Columnist, author Don Phillips dies

By Kevin P. Keefe | September 24, 2025

Phillips's contributions to Trains were an essential part of the magazine for more than four decades


Don Phillips, left, chats with an Amtrak Acela Express conductor on the train’s first public run in December 2000. Brian Solomon

Of all the bylines to grace Trains magazine’s pages over its 85-year history, likely none matches the record of transportation journalist and railfan Don Phillips, whose monthly column ran in the publication in two separate stints between 1977 and 2018, and whose feature stories covered everything from the creation of Amtrak and Conrail to Staggers Act deregulation to the Norfolk Southern steam program. His contributions were an essential part of the magazine for more than 40 years.

For much of that time he was also regarded as one of the nation’s top transportation journalists, with more than 20 years covering the subject for the Washington Post and the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, an affiliate of the New York Times.

Phillips died Tuesday after a years-long illness. He was 83.


Longtime Washington Post transportation reporter and Trains columnist Don Phillips was trackside in Panama in 2017 for the annual meeting of the Lexington Group for Transportation History. Jim Thomas

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