Say what? What else would they be, an insurance company? Oh, wait --that was Penn Central’s ultimate fate.
The OP should read Rush Loving’s The Men Who Loved Trains for a good overview of what went wrong, and how it eventually got better. Also,besides the Interstates, the Interstate Commerce Commission, state taxes, too much rail infrastructure, and too many companies, another factor was the St Lawrence Seaway, which diverted rail traffic from trunk lines to large ships that were able to navigate the Great Lakes and head out to sea. It cut out much of the railroads’ role in carrying goods between the Midwest East Coast for import and export, so there was less money coming in.
That has nothing to do with it at all…A company on the PRR couldn’t have the B&O to switch them and rubber to rail wasn’t cheap nor desired.
Trucks took away a lot of rail business because it was fast and cheaper. A boxcar could take four to five weeks to travel from Baltimore to Huston while a truck could do it within five days.
Railroads started chasing single car shippers away in droves in favor of unit train service or their TOFC service. This was done to curtain costs of running a local with a full five men crew. Even back then they toyed with the idea of cutting the crew size to two or three and doing away with cabooses.