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It is interesting that kennco brought up the natural resources of the railroads. One thing the BN did was to spin off the natural resources into a separate company a number of years before the ATSF merger. It was very controversial in the business community at the time. In order to split the company old bonds constructed by JP Morgan had to be circumvented. The bond holders got screwed and the railroad got screwed. The new natural resource company spun off with no debt, the debt was left with the railroad. Much of the debt came about from the purchase of oil assets and a pipeline company called El Paso Oil among others. The railroad was left so much debt it was predicted that bankruptcy might follow. Ironically the railroad survived and prospered and El Paso Oil met hard times. The Federal Government made pipelines into common carriers. That meant that the pipeline had to transport products from anyone for a fee. Before pipeline companies would purchase the product and add a percentage onto the price to cover the cost of transport. The pipelines were taking advantage. Natural gas was the example I remember. The pipelines would import very expensive natural gas from the middle east add the percentage and make a huge profit. Now power companies buy the least expensive gas they can find and add the same percentage for transport. Of course that was the perion where oil executives were running the BN.
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