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If you really want some answers, there are three things you can do: 1.) Listen to everyone here. 2.) Look in to the past 3.) Look at the NYSE and STB Why? 1.) Mostly everyone in here either a.) works for the railroad or b.) knows these rails by heart. I can tell you what trians to expect on the W line on the Norfolk Southern. I live and breath around Huntingburg, IN, so of course, I should know what to expect. One day while railfanning, caught nothing but UP SD70M's in Southern Indiana of all places! 2.) Right now, all the Class I's are paying off their merger consumptions from the mid 80's on up. Union Pacific should be automatically counted out of the race for merging anytime in the near future, since it is paying off CNW, SP and possibly the Katy. BNSF is still paying off for ATSF, NS and CSX are still paying off Conrail and CN for IC. The only merger right now would be for CP to merge up with someone. However, that is doubtful seeing how they are doing a bad job with service (they are in the process of selling off the Latta Sub to INRD). Railroads are businesses, they thrive on booming economies and they need to survive. SP and UP merged to threats by BN and SF. CSX entered the takeover for CR due to NS. BNSF and CN were going to merge in reaction to the UP+SP combo but that failed. 3.) Right now if you look at the NYSE, you will see that stocks for railroads are pretty lofty (NS is at $54, CSX is at 59, CN at 47, CP is 49, UP is 92, BNSF is 80) which translates to if a western railroad and an eastern railroad wanted to merge, it would be bloody expensive! And let's not think about western railraods (Sherman Anti-Trust Act ring a bell?) Let's say you want to buy out 50% of the outstanding stock at NS and it was at 100,000,000, okay, first you would have to agree to pay it at an inflated rate. Something that is higher so that the investors will accept the merger and see that it will make them money. Remember many investors are in the stock business to make money, like businesses. So let's say for a moment that BSNF wants to merge with NS, that means BNSF will buy 50,000,000 shares outstanding, not including shares outstanding they need to buy in order to get a foothold. But, they will need to pass through the STB and NYSE first to make sure this is a legit deal. Now let's say they offer roughly $60 a share for NS stock which is a deal to some, that would mean BNSF would pay out 300,000,000! but in all actuality, NS's outstanding stock is 412,237,000! So do you see the issue with merging right now? It's not just unreasonable and a fantasy, you wont make a profitable enough return to make it feasable.
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