Eastern Railroad Discussion > Mergers

I know people have talked about the mergers of the past before, and what mergers will soon, or not so soon occur, but I have a question. What are some of the proposed mergers that never came about. The biggest one I recall was Southern Pacific and Sante Fe. Another would have been CN and BNSF. I have heard about some older ones like Missouri Pacific and Southern (pre-NS and UP). I heard that before the Milwaukee Road and Soo Line merged, the Rock Island wanted to merger with the Milwuakee Road. Also there was a rumor of Grand Trunk and Milwuakee Raod talking about merging. Any other potential mergers that never happened.

C&O and N&W worked towards a merger in the late 60's early 70's (some N&W power even got renumbered) but it never happened.
Larry

Didn't Conrail try to get Cotton Belt before Sp did? I remember reading something about that. Or was it that they wanted the Cotton Belt portion of Southern Pacific when UP got the whole deal? I can't remember.


Joe H.

jch9596 wrote:

> Didn't Conrail try to get Cotton Belt before Sp did? I
> remember reading something about that. Or was it that they
> wanted the Cotton Belt portion of Southern Pacific when UP got
> the whole deal? I can't remember.
>
>


SP got control of Cotton Belt in 1934 and Conrail was formed in 1976. :-) What you are thinking of is that Conrail wanted to be allowed to buy the Cotton Belt as a condition of the UP-SP merger.

Anyhow, great ones that never happened....lessee...IIRC,there were a couple of odd attempts to merge with SP, like Seaboard Coast Line and KCS both tried it back in the 70s.

BobE

As the railroad most viable and capable of remaining independant from Conrail, the EL was a target of the Santa Fe, which toyed with creating the first true US transcon back in 1975. Most UPS off the Santa Fe was taking the EL east of Chicago anyway. Had a chance in hell, tho, given the regulatory environment then. I'm sure the proposition generated plenty of panic from the leaders of those "profitable southern roads" who were busy gloating over their better-than-PC management skills to Congress. Quite the scare, indeed.

Southern and Frisco in the late 70's.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the competing bids of, IIRC, Santa Fe and UP to split up the Rock Island. It dragged on for years, and exposed the ineptitude of the ICC. When UP finally got approval for its proposal, the CRI&P was so far gone that the UP did not want it anymore.

The rumor that GTW wanted to buy the MILW was no rumor at all. While the MILW was awash in red tape, GTW entered into an agreement with them, pumping over 3000 car loads a year.

For many months, GTW was the Milwaukee's only suitor. Soo Line got into the bidding as it did not want GTW to finally get their missing link around the western Great Lakes. This of course would have meant a loss of traffic for Soo Line. Once Soo put a bid in with the Bankrupcy court, CNW fearing it's own loss of traffic, entered a bid.

The GTW could not afford what Soo and now CNW were bidding, and dropped out.


Ken
Mason City, IA

Back in the early days of Guilford, there was serious talk of bringing Bangor & Aroostook into the fold, which would have made quite the northeastern railroad empire!

After the PC merger Chessie and N&W started talking. But when PC started running out of money they stopped talking.

BobE wrote:

"SP got control of Cotton Belt in 1934 and Conrail was formed in 1976."

OK. So what you're trying to tell me is that Conrail didn't try to get Cotton Belt before SP did? LOL


Joe H.

There was an attempt in the late 40's to merge many, if not all the major systems of the time, which was driven by the I.C.C.. I don't believe this ever got beyond the discussion stage, but some proposed alignments, as I recall were Pa + NW, C&O + NYC + others. There were numerous other nationwide alignments proposed, you'll have to forgive me as I am at work at the moment and don't have access to the information. I'll try to post more later, but most likely someone else will fill in the blanks.

At any rate, I believe what contributed most to killing the plan was the fact that a number of the proposed mergers were(at the time) rather unfriendly combinations, as well as that no one would accept the Pennsy getting any bigger.

Needless to say such a plan, if it had been implemented, would have radically affected what has actually transpired since, and likely would have headed off many of the negative events experienced during the 60's and 70's(P.C., R.I.)not to mention created a healthier, balanced system of Eastern Roads that could very well be intact today. Unfortunately, the industry wasn't quite ready for such forward thinking proposals when it appeared there was no end to the happy days in sight.

I beleive that the proposed NYC + C&O merger was the brainchild of then NYC president Alfred Perlman in either the late 50's or early 60's as a result of N&W and PRR talking about a merger.

The Mega Mergers that I think you are talking about were the ones the government proposed after WWI. This would have merged all of the then numerous Class 1 roads into 12 large roads. Since the PRR owned a piece of so many other eastern roads, there was a lot of opposition that helped foil the idea.

Some of the other mergers that were proposed: C&O + NKP (in the 30's), SP + Seaboard (before Chessie), Chessie + Reading and part of E-L (at the formation of Conrail), and of course E. H. Harriman's plan years ago to merge SP and UP... nah... never work.

I am suprised that no one has metioned the proposed merger of Conrail and Santa Fe back in the 80's. Conrail and Santa Fe were both seriously talking until Santa Fe decided that it wanted to try merge with Southern Pacific instead.

Kyle

If memory serves, Conrail wanted the Cotton Belt as part of the takeover of Southern Pacific by Union Pacific. I wish I could remember exactkt when that happened, but I do remember it was in the mid-1990s. Considering that the Cotton Belt paralled the ex-Missouri Pacific lines of the Union Pacific, Conrail had a point. But it didn't happened...and Conrail was killed several years later.


Dave

Somewhere I have a pamphlet about Prorail - the proposed Chessie+Rdg+EL merger. Would have been neat to see! This pamphlet was from 1975-ish...

Pro-Rail was the 1985 effort to extend newbie Guilford to Chicago when NS was after Con-Rail (get it?) in the mid-80s, which started the "Let Conrail be Conrail" rhetoric.

The 1975 effort which kept the EL intact was called MARC, or Mid Atlantic Rail Corp.

When MARC failed, the Chessie plan to take over parts (not all) of the EL and RDG was attempted, but that too failed due to labor issues.

Let's see...

GM&O and Frisco were talking in the 50s I believe.

ICG was courted by the Southern and by CP in the late 70s, early 80s.

Reading and Lehigh Valley almost came about in 1899 if I remember correctly. How's that for an anthracite road?