Super Railroad

[Anonymous]

When it comes to government run railraods don't forget about CN.... it was government run up until about a decade ago or so.

[Anonymous]

There will never be a super railraod in the US. The Laws are specifically set up to deter such a thing, infact there's talk that Congress will soon be making UP split off some of it's holdings.

The best you'll rpobably see in the US will be around 5 or 6 big railroads, with another 10-14 medium lines and hundreds of shortlines. and as others have said the names will cycle, UP is one of the big one, but in 5 or 10 years it may be a medium again and another Railroad will take it's place.

The US governement did have many Railroads it owned, they started companies, ran them till they were decently profitable, then sold them (at cost) to private investors. There is one exception to this, the Alaskan Railroad, which the US Government Sold to the State of Alaska, and is one of the most profitable Governement run railroads in the world.

So the only Hand the US Government would have in running a Freight Railroad would be to get it ready for private Takeover to foster more competition. As for passeneger service, Congress is really taking a hard look at how Amtrak is designed and they may make major changes to it to make sure there's some sort of federal mass transist available in the event that Airliners are grounded again.

Jay

[wallyworld]

It would be interesting to see the statistics of the world's railroads in how many of them are nationalized versus how many are still being privately held.The idea of a federal railroad brings up the same reaction you get here in the South when somebody's impolite enough to say they don't care for BBQ,. The suits in DC spent money faster out of my pockets faster than I can shout out "super size it " If all the roads attempted to formally conjoin and congeal in a big corporate lump, like let's say...GE or AT&T or Exxon...and tried to run a national centralized operation like the Department of Energy or the EPA, you would hear those same suits with pork in their pockets cry Unfair, Unfair to The Public. And so it goes.

[AntonioFP45]

UPTrain,

Good point about Conrail, but the originally many experts and railfans (me too, I was a teen at the time) expected Conrail to flop miserably. One nickname was The "BIG CON-artist". But Instead, Conrail turned into a viable, healthy road within a decade. Nickname then became "Big Blue", with respect attached to it.

I was sorry to see it go; divided up between CSX and NS a few years ago.

[UPTRAIN]

There was a "super railroad"...the Conrail...operated by the government...but as many of you know...it was dissolved.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cjm89

The government run railroads? That will be the day.

.

That WAS the day. The Gov't ran the RRs during WWI. It didn't work out too well, so they didn't try it again. The gov't isn't even very fond of Amtrak.

You probably see the roads in US and Canada eventually align into two big roads. Most pundits figure it'll be BNSF&NS and UP&CSX with the Canadian roads going either way. I would guess it'll be several years before it happen's though. There's no money in it right now.

[Anonymous]

The government run railroads? That will be the day.

Railroads and the U.S. gov. have never gotten along well, and macguy is right about the "continuous cycle...The Union Pacific, Illinois Central, and Wabash were once all consolidated in the 1800s, and the Pennsylvania also once had a large interest (speaking in stock and bond terms) in the N&W and the B&O.

[Anonymous]

Unlikely.
Anyone that goes back and looks at the History of Railroads will see that there is always a continuous cycle.

Basic cycle is there are lots of railways they all are somewhat small, some larger than others, then they start merging and there are fewer railroads but they are bigger. Then they start to get small again, then big....

It's always cycling, at this point were are now seeing a lot more regional or class IIIs take trackage that the class one's don't want therefore there are more smaller railways starting up, and the class one's getting a little smaller.

Basically, in my opinion, there will never be just one big railroad, the market will always be changing with railroads starting up and others shutting down, but it would likely never get to the extreme of one big line.

My [2c]

[Anonymous]

With recent mergers and rumors of others, do you think that one day there will be one SUPER RAILROAD, possibly run by the government?