Not exactly about Bachmann trains

[Woody Elmore]

Bloomberg news reports that Norfolk Southern is going to be purchased by Canadian Pacific. NS board turned down the first money offer. That will make one big realroad.

[AGSB]

NS has turned down the original and also turned down a counter offer.

[jward]

I doubt this will happen. ns is opposed to it, as are most shippers and all the other major railroads. in addition, ns interchanges relatively little traffic with cp, and their other traffic can't be diverted to run over cp due to its destinations. my feeling is that hunter Harrison has painted himself into a corner with cost cutting at cp, and is trying to save his butt. cp is arguably the major railroad with the most troublesome future and feels it needs to merge with somebody, anybody, to survive. the already approached csx about a merger and were told to take a hike. ns has turned them down at least 3 times in the past few months.

the bnsf;s ceo has said that if cp persists with this bnsf will themselves make an offer for ns. there is no waycp can outbid bnsf for ns, and in addition an ns-bnsf merger would make a lot more sense than ns-cp.

[Trainman203]

"Realroad" ...... As opposed to an "unrealroad".

[Desertdweller]

Trainman:
You might be on to something.  "Realroad" as differentiated from "Model Railroad".

My observation as a retired "Realroader":  I am generally opposed to mergers, especially parallel rather than end-to-end.  I have seen this strategy badly abused in the midwest.  While sold to the ICC as a way to improve service, it has resulted in abandonments of merged lines and loss of jobs and service to the public.  Even if the service isn't abandoned, shippers are often left captive to one railroad rather than being able to choose between two competing railroads.  In my own hometown, service has gone from three competing railroads to one.
If a railroad is being mismanaged, buying more railroad is not going to help.  It will just spread the misery.

Les

[Woody Elmore]

That was a "real" bad typo on my part.

Just think - when the Virginian merged with Norfolk and Southern, that was a big deal.

[Trainman203]

It was hilarious Woody, we got a thread and a new word out of it.

I was around in the early 60s when the merger thing started .  The Erie-Lackawanna was the first one I recall well.  We were shocked when the NKP and the Wabash, two iconic names, went away.  Then the PRR and the NYC. Mercy, mercy, mercy, we were all crying.

[jward]

Trainman:
If a railroad is being mismanaged, buying more railroad is not going to help.  It will just spread the misery.

Les

exactly. and cp has suffered from mismanagement for many years. even the so-called "golden buy" hunter Harrison hasn't been able to save the cp from itself. plus he serves at the behest of a hedge fund manager who has no interest in railroading per se.

even when two well run railroads merge the chaos that ensues can set them back years. I was working with the railroad when conrail was split, and I had a front row seat to it. I watched my beloved conrail fall apart before my eyes because of stupid mistakes and an arrogant attitude on ns's part. ns knew how to run their railroad, but they didn't know how to run conrail. their attitude drove a lot of cr's management away, and those of us peons in the field were the "enemy" so they had to learn things the hard way. they eventually figured things out, but in the meantime things deteriorated to the point you could have bought BOTH ns and csx for the price they paid for conrail just a year earlier.

conrail lines, particularly in Pennsylvania, were and still are, a mix of high priority trains you don't delay, and ponderously heavy drag freights that can't move fast enough to get out of their own way, all fighting for space on the mainline. ns had nothing comparable on their system, so they had to relearn how to run a railroad the conrail way.

hunter Harrison has made a name for himself by cutting his way to prosperity. that may work on a railroad staggering under its own excess facilities. ns is not that railroad. ns has been investing heavily in added capacity for anticipated traffic growth, most of which cannot be diverted to cp lines as we know it. ns is very well positioned for the future, yet cp wants to come in and cut the car and locomotive fleet that is needed in the future. they are looking at ns's situation now, with coal traffic way down, not the situation in a couple of years when a widened panama canal will result in huge container ships currently restricted to the west coast being able to call at east coast ports.

[Bucksco]

As the title states, this thread isn't exactly about Bachmann trains so.....