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[quote user="Datafever"]Okay, I have managed to obtain a little more information.  The railroad agent (who is now 82 years old) maintains that it was not a case of the railroad raising rates.  Trucking companies managed to do a good job of marketing and selling a niche market - short haul transportation of grain to facilities that were able to negotiate lower rates because of volume (i.e. units trains), thereby providing an overall cost savings to the customers in question.  Which is kind of what I had been trying to say.  The agent was given early retirement and the line was abandoned years later under a rule that allowed lines to be abandoned is there had been no traffic over the line for at least two years. I don't know how you see it, but the agent and I see it this way - the trucking industry was able to undercut the railroad and drive them out of business (the business of providing short-haul transportation).  To me, that sounds like competition. Now, I can't say that this was the case in a majority of cases, or even in a small minority of cases, but it was the case on this particular branch line.  Therefore, it is not always the case that only another railroad can be competition for a railroad that is servicing a "captive shipper".  Which is possibly why researchers have a difficult time in trying to determine exactly which shippers are captive and which are not. [/quote] You contradict yourself.  You say trucks were the competition, yet you admit the trucks were hauling to the railroad's unit train terminal.  Since the railroad didn't lose the business other than the carload traffic off the branchline, the trucks acted as collaberators with the railroad rather than competitors. It's not competition if said *competitors* are delivering to the same railroad's facility.  Sounds more like the trucks were the non-union alternative to local carload.  All the railroad cared about is the unit train facility, how the grain got there wasn't important to them.  Remember, under carload service the branchline didn't have to pay for itself (e.g. variable costs + fixed cost of the branchline) since the branchline fed revenue loads out onto the mainline.  Then railroad management figured out that they could keep that same traffic on the mainline without the hassles of keeping the branchline up to speed - just build a consolidation terminal.  It's too bad that the railroads have used these tactics to force trucks onto our roads and highways, and it's also more of a burden for the former shippers on that branchline.  Question:  How many of those 5 elevators and 2 mills have since shut down?  I would be suprised if all the players are still alive and kicking.
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