SteelWheels.Co — Weekly Intelligence Brief

THE
MANIFEST

Weekly railroad intelligence. Operations. Markets. Regulatory. Capital. From forty years on the property — to your inbox.

Why It Exists

Most rail trade press is press releases with attribution. Aggregators rebroadcast Federal Register filings without reading them. Class I earnings coverage gets filtered through analyst-relations decks. Short line and transit news lives in scattered industry forums no one outside the network reads. The actual signal — what’s in the FRA waiver petitions, which STB dockets matter, where the CRISI money is going, what the merger filings reveal about gaps in the application — gets buried under the noise.

The Manifest exists to surface it. Each issue is a field-credentialed weekly read on the regulatory wire, the capital flows, the labor docket, the equipment market, and the operational truths that don’t make the trades — anchored by an original editorial leader, From the Field, written from forty years on the property. No paywall. No filter. No editor smoothing the grit off the voice.

Every Issue

What’s
Inside

Eleven sections. Every week. Structured for the operator who doesn’t have time to chase six dockets and a dozen forums.

Section I From the Field

The editorial leader. Original analysis on what’s moving on the property — written from forty years across Class I, transit, shortline, and government contracting. The signature piece each issue.

Section II Rail & Energy Markets

Class I and supplier equity prices. Crude, Brent, natural gas. The macroeconomic frame the operating numbers move inside.

Section III Class I Dispatch

BNSF, UP, CSX, NS, CN, CPKC. Operational moves, regulatory filings, technical news from each carrier — gathered weekly so you don’t have to chase six dockets and a dozen forums.

Section IV Transit & High-Speed

FRA, FTA, and Authority-level activity across passenger and transit infrastructure. Capital programs, regulatory actions, federal funding flows.

Section V Intelligence Briefing

The week’s most consequential developments — STB merger dockets, CRISI funding announcements, gateway expansions, hazmat rulemakings — analyzed for operational and strategic implication, not stenographed.

Section VI On the Labor Front

Crew certification, two-person rules, BLET and SMART-TD activity, FRA waiver petitions, AHO process changes. What the operating crews and their unions are facing.

Section VII Regulatory Wire

STB. FRA. PHMSA. The Federal Register entries that matter, with the analytical context the agencies don’t provide and the trades don’t translate.

Section VIII Equipment & Fleet

Locomotive certification, railcar regulation, hazmat permitting, heritage equipment compliance — the rolling stock side of the regulatory and market pictures.

Section IX Career Opportunities

Selected senior-level rail openings — Class I, regional, shortline. Curated, not aggregated.

Section X Railroading Quote

Closing each issue. Drawn from rail history, military history, industrial leadership.

On the Wire

Recent
Issues

Issue 1 · April 16, 2026
Virginia Signs Two-Person Crew Law; Short Lines Seek One-Person Waivers; Shippers Push STB on Rate Transparency

The crew-consist landscape splits in real time — and the divergence between Class I and shortline regulatory posture becomes the operational fault line of 2026.

Read full issue Issue 2 · April 23, 2026
UP-NS Merger Filing on Track for April 30, $6.7B in Federal Rail Grants Drop, Amtrak Sues Metro-North Over NextGen Acela Access

Earnings season delivers a clear signal on Class I capital posture; federal grant dollars hit the street; passenger rail fights itself in court.

Read full issue Issue 3 · April 30, 2026
UP-NS Merger Filing Lands at STB; $2B CRISI Pot Opens; Texas Border Rail Corridors Multiply

A force older than the railroad — entropy — drives the largest merger filing in a generation, while the regulatory and capital fronts move in parallel.

Read full issue
View full archive →
From the Industry
“

The rail field can definitely use a professional-looking news aggregate site. Especially one generated by someone with an eye for substantive stories and a way with words for presenting them in not the same ol’ mundane language as everyone else — not to mention years of experience that provide the insights to take deeper dives into stories than the average rail trade or railfan mag.

Bruce Kelly · Contributing Editor, Railway Age

200+ subscribers across Class I, transit, and shortline operations  ·  10,000+ views on the inaugural LinkedIn companion piece  ·  Weekly cadence since April 2026

The Editor
Frédérick M. St. Simon

Frédérick M. St. Simon

Frédérick M. St. Simon is the founder of SteelWheels.Co — a railroad operations consulting and advisory practice based in Flagstaff, Arizona — and editor of The Manifest. Production Roadmaster (BNSF) · Road Trainmaster (CPKC) · Senior Project Manager (RailWorks) · General Manager (multi-state shortline) · FRA Tier III Track Inspector · PMP. Forty years across Class I freight, transit infrastructure, shortline operations, and government contracting in austere environments. The Manifest is the editorial vehicle of the practice.

About SteelWheels.Co → Engage with the practice →