I think Balt nailed it. All of the problems CPKC has encountered are the ones that should have been expected and accounted for. The planning and execution of the cutover has been an unmitigated disaster. Fortunately for CPKC, the amount of railroad affected is small enough that they should be able to recover relatively quickly. They still have to eventually cut over the operations in Mexico from MCS to TYES. It will be interesting to see if any of the lessons learned with the KCS-US cutover will be put into practice.
Related to my original concern that any large transcontinental merger could devolve into absolute chaos on a scale that would make the UP-SP merger look like child’s play, Bill Stephens posted this news wire story yesterday: