Geretings,
Anyone out there know why the SP/ATSF merger failed and the BN/ATSF merger went through?
Curious here.
Thanks,
Mark in Texas
The board that approves mergers wouldn’t allow it. Usual reason is lack of competition.
The real irony is to look at the merged roads and check the history of them.
Both the SP and the UP were owned by Harriman, but the government made him get rid of one. Gould owned the MP, the Katy and the DRGW trying to patch together a transcontinental system and ended up selling them off.
Dave H.
SPSF…Shouldnt Paint So Fast
The SP and ATSF merger was denied for to many duplicate lines and not enough competition. The merger btwn BN and the ATSF was approved for not as many duplicate lines and that competition would remain. The BN/ATSF merger was a non strategic merger.
Ch
Oh, that merger. As a CB&Q modeler, whenever I see or read the word merger I automatically think of the one in 1970 which created BN (and ended the ‘Q’). So never mind; don’t read this.
i wi***he CB&Q was still around. i want to find some newer pictures of the locomotives.
The late great Irv. Athearn somehow KNEW these mergers would take place some day…he was even painting SF cabooses for the CB & Q way back in the late 1950’s…nice silver ones.[;)][;)]
He did those SF cabooses for me in my B & O lettering, too.[:0][:0]
regards
Mike
Yeah… we’ll miss the CB&Q[:(]… I think after or before the “Q” disappeared, didn’t they call it the Burlington Route?
I miss the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern.
By the way, whatever happened to The Milwaukee Road and the Southern Rwy??
The Norfolk Southern Corporation was formed in June 1982 to operate two subsidiary railroads, the Norfolk & Western Railway (N&W) and the Southern Railway (SR). In 1990 the N&W was merged into the SR and the name of the SR was changed to the Norfolk Southern Railway, a subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation. The merger of parts of Conrail into the NS system in June of 1999 had no direct effect on NS trackage in this part of Virginia.
The Milwaukee Road filed for bankruptcy in the 80’S and the Soo Line took over.
Mark in Texas
Gee, and I thought The Merger was the one that finally went through in 1968, then collapsed in dramatic fashion in 1972, creating at the time the largest bakruptcy in history.
Of course, I’m talking about the Pennsylvania-New York Central merger and subsequent crash of the Penn Central, which nearly ended railroading in the Northeast.
Now, that’s a merger! [:D]
Eric