Railroad journalist and columnist Don Phillips died on September 23 after a years-long illness. He was 83.

Phillips was one of the nation’s leading transportation journalists, working for the Washington Post and International Herald Tribune. However, in the railroad world, he was best known for his columns in Trains, which ran from 1977 to 2018, with a brief hiatus in the late 1980s, often under the moniker “The Potomac Pundit.” 

Phillips grew up in Birmingham, Ala. He studied journalism at Auburn University before landing a job at United Press International’s Atlanta bureau in 1966, marking the start of a decades-long career in newspapers. That same year, Phillips had his first byline in Trains. He went on to cover many of the biggest stories in railroading during the late 20th century, from the Northeastern railroad crisis leading to the establishment of Conrail and the Staggers Act, to the infamous deadly wreck on the Northeast Corridor at Chase, Md., in 1987, to the merger mania of the 1990s.

Phillips wrote his last column for Trains in 2018 and soon found a new venue for his work with Railfan & Railroad, where he wrote “Capitol Lines.” He also wrote a column for Passenger Train Journal. Throughout his career, his writing carried both personality and warmth, whether examining the political hurdles facing the industry or evoking the deep nostalgia that has always been at the heart of railroading.

—Justin Franz