Eastern Railroad Discussion > Extending Soo Line through Michigan

Canadian Pacific has owned the Soo Line since the late 1800s.  Did the Soo Line and or the CP ever take interest in either building or acquiring their own line across Michigan to connect the Soo with CP's network in Windsor, Ontario?  Seems logical just looking at a map of the Soo and CP network.  Since the 1960s, the Soo could have considered purchasing the old Michigan Central line when Penn Central went bankrupt and could have also made this a priority during the Conrail breakup to end up with this line and more of an interest in the IHB considering they owned 49% of the IHB following Soo line's purchase of the MILW.  Seems that CP's network has a big gap in it today with the lack of their own route through Chicago and Michigan today.  Does anyone know if there was ever an effort to rectify this issue?

One would have thought that the Soo Line (CP) would have wanted their own line verses trackage rights over someone else's line.  Surprising that CP did not try to swap with NS the old Michigan Central in exchange for the south end of the D&H.

Just curious, doesn't the first single track segment lined CN tunnel under the Detroit River as well as the
second one they are now planing on boring with another 45 foot diameter tunnel boring machine like
the TBM the CP crews christened with the name "Excalibore" eliminate /bypass that issue completly????

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/19/17 11:12 by leonz.

CP has operated thru Michigan for years, mostly on CSX. Usually they had more trains on CSX but it was not a double stack route. Those decisions were made so long ago no one could for see the needs of today. NS knew the "Michigan lines" (or cluster as we called it on CR) were more valuable as a passenger than freight route. I did the studies on CR. So NS just held out until they got a deal from the state. Good for passenger railroading and AMTK if Trump does not tell Chao to end that. This also involves Hunter Harrison. IC was simple to manage. i could have done it, no route with more than about 7 freights a day each way. IC's previous management had largely single tracked it. I invested a bit in IC before my job at CR ended in 1999. Easy takeover candidate i figured. CN was much larger than IC, but still had a good traffic base, and easy grades, like IC. They were a simple combination. CN as a Gov't owned RR in Canada ran 85 car trains with 3 four axle units for years. Hunter changed that. But CP is a much harder RR to run. Previous management got rid of the lines East of Montreal and de-emphasized the D&H properties they got. So CP had a worse network than CN; and why they have gone to such drastic measures for efficiency's under Hunter. So I have to think that CP has to live with the current trackage rights arrangement with NS (and maybe CSX) to connect the ex-MILW at Chicago to the CP a Windsor. Loosing the NS Hunter could not fix that. Maybe he would try to do that with getting CSX. But if he tries a merger.....again....he has to deal with different Canadian vs. USA laws that helped thwart his attempt for NS.