My name is Dan Furey, and I like trains.

When I’m not writing about lesbian space pirates or trains, I can usually be found playing video games, drinking coffee, coming up with wacky Lego designs, or reading just about anything. I also love maps, old & new, so it’s no surprise that my day job is working for my local mapping department.

I’ve always loved trains–my first words were “choo choo”, you can ask my mom!–and I love writing, so the blog on this site is my attempt at combining the two. I’ve worked as a real railroader (on the Alaska Railroad), and I studied under Dr. Tyler Dick at the University of Illinois, so with this combination of theoretical and practical experience, I hope to make sense of the often-opaque industry that is American Railroading.

Railroads have just about always been a very conservative bunch–in both the political and literal sense–and I aim to provide a left-wing, labor-focused perspective to help balance the conversation. While I am of course a rail fan, I’m just as interested in the why of railroading as the what; sure, some locomotives are cool, but why did a railroad purchase this one instead of that one? Why did some lines get abandoned, while others went from shaky branch to heavy-duty mainline? Those questions, and more, are all things I hope to uncover with this blog.

I’m also passionate about rail advocacy. Too many proponents of rail in the US have a limited understanding of American rail history, and especially freight operations, and I hope to shed some light on why the US has the rail network we do, and what it would actually take to bring widespread passenger service–and true high-speed rail–to the US.

If that all sounds good to you, then get on board! The Iron Horse welcomes you, and we hope you enjoy the ride!

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Land Acknowledgement

I live on land forcibly and violently taken from the Alibamu and Coushatta peoples, part of the Mvskoke Confederacy, by the United States Government in the 1814 Treaty of Fort Jackson. I thank and acknowledge the present-day descendants of those peoples, the Poarch Creek Indians in the US state of Alabama and the Alabama–Coushatta Tribe of Texas, for their continued stewardship of the Earth and her people.