadrunner-type horn. (See illustration at right.)

Seriously, and on the other hand, the PTC gamble may be no less risky than to find the money for the extra balloon payments in 2025 and 2026. So, Rail Runner Express, the little train that dangles on a shoestring, just might pull it off and be allowed by the FRA to go beep-beeping off into the desert.

©2018 – C. A. Turek – mistertrains@gmail.com

(Charles A. Turek is a writer and novelist based in Albuquerque, NM. After four decades working in areas of the insurance industry related to transportation, he now writes on all aspects of American railroading. Charles is a political conservative but believes in public funding of passenger rail as a part of the federal government’s constitutionally conservative obligation to provide for defense and public infrastructure so that private enterprise may flourish.)