CN Fallen Flags?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

How many fallen flags has CN incorporated over the last few decades?

Here’s the ones I can think of.

Britsh Columbia Railway

Grand Trunk Western

Detroit, Toledo and Ironton

Elgin Joliet & Eastern

Wisconsin Central

Illinois Central Gulf

Illinois Central

Gulf Mobile & Ohio

There’s likely more, though these 8 are the most evident, which is still much fewer then the 20 or so fallen flags NS has under it’s hood.

Of course some of these fallen flags weren’t directly merged into CN. GTW acquired DT&I in the 1980s, while IC and GM&O merged to form ICG in 1972, which later become IC again in the 1980s.

IMO, if CN were ever to do heritage units, they should follow NS’s example and paint them in accurate renditions of each fallen flag’s paint scheme. Even though ICG was later renamed IC again, IC and ICG should have separate heritage units.

2

Well obviously one of the most famous would be the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range Ry.

Also the Bessemer and Lake Erie although they have largely been left alone. P&LE also.

3

The operating remains of P&LE are a part of CSX not CN.

4

P&CD rather.

5

I’d add Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific, although that was from way back an American subsidiary of CN, as was Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Western.

I think if you want to include all the railroad that over a century or so went into making up the railroads CN now owns, you’d have quite a list. The Missabe was two different railroads until the late thirties for example, so I guess you could say CN “owns” the Duluth Missabe and Northern, and the Duluth and Iron Range railways.