[woodruffw]

Okay. That’s a very different argument than the original one: we’ve gone from “it wouldn’t be a competitive risk” to “the reduction in competition would have made midcentury rail profitable such that Conrail wouldn’t have been necessary.” But that presumes a change in bartering power and operating efficiency that can only come in a less competitive rail market.

[Aloha]

Back then it would have given them a competitive advantage over their peers because of faster end to end performance.

Other than some of your head office folks (accounting, HR, etc) there wasnt much of a greater operating efficiency to be gained, nor do I think they would have gotten significantly lower costs (but for maybe fuel) by squeezing their vendors either.

I think that rationale holds true today too.

When we allowed the UP-SP and BN-SF lashups, we created two western colossuses, if we still had four roads in the west, and had they encouraged east/west mergers at that time, things would be better off today.