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Why was BNSF allowed while the SPSF was rejected? It's all politics. In today's "corporate" world, bigger is better, regardless of what happens to the consumer. Look around, how many mega-mergers have happened recently? Did we really need ExxonMobil? The other part of the equation is that the STB is a castrated ICC, and many have commented that it's a rubber stamp for almost any merger. In other arenas (business), the FTC (I think it's them) regulates mergers. Yet, when you look at the overlap of the SP and the ATSF, there was a bunch, and I mean a bunch, in California, Arizona, and a little in NM. Texas, well, look at the gulf coast, down around Houston/Galveston was pretty much all SP and ATSF. Simply put, the concessions required by the ICC (not to mention the comments made by someone at SPSF) would have changed the nature of the west, bringing DRGW into Nor Cal and Oregon (remember the Modoc line, that was to go, IIRC, to the DRGW for access into the Northwest) and I personally don't think that the market was ready for such a large RR merger. So, Roseville would've been one end of the DRGW b/c it was part of the concession. You'd have three class One's in Sacramento. Not bad. Politics killed it. The political winds shifted and after the UP fought bitterly for ATSF (imagine that one), the BNSF won out and I don't know why, seemed like a bad deal for competition. I guess they wanted to compete with the larger Uncle Pete and of course the BNSF merger forced UP to consume SP. I digress...but it was politics that killed SPSF. art
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