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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by cnw8835 [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by BNSF railfan. I wi***hat the CNW Railway was still around today. I realy also wanted to see the CNW run Coal Trains on the Cowboy Line. But when the CNW "GAVE" them selves to the UPRR.....that ended it right there. It was realy sad that the cowboy no longer runs Trains anymore. There was some hope for the cowboy line but not anymore. As for the Coal Trains. Well time will tell......Allan. [/quote] Wouldn't that have required a ga-zillion dollars in ROW rebuild to run heavy coal trains over the Cowboy Line? [/quote] Yes, it would have cost a whole lot to rebuild the Cowboy Line. Its was 519 miles from Fremont to Shawnee Jct with 90-100 lbs rail with very little ballast. There were 417 bridges, almost all of which would have to have been rebuilt. At best it would have cost 1 million a mile to get the line to the point where a coal train could even safely travel over it. In the mid 70's when rebuilding the Cowboy was first proposed, C&NW was in no shape to spend at least a half billion dollars just on the Cowboy and then another half billion on their portion of the Joint Line. C&NW couldn't have managed that even in the best of times. [/quote] Once CNW's Pacific ambitions ended, the Cowboy line no longer mattered in the larger scheme of things. For all intents and purposes, it became a Granger branch. In the 1970's there was a lot of overbuilt capacity, and it made sense to use UP's available capacity rather than spend a lot of money on a superfluous single commodity line. Today it might be different, as capacity is maxed and any new business is going to require added tracks. Thus, we have the DM&E taking on what CNW couldn't pull off. If CNW had somehow managed to keep it all on the home rails sans UP's involvement, would that have forestalled the UP takeover of CNW? [/quote] Yes, it is possible that C&NW getting into the PRB by itself may have delayed the UP takeover. Any definate answer about that would be nothing more than speculation. We will never know for sure. As for DME's project, in my mind it is even more ambitious than C&NW rebuilding the Cowboy Line. DM&E is not only rebuilding the former C&NW "Alco Line" but is also building 150ish miles of brand new rail line. Granted if C&NW had rebuilt the Cowboy line virtually nothing other than the ROW would have been kept (which is what happened from Shawnee Jct to Crandall Jct) so it basically would have been a new line, DM&E is working with completely new ROW. More power to you DM&E.
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