Does RA suck cash from its most profitable lines to support it’s less profitable lines?
I’m curious, because I look at railroads such as New England Central and Indiana & Ohio/Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern and wonder why they look like rag-tag operations?
In comparison with roads of comparable size and carloads, such as Wisconsin & Southern, Paducah & Louisville, Indiana Rail Road, and Wheeling & Lake Erie, these roads appear to be in worse condition. I suppose you can’t judge a railroad’s profitability solely on their locomotives, but WOSR, PAL, INRD, and WLE all keep their locomotives looking nice and clean. While RA runs their locomotives into the ground. Luckily NECR is blessed with lingering paint jobs from RailTex ownership.
Going on route-miles and carloads alone, it seems that the bigger RA lines should be as profitable and well-kept as many of the other small regionals in the Midwest.
I suppose I could also toss Iowa Interstate into the list of railroads with good-looking, well-kept locomotives and right-of-ways.
As an after thought, the roads that seem to be doing well have a very standardized roster, with many locomotives of just a few types, instead of many locomotives of various makes and heritages.
Does CSX’s partial ownership have an effect on INRD and PAL? I know WSOR, IAIS, and WLE are all solely independent lines…
And to save time - I am not comparing the larger RailAmerica lines to MRL, FEC, ICE/DME, or Alaska RR, as they all fall into a larger category (or are state-owned or class 1 owned).
My experiences with Rail America has been with the Indiana Southern railroad and they have spent a lot of money improving their mainline and the motive power always seems clean , I would say it is localized as to how each property is kept and run .
NEW ENGLAND CENTRAL is the former Central Vermont division of the Canadian National. CN kept the Right of Way “picture book”. It’s just as good now. The 1995 “Short Line Railroad of the Year”. They interchange freight trafic with the P&W at Norwich and Willimantic, CSX at Palmer, Vermont Railway at Essex Junction VT, and CN at St.Albens VT. A true “bridge line”. The Amtrak “Vermonter” makes a switching move from Springfield to Palmer in order to avoid Guilford and use the New England Central tracks north to Vermont.
CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND is another railroad. A short line railroad switching the Hartford area, it connects with CSX at Springfield and reaches New Haven using the Amtrak main.
I haven’t seen any CF&E units that looked that shabby. Some of the leased power, yes.
Also CSX owns the ex-Pennsy line that the Chicago, Fort Wayne & Eastern runs on. At one time NS also had (may still have) rights to run the line from Fort Wayne to Spriggsboro (west of Valporaiso) as part of the Conrail split. NS does have and excercises its right to serve the SDI steel and rail plants near Columbia City almost daily, taking a fair chunk of that business.
The CFE units do look great. The leased units do look shabby, but that is hardly their fault. I havent seen or heard an NS on the CFE line in years, except from Spriggsboro to Hobart on the joint line.
That’s good to know, but does surprise me. Indiana Southern gets little press - especially with the railfans. It’s hard to find information and pictures on. I wish there was more info available about this road.
You are right about CF&E’s locos - they are nice, probably because they’ve been recently repainted from the CNW paint. I sorta grouped them into the Indiana & Ohio’s fleet, which from what I hear is just ran into the ground until they don’t work, then they just lease new power. And from a number of pictures I’ve seen, RA freely interchanges locos between their lines when they are connect at some location. Heck, they move them around from road to road fairly often even if the roads are seperated by hundreds of miles.
I remember reading [don’t remember where] that CSX does own part of INRD.
Their maps show shared trackage rights of the old NYC tracks from Terre Haute IN to Paris IL and on into Danville IL. Also shared rights with CSX, UP, and NS on the old C&EI tracks from Terre Haute to Chicago, into Clearing yard.
