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CSX isn't even in the hunt with NS, just as C&O was never in the hunt with N&W. In an era where a railroad's prosperity was judged at least partly on how much coal business it carried, C&O hauled more coal than N&W; on the west end of the railroad it took its coal all the way to Lake Erie at Toledo, and N&W had to give its coal, and part of the revenue, to connections at Columbus. Until it merged with Pere Marquette, C&O didn't have any more non-coal-involved mileage than did N&W, nor more passenger service to support. C&O didn't have N&W's grades nor N&W's curvature, against getting its coal to market. C&O had roundhouses full of the most fashionable locomotives ever devised by the mind of man - 90 big 2-8-4s, 40 2-10-4s, 60 2-6-6-6s, the world's heaviest 4-6-4s, and the Greenbrier 4-8-4s; while N&W just had a bunch of old obsolete (the smart guys said) compound 2-8-8-2s, 43 2-6-6-4s that the intelligentsia said were much inferior to the 2-6-6-6s, and some short-legged 4-8-4s. Yet C&O never made the money that N&W did, as a function of carrying gross income over to net. The bottom line is where it counts . . . Old Timer
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