When will the old railroads return in the U.S. ?

Question

When will railroads like the Baltimore and Ohio, New York Central, Southern Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande Western, Santa Fe, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Rock Island come to run again in the US and put their rail lines back in commission. When will the Government put those lines back in business and used for what they were meant for?

Answer 1

All those railroads were swallowed up by mega mergers and now have names like UP,BNSF,CSXT,and NS.Most of the tracks are still there and being used,but sadly the names that built them and made them great are now part of railway history.I was  a Southern Pacific engineer when we got swallowed up by the UPRR.

Gator i don't know where your getting your info but freight railroads are making record profits.

Answer 2

Right now there is no profit in rail freight or passenger service. Besides the govt makes more money having trucks cars on the roads. There's tolls, taxes, tickets and many other money making traps the govt can to increase revenue. they can't do that with trains.

Answer 3

Andy is correct.  The smaller regional railroads have been merged into other railroads.  Consolidation of railroads works just like consolidation of other industries.  They reduce the overhead of multiple railroads by combining.  Likewise, these large railroads also sell-off low-profit lines.  Some of these become shortlines or are just retired.  We have two local shortlines that were former CSX and NS territories where I live.  The government doesn't own the railroads, so don't expect these railroads to ever return.  It's like the Pony Express, very useful at one time, but out of date in modern America.

Gator, when gas hits $3.00 gallon, the railroads make record profits.  NS has been making record profits for 3 straight years.

Answer 4

"You cant have a 30 mile branch line to one grain elevator"

The heck you can't.  If that elevator is cycling through 100 cars a day, or more, it can be very profitable.  I've ridden 6 hours on a CN local to pull one empty covered hopper from an industry.  Obviously, they're still making money, otherwise that job wouldn't run every other day.

Answer 5

I'll agree with Andy, freight railroads are hugely profitable in recent years with revenues measured in billion$$.

The old companies may be gone due to mergers or reorganization but most of the lines are there under different names.

For sure there are a lot of lines gone but they usually were either redundant or just not profitable.

You cant have a 30 mile branch line to one grain elevator.

Edit, jak, of course you're right with a large revenue elevator, I was thinking of a couple lines I used to work on, Grass Range Montana, Winifred, Montana, and a few others. These were tiny little elevators I used to work, they loaded one or two cars a week for half the year and were 30 miles out, they simply would not generate the revenue to maintain the lines to them.

Answer 6

Railroads are privately owned in the USA Amtrak uses private rails, Amtrak shares the rails with freight trains, if gas gets more expensive it me be more economical to open more for passenger service

Answer 7

a private carrier could do well by focusing on a single region,   with gas going up, you could fill trains on short distances (chicago-st louis) or (dallas-st louis)

it must be more profitable than a plane if you fill several cars.