In brief: Feds seek safer travel for oil by rail

U.S. transportation officials on Thursday pressed for companies to come up with safer ways to transport oil on the nation’s rail lines following some explosive accidents as crude trains proliferate across North America.

After a closed-door meeting with oil and railroad executives in Washington, D.C., Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the industry agreed to make voluntary changes aimed at accident prevention within the next 30 days.

Topping the list are plans to analyze the risks of oil trains that in recent years began passing regularly through major metropolitan areas across the U.S., Foxx said.

The results could be used to alter some routes, government officials said. Railroads also will consider where oil trains could be slowed down, to lessen the potential danger in areas that pose the greatest threat to public safety.

‘Partridge Family’ actor Madden dies

Jacksonville, Fla. – Comic actor Dave Madden, who played the child-hating agent on the hit 1970s sitcom “The Partridge Family,” died in Florida on Thursday at age 82.

Madden died at a hospice center near his home in the Jacksonville area, his niece Mary Frances Miller said.

Towering and rumpled, Madden was best known for his role as Reuben Kinkaid, who managed the Partridge family band and regularly clashed with its impish pre-teen bassist, played by Danny Bonaduce.

While the series starred Shirley Jones, with her real-life stepson David Cassidy as the resident heart-throb, it was Madden and the freckle-faced Bonaduce who became the reigning comic duo.

Jones said Madden “made the show, I felt.”