What is the most regretted of all RR abandonments in USA & Canada inthe past fifty years.I nominate the Seaboard Line main line near the Va. N.C. boundary.Dutchie
…I don’t know if it is now regretted by the authorities or not, but I sure have read a lot of comments over the years about abandoning the B&O route west…Not even sure how far it went now…St. Louis…?
The CNW Cowboy line.
The DRGW narrow gauge from Durango to Alamosa, CO.
FIRST OF ALL,[#welcome], Dutchie
My vote for what might have been a key link intoday’s picture, goes here in Kansas and it was the line east from Wichita east to a junction at Monett, Mo… would bypass Kansas City and give the BNSF a short cut to the Southeast thru Memphis… It was a shame they hurried to rationalize that FRISCO line…Just my [2c]
Regretted by whom? The railroad, the region’s econ development folk, or out own personal opinion?
Railroad - I would venture that BNSF regrets letting go of two portions of the ex-Milwaukee line in Washington State - the Snoqualmie Pass line and the Ellensburg-Lind cutoff. Oh well, the State of Washington might just bail them out on the latter!
Regional interests - Surely the State of Montana wishes NP and GN had never merged into BN, followed shortly by the Milwaukee’s PCE retrenchment. Montana thus went from three east-west Class I’s to one, and the rest is history…
Personally - Well, I guess it’s 3 for 3!
The B&O’s line west reached St. Louis, which was as far west as it came. But most of their track is still being used by CSX so it’s not a total loss.
Ishmael…But hasn’t it been cut as a through line…I believe quite a bit of it was abandoned quite a while ago…Such as the section that is close to I-70 out in Ohio…
Any track taken out is regretted.
Two regretted “abandonments” I can think of were the second track of the B&O main line into Chicago, and the second track of the CNW from Denison westward. They’re back now. Then there was the line in Missouri (?) that UP spun off to a short line (M&NA), and later re-acquired to handle some of its traffic.
Defintely the Milwaukee Road.
Following that right of way through abandoned towns in Montana and Washington was really sad…
2nd on my list was the CNW Air Line from Milwaukee to Manitowoc. Lot’s a good memories from when I was young. I even got the opportunity from a nice engineer to tour a CNW GP9. For a 12 year old boy that was a dream come true.
Close to home (for me) are the abandonments of the GB&W and the ex-C&NW and MILW lines between Milwaukee and Green Bay. How different might things be if the BN/GB&W merger had gone through (oh, and let’s toss in the C&NW New London-Appleton branch) and/or the E&LS had been able to gain either of the two lines south of Green Bay (with access on the line between Manitowoc and the Fox Cities)!
Down here in Texas,I think the UP would love to have back:
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Former Katy main line Eureka- Sealy
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Former SP line Houston-Eagle Lake
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Former SP line Rosenberg- Victoria and down through Alice
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Former SP Beaumont-Lufkin
I would think CSX’s biggest regret would be removing parts of ACL’s Double track mainline from Jacksonville, FL. to Richmond, VA.
In my opinon locally, between the CSX and NS ,it would be CSX’s track (former C&O) from Ashland to Lexington,Kentucky.Saying that ,there is about 12 miles of the track still in service from Ashland to Rush ,Ky.But it is not a signaled ,and not considered a mainline any longer.
CSX took the track up before Toyota’s big boom in business at their Georgetown,Ky plant got started.Toyota now has built an engine and transmission plant in Buffalo,WVa that would have been located more close to this line if it wasn’t taken up.
In the past year a waste management company has built a nearly 1 mile long spur off it(in Boyd Co.) to run “trash trains” from N.J… And Kentucky Electric Steel has a plant located at the very end of the line in Rush,Ky.
But the big kicker has to be this.The Pocahontas Land Corp. owns (or did) over 300,000 acres of land along that former C&O track from Boyd Co. to Fayette Co.(Lexington),that is full of premium coal.
Now all of this took place before the ICC was done away with, and this might of been some business move by the CSX.
Under the old ICC laws a carrier that owned track that another carrier wanted to conduct business on,had to provide service by allowing that carrier trackage rights or to haul their cars.
Meaning the CSX knew that it would keep the NS from hauling out that coal and making a profit using their track.
The C&O’s predicessor signed agreements with the land owners of the time (19??) that if the line was to ever be rolled up,their land would be given back to them or their family if the land stayed in that same family…[%-)] .
There was an article in a local newspaper around a year ago talking about all this and a group pushing for a “rail to trail” on this former roadbed.
A bunch of cyclist got together and road most of the old roa
Some abandonments and various other business decisions may be regretted in the 20/20 vision of hindsight. Analysis after the fact can be unfair because the analyst has other information available that the original decisionmakers did not have at the moment of decision often because that additional information did not yet exist. We should not assume that the decisionmaker had an infallible crystal ball for predicting future events as an aid in his decisionmaking. We all have made decisions that we regretted later, what we need to ask is: Based on the information available as of that moment, was the right decision made?
It was severed as a mainline from Midland City, OH, to near Parkersburg, West Virginia, in the CSX rush to get rid of anything that wasn’t making them any on-line revenue. There are those who argue it was a cost-conscious good move by CSX but I have to wonder what the operations people thought then and think now of having that route missing.
RIGHT ON!!!
I regret Septa, in Philly abandoning part of what used to be the continuation of the R8 Line from Chestnut Hill West, to Fox Chase. Instead of the line ending in Fox Chase, the line used to continue to Newtown, and run through County Line. I guess Septa got rid of it due to the fact that County Line is only 3 miles away from Warminster, which is the begining of the R2 Line to Wilmington.
I also miss the little cut off PRR had on their Chestnut Hill West Line, to Plymoth Meeting on their mainline to Harrisburg. It used to go through my old neighboorhood, in Wyndmoor. Unfortunitly, the tracks are taken up now, but the overhead catenary (sp) lines still remain. I’m not sure if Septa abandoned it when it came into existance, or did the Pennsy abandon it. But, I do know that brach line once served some factories over by Oreland and Wyndooor.
…Can’t say if it’s regretted or not but thinking of the rapid transit line of the North Shore from Chicago north towards Milwaukee…Many years ago I got a good look of some of that ROW from the air not long after it was ripped up and wondered why a transit route between such metropolitan areas wouldn’t have value…But guess not as it was abandoned.
It’s true that B&O’s old west line has been cut as a through route in Ohio, but seeing CSX in our area is some consolation. Before I retired, I was running around southern Illinois on business and there were a lot of lines abandoned. It may be said that Illinois was overbuilt anyway, but it’s still sad to see.