if this UP and NS merger happens you will a full blown disaster. NS is in debt after the East Palestine disaster, differed maintenance, terrible business practices etc billions in debt I believe. Once the UP gain control of the NS that debt goes to them. in 1968 the PRR was 1Billion dollars in debt system falling apart and wanted to have the NYC to merge with them which the NYC was in better financial shape than the PRR. both railroads are operate differently just like the UP and the NS today. this will be a monopoly that will most likely fail just like the Penn Central.

history repeats itself all the time. When the Penn Central went bankrupt in 2.5 years and then Conrail came in in 1976 which I say the government should've maintain control of Conrail throughout it's existence. once the UP and the NS merger goes through it will most likely go under as well.

just my opinion but I'm taking an educated guess on what history teaches me.

Tell us you haven't actually studied the Penn Central merger and bankruptcy in depth without actually saying you haven't studied the PC merger and bankruptcy in depth......

The differences between both the two merger proposals and the economic and regulatory environments faced by both, 55 years apart, are VAST.

And also way beyond the scope of this forum, save for "Those who do not study history. . . "

There are a lot of reasons to question the potential adverse affects of this move, but you haven't provided a single one: one would be diseconomies of Scale.

However, your attempt to liken this Penn Central is frankly, ridiculous. The reason for the PC merger was an attempt to reduce redundancies (eliminate common routes) in a futile attempt to overcome idiocies like "betterment accounting" which systematically underestimated capital costs-which was a death blow when the ICC was regulating rates. Penn Central's declaration of bankruptcy only acknowledged it was economically unviable at its inception.

NS does carry debt, as does all major publicly traded companies, but there's no great increase in it, and other indicators show financial stability.

So overall, you've engaged in fearful speculation, but this "I say the government should've maintain control of Conrail throughout it's existence." is beyond the pale. Had that happened, we'd have had "Amtrak 2.0".

I'll admit that the regulatory system were very different back then I admit it. I was trying say is the PRR and NYC were operated very differently and have a lot of infighting. yes the railroads over regulated because of the ICC enforcing outdated regulations. however today class 1 railroads don't want to put in the capital to update their aging infrastructure unless it falls apart, practice PSR or precision schedule railroading where safety comes second, innovating and investing to improve business efficiency cost money and doesn't make money.

The Conrail thing when the Penn Central and the five other bankrupt railroads the Ford administration would bail out those railroads to create Conrail. if it wasn't for the government backing Conrail would never make it. when the Staggers Act was passed which I believe was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980 which deregulated the railroad which allowed to abandon money losing lines which makes sense. when I said the government should kept control of Conrail which I was saying the taxpayers and this was before my time shouldn't we the taxpayers get return in their investment and whatever profits that Conrail create shouldn't that go to the state and improve the lives of the taxpayers?

the Amtrak thing well they rely to travel on the Class 1s what we see under PSR which create bottleneck which makes it very difficult for the trains to get through.

The UP and the NS merger would make this one railroad so large it most likely wouldn't survive for that long since it would be so large probably would be too big for its own good. the Penn Central was smaller compare to this merger if it goes through.

I'll admit I don't know everything and never said that I did.

The key to intelligence is 1) knowing what you DON'T know, and 2) the willingness to seek it out and knowing where to look.

If I put all the books I have that cover railroad mergers and proposals just since World War Two together on one shelf, it'd be about three or four feet of shelf space. You could start with the populist bestsellers No Way to Run a Railroad and The Wreck of the Penn Central, and work your way up to the academic textbooks by Richard Saunders, Jr. -- Merging Lines and Main Lines -- then wade through memoirs like Just Call Me Hays, My Life With Trains, and The Men Who Loved Trains. Then you delve into more specific histories of particular lines like Churella's PRR Vol. 3 and the late H. Roger Grant's A Mighty Fine Road which covers the attempt by UP to take over the Rock Island, then add in the final volume of Maury Klein's epic trilogy on the Union Pacific (1969-2010)............ and over on another shelf I have copies of all the planning that went into the formation of Conrail. Add in the magazine coverage in Trains Magazine of the various mergers as they happened.

I've read them all. And I don't even pretend to know how this proposed merger will shake out. I see similarities; I see vast differences.

As to your speculation about the government retaining control of Conrail:
The government received a return on its investment with the sale of Conrail to the public as the largest public stock offering to that time. The government realized $1.65 billion for its 85% stake in Conrail. That figure probably is not what the government put into the formation of Conrail and its predecessors in subsidies to keep it alive, but at least it's a good chunk of it.

It's a fundamental tenet of United States capitalism that "the government" is not in the business of owning industries. The only reason we have Amtrak is that there was a "bait-and-switch" false promise that pledged that Amtrak would be profitable within five years or be shut down, and no one has had the political nerve to try to shut it down since Reagan's unsuccessful attempts. In spite of government bailouts of companies deemed (falsely) "too big to fail," we do not have a nationalized airline, a national steel industry, a nationalized auto/truck or airplane maker, a nationalized energy production company or oil refiner, or a nationalized railroad system. And the discussions of the pros and cons of such concepts are FAR beyond appropriate subjects for discussion here.

(And come to think of it, I haven't found a good book yet on how/why BN, Chessie, and/or CSX came about......)

When it comes to the Penn Central Bankruptcy I've read three books about it, two you mentioned, The Men Who Loved Trains and The Wreck of The Penn Central.
There's one more, titled No Way To Run A Railroad: The Untold Story of the Penn Central Crisis. It offers a different perspective. "The Wreck..." blames Bevan's crap job as CFO. "No Way..." is written from Bevan's perspective blaming everyone else.

Either way, there was a lot of blame to go around, and the PRR and NYC didn't make ideal merging partners since they had a decent amount of route duplications, etc.

If we're being honest, the PRR/N&W/LV should have merged, and B&O/C&O/WM/NYC/EL should have merged via DERECO. I know there's a lot of "what-if scneraios that could be played out.

The bottom line with this proposed takeover by Union Pacific of Norfolk Southern. It will be interesting to see what concessions are requested and what concessions are granted, if approved.

Just stop. When you are in a hole, stop digging.

The Penn Central merger was the beginning of the end of one era, and I suspect this merger might be part of the end of another: the Jack Welch era of maximizing shareholder value. You might recall how Welch's philosophy when he was at GE already featured prominently in discussions of Boeing last year, especially his impact on the philosophy of McDonnell Douglass before Boeing took them over and assimilated their culture, when among other things an improperly installed door blew off of a Boeing 737 Max 9 mid-air and landed two miles from me in the Portland OR area. It looks like to me that Wall Street is trying to squeeze this one in under the wire with a pro-business administration, knowing that we are one more Palestine-type event away from serious re-regulation.

My main concern regarding this proposed merger are the major interchange points (Chicago, New Orleans, & St Louis to name a few). Taking Chicago as the example BNSF has the former CB&Q and GN, CSX has former Monon, Pere Marquette, C&O, and B&O (plus any assets taken over after the Conrail split)

Whereas UP has former Rock Island, CNW, & MP/C&EI trackage, coupled with NS with former Nickel Plate, Wabash, and any other trackage taken over after Conrail