Nearly 40 years ago Santa Fe and Southern Pacific attempted to merge but were shot down by the then ICC regulators. Will UP-NS be another SPSF? Will UP’s CEO Vena end up fired and go howling like the Santa Fe Pacific CEO was? The fierce opposition to UP-NS makes one wonder …
One big difference between then and now is that track was put in place in anticipation of merger approval. Managements seem a lot wiser now.
Or another Penn Central?
PC? Likely not as both lines are in better physical and financial shape.
One of the concerns of PC and why Congress got involved was the pension funds that had money at risk via PC. Also, the fact a lot of the Northeast railroads around it were in serious financial trouble as well (domino theory revisited).
In my view it would have been a lot easier for this country to fix it’s industrial policy back then vs. putting band aids on the various symptoms. I think we are probably paying the hefty price now for being too generous with other countries that were never friendly to us and leaving the industrial policy to the markets entirely…all based on a hope that never materialized.
I don’t know if Santa Fe was really unhappy back then. Southern Pacific emerged from the failed merger as a completely impoverished railroad company, since SF was able to retain all of SP’s assets, such as real estate and land, when SFSP was split up.
SF had become richer and SP even poorer, making it even more of a takeover candidate.
I hope that the two railways have really learned from this and are waiting for the authorities’ decisions.
Regards, Volker
I see more trouble if BNSF and CSX try for merger because CSX management is more headstrong than BNSF’s is. Is hardheaded a better term? 
Since CSX changed the head of its management only a little over a month ago - its Management track record is yet to be defined.
I don’t think that’s an issue at the moment, as BNSF isn’t interested.
While that maybe true…
SP’s route on the map wasn’t all that great and in my view it’s management wasn’t very good at innovation or marketing. SF had far better management and probably the best and fastest Chicago to LA rail route…far superior to SP…better than UP Chicago to LA.
UP had a decent marketing department in the 1990’s. I have no idea about today. It’s been a while since I have seen anything really innovative or market savvy from UP.
This merger looks to me like a two obstinate railroad management cultures trying to make a quick and easy score. I don’t think is the best move for either company though it might be the easiest.
Chuck, accoeding to my read of TRAINS, seems former CEO did great things. Why the change? One word, Ancora. Ancora = short term thinking = PROFITS. I will admit the new CEO has an outstanding resume, but as he surely is close to his last CEO jig. Will he have backbone to buck the Ancora game plan. His former companies did not have the same type operations as RR’s mike endmrw1102250950
In ~1960:
City of LA schedule was 40.5 hours.
Super Chief 39.5 hours.
Golden State 45 hours
Even with opposition growing, there’s heavy political influences at work.
Here’s from firecrown’s own reporting:
I posted a similar post earlier but a member flagged it as political (and possibly as trolling no less. He should check the definition.)!
For Firecrown to delete an article from Firecrown?
That’d be some next level stuff.
PC and SPSF were mergers of parallel lines which hope to eliminate duplication. The UP-NS merger is an end-to-end merger meant to eliminate interchange choke points.