Date
1 - 11 of 11
the implications of how the CRIP Choctaw Route was kill ed
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Kal Silverberg
My two cents.
The value of the Choctaw route was the value of Memphis-West Coast traffic. To SP/SSW, it was the value of the Brinkley-Memphis leg. To ATSF, it was the value of the Amarillo-Memphis leg. Why should the trustee not sell the Brinkley-Memphis section to SSW for the same price that ATSF would pay for the entire route, then try to sell the Amarillo-Brinkley pieces? As the trustee, it was his fiduciary responsibility to get as much from the entire line as possible.
And a couple of other pieces of information based on Earl Currie's two books on the history of the BN from 1970 to 1996: BN bought the Frisco because Lou Menk, the President of BN at the time and formally from the Frisco, wanted the Frisco (page 21 of the second volume of Earl Currie's books); BN had already had some informal discussions with MP. I actually don't buy the MP/Arkansas legislature argument, because MP and Santa Fe did not compete for Memphis-west coast traffic; MP didn't get into that traffic until the UP merger in 1983, and then it went through Kansas City.
Again, my two cents.
KS
---------- Original Message ---------- From: "James Robichaux" <robichauxenterprises.jr@...> To: Railspot Railspot <RS-TALON@groups.io>, James.A.Robichaux@... Subject: [Railspot] the implications of how the CRIP Choctaw Route was killed Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2023 12:41:04 -0500 I wish to return to a subject that, per my searching of old e-mail messages last night, was discussed, along with my participation, on the Railspot group just a little bit more than 10 years ago!
One of the proximate reasons for my questions here is the thoughts and discussions that stem from STB Chair Oberman's statements yesterday in announcing the approval of the merger of Canadian Pacific with Kansas City Southern, and another proximate reason is my admittedly-daydreamy brain.
I remember being quite astounded to learn in that discussion 10 years ago two very-related things regarding what happened to the constituent parts of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad upon its dissolution beginning in 1980:
1.) that the Santa Fe was very interested in acquiring the Memphis-Amarillo line to have a direct connection to eastern, especially southeastern, carriers at Memphis.
2.) that, because every railroad that handled Santa Fe bridge traffic at that time had a huge interest in preventing Santa Fe from acquiring the line, they went through great means to stop it, including, according to some, buying off legislators in the Arkansas state legislature!
I think that that is hugely significant!
Some said that Santa Fe did an inspection of the line, realized that it was in worse shape than they thought, and decided against pushing too hard to acquire the line, thereby making the entire question moot, but I don't think that that makes the issue moot, because, even if that fact was relevant, I don't think that it should be relevant. Economically, it would have been no problem for the US Government to fund all or part of the rehabilitation, and we do this now, albeit in (I assume) smaller scale, with US Government grants for specific track projects. The other transcontinental lines might have cried foul about unfair government putting its hands on the scales, but the Government also had an interest in maintaining the balance of power between carriers, and it really wouldn't have been Santa Fe's fault that CRIP deferred maintenance on the line.
What inspired me to think of this yesterday is what STB chair Martin Oberman, generally thought to be progressive and critical of consolidation, said when defending a decision to allow further consolidation in the industry in the specific form of allowing the CP-KCS merger to happen. He said that, given the consolidation that had already happened in the industry, consolidation that he himself seems to agree was excessive, it made sense to allow CP and KCS to merge so as to give the two western duopolists some more competition!
Furthermore, ever since those conversations here on the groups more than 10 years ago in which I learned about the possibility that Santa Fe would have acquired the Choctaw Route, I actually think about it often!
I have come to the thought that this acquisition, had it happened successfully, would have altered the course of history, because - here it is - I think that we might not be stuck with the western duopoly that we have had for the last almost-30 years had Santa Fe acquired the Choctaw Route and turned it into a standard mainline. I think that we might have had four major transcontinental western carriers to this day instead of the duopoly of which the public has become more aware and more critical in the last year.
Why? Simply, a reason that Santa Fe needed a merger partner despite being an otherwise very healthy and well-managed railroad is that, compared to the other three big western carriers, it had the worst set of interchange points with the totality of all eastern carriers - simply by not having any connections south of Saint Louis. For all of their other problems, the other three of the big western railroads had their interchanges with eastern carriers more spread out, enabling them greater flexibility and choices.
I think that analyzing these questions isn't just some academic exercise, as it can help us to understand the state of today's railroads.
At the very least, even if we might not have the four big western railroads to this day, we might have three, with two of them merging and the other two getting extensive trackage rights on the newly merged railroad.
Now, here are some questions.
I know that Burlington Northern had already been seeking a way to close the gap between Kansas City and Fort Worth, and I know that it first thought about acquiring the Katy before it acquired the Frisco, but was this done with the prospect of Santa Fe acquiring the Choctaw Route in mind? Or was it the opposite? Did Santa Fe seek the Choctaw Route because of the BN acquiring the Frisco?
Steve Goen wrote this on 31 December 2012:
Well, we need to know more about that story! Is it told publicly anywhere by reputable sources? See, I want to be able to include this information in a big essay that I write for the public, but I feel like I am not going to be taken seriously if I say "according to So And So on Railspot." Tom Mickel, Gerald Hook, and Mike Blaszak, in addition to Goen, have said that MoPac blocked the acquisition in the Arkansas state legislature.
It's not that I don't believe them. It's that the charge being made is a heck of a charge! If some entity, MoPac or anyone else, convinced a state legislature to do something so significant as block such a significant piece of legislation, then that is a heck of a charge that requires some substantiation to be taken seriously! It's a serious charge, and serious charges require evidence in order to be taken seriously.
I'm sure that I could find the piece of legislation in question if I looked hard enough, but a piece of legislation alone won't have evidence of why it happened and who influenced whom and why in advancing or opposing it.
On 1 January 2013, Blaszak wrote this:
I really am fascinated by this information. I will myself look for more substantive sources, but, if you guys could at least point me in the right direction, I would appreciate that.
I'm just not encouraged by Blaszak saying that he doesn't think that we'll ever know for sure, though. So, how do we know that MoPac tipping the scales even could be a thing that happened?
Thanks.
James
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Barton Jennings
I published a book on the Choctaw Route a year or so ago and covered a little of this, and have recently been helping a few others to research the issue to try to save the line. The research seems to show that while the ATSF was interested in the route, the strength of this interest has probably been overblown. While they considered the route, the cost of repairs was too high for the small amount of traffic that they moved over it, or planned on moving. I have a book coming out this summer on The Little Rock, the old Louisiana Division of the Rock Island. In researching efforts to save it, or at least parts of it, I came across the Interstate Commerce Commission review of the proposals. Below is a bit about these efforts from my book. Note that the ICC discussed saving El Reno eastward, and that the line on to Amarillo was not covered by any plans reviewed. The El Reno to the east effort appeared to be independent of ATSF and was proposed by Arkansas and Oklahoma, but they couldn't find a company to lease the package of tracks. Meanwhile, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the trustee of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and others were meeting with potential operators. A number of proposals were fielded by September 15, 1980. These included the North-South Development Corporation (El Dorado to Winnfield); Trans-Con using their Arkansas Louisiana Southern Railway Company (Fordyce to Alexandria); A-OK (Fordyce to Alexandria), Continental’s North Louisiana & Gulf Railroad (Hodge to Alexandria), and the Louisiana Midland Railway Company (Hodge to Alexandria). The ICC summarized the applications by stating that they were mutually inconsistent, with different organizations wanting to operate different parts of the southern end of The Little Rock. There were “two applications for the Hodge-Alexandria segment (Continental and LOAM), one for the Hodge-Fordyce segment (North-South), and two for the entire Fordyce-Alexandria segment (Trans-Con and A-OK). Of these, the A-OK proposal, a partnership between the Arkansas Transportation Commission and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, had actually submitted a much larger proposal. This included 513 miles of track between Memphis, Tennessee, and El Reno, Oklahoma; 228 miles of track between Little Rock and Alexandria; and the 21 mile branch from Mesa to Stuttgart, Arkansas. However, much of this proposal was based upon having an existing railroad agree to lease the entire 762 miles of track. The ICC reported that the “weaknesses we see in A-OK’s proposal are the lack of a contract with the Trustee, a huge dispute in the cost of the line, no solid financial commitment, no rail operating experience, no operating plan, no operator for the line, and the uncertain public financial commitment.” Bart Jennings On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 5:22 PM Kal Silverberg <kgs-home@...> wrote:
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James Robichaux
Kal Silverberg said:
I don't think that the interests of the trustee are particularly relevant here. We're talking about the interests of regulators, of local communities, of the public at large, and of the Santa Fe. Even if the trustee sold any particular asset to the highest bidder, regulators could still have granted trackage rights to the Santa Fe (or to anyone else, for any reason), and that's what we are discussing here. Also, SP's/SSW's interest in the fate of the Choctaw Route went beyond an interest in accessing the line east of Brinkley! Like, MoPac, SP/SSW was threatened with the loss of bridge traffic if Santa Fe would have been able to acquire the entire route.
Yeah, but why did BN want the Frisco? It's the same reason that it considered acquiring MoPac: aside from new online traffic sources, either acquisition would have eliminated the need to use a bridge carrier to reach eastern connections (even though, post-Frisco-acquisition, BN still used KCS to access L&N in New Orleans for coastal destinations, which it would not have had to do had it acquired MoPac.)
And I don't buy what you are saying here, because you seem to be ignoring the issue of bridge traffic, which was, as I have already mentioned in this message, the whole reason that MoPac and SSW sought to block Santa Fe's acquisition. As I said in my original message, since Santa Fe had no eastern connections south of the Missouri River, it and carriers in the Southeast relied on bridge carriers to reach each other, these being Frisco, MoPac, KCS, and SP/SSW. That is the overriding theme of this entire discussion, this entire question, this entire issue. The fundamental issue, theme, problem, question of that time was that there was, at that time, several of a type of railroad that, except for Frisco, went no farther east that the Mississippi River (and Frisco didn't come close to the East Coast) and no farther west than the eastern foot of the Rock Mountains (and most of them didn't reach nearly that far) that, in the age of the automobile and the truck that killed the viability of short-haul traffic, relied very heavily on bridge traffic for survival (though MoPac had an advantage in that it served so many of the burgeoning chemical plants and refineries in Louisiana and Texas and would have been in a good position to capitalize on the soon-to-be-burgeoning traffic across the US-Mexico border had it survived as an independent entity for that long.) This issue defined the question from the Gulf Coast and Mexican border to the Canadian border and consumed much attention from regulators for decades, particularly after UP and Rock Island applied for a merger in or about 1964. Railroads of this type included The Rock, the CGW, the Milwaukee Road (despite its Pacific Extension), MoPac, CB&Q (not really, actually, since it was owned by GN and NP), The Frisco, The Katy, and the KCS, and about the only reason that KCS was the only one of this group to survive as an independent entity - until this week - is that essentially outgrew this class due to its Mexican acquisitions starting nearly 30 years ago at the time of the megamergers a couple of years after its purchase of the MidSouth 30 years ago. So, even if Santa Fe wasn't that interested in acquiring the Amarillo-Memphis segment, and even if cost of buying and rehabilitating the line compared to the revenue that it was expected to generate proved to be the deciding factor, MoPac and SP/SSW realized the huge value that they had in depriving Santa Fe of this line. Thanks. James On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 5:22 PM Kal Silverberg <kgs-home@...> wrote:
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arkrail2001
There are a lot of opinions and speculation being voiced in this discussion. Bart Jennings provides some of the best fact based commentary, but excruciating coverage of the entire fiasco of the loss of the Sunbelt route was provided by both Little Rock newspapers, the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat. To get a full understanding of what happened, the newspaper coverage of the political activity compliments the ICC coverage that Bart cites. Secondary commentary on the Sunbelt line such as the abbreviated version offered by Gregory Schneider in Rock Island Requiem is a gross oversimplification that omits many details available in contemporary newspaper reports.
The Santa Fe indeed had an interest in the line, but only if they could get the states to participate in the financing by guaranteeing reconstruction loans. Oklahoma was more or less on board, but lobbyists from Missouri Pacific and Cotton Belt worked the Arkansas legislature to put doubts in the minds of legislators who were for the most part ignorant of rail issues and generally suspicious about the state getting into the railroad business. One of the biggest lies promoted was that the Santa Fe was not financially solid, and that any participation by Arkansas was likely to result in the state eventually being responsible for repaying the loans when the Santa Fe defaulted. At the time this was being considered, Frank White (R) was governor. White's interest and understanding of Arkansas rail transportation issues was minuscule (or less) and accordingly, when the votes on the Santa Fe involvement were being taken, he was out of town, AWOL, when he could have been working the legislature to counter the inaccurate arguments being advanced by opposition railroad lobbyists. After the Santa Fe effort fell through, the MKT made several hy-rail trips over the line, but with sales and proposed sales already underway, it was becoming increasingly difficult to put all the pieces back together and the Katy's interest was probably more wistful that realistic. Cotton Belt was purchasing Brinkley-Memphis (Briark), and MoPac was purchasing Hazen-Little Rock and a couple of miles west of Biddle Yard just for good measure, not because they had a use for the westernmost trackage, but to be an impediment to any through operation. Trustee Gibbons technically retained the right for through (bridge) operation over each of the segments sold, but the question of negotiating with MoPac and Cotton Belt for equitable charges on trackage rights into Memphis complicated an already tenuous situation. As a final desperate effort, the counties in western Arkansas banded together to try and form a rail district to purchase the line to preserve service into Little Rock, with the idea of leasing the line to a regional carrier. The concept of a rail district required enabling legislation, and once again MoPac and Cotton Belt lobbyists swarmed the state capitol at Little Rock. By this time, the Little Rock & Western was operating and preparing to purchase the line from Pulaski (the end of MoPac ownership) to Perry, so this last ditch effort focused on a mechanism to acquire and preserve the trackage from Perry to the Oklahoma line. There are four counties between Perry and Oklahoma, and legislators from that part of the state made a valiant effort to get the enabling legislation passed. After several failed votes, veteran State Rep. Lloyd George of Danville gave what was regarded as his best speech in a long and distinguished career in the legislature. The end result... the enabling legislation failed again. To be helpful, MP lobbyists let it be known that if a "minor" change was made to the legislation, they would withdraw their opposition. The change was to specify that a rail district could be formed "by any three contiguous counties," thereby effectively blocking any through line restoration. With that change, the legislation passed, the battle was won but the war had been lost. One of the most vocal proponents of preserving the Rock Island trackage in Arkansas was John Corbett, administrator of the Arkansas Transportation Commission. Corbett worked diligently to see the line preserved, starting well before the Rock Island shutdown. His outspoken support urging that Arkansas act to preserve the trackage eventually cost him his job when Gov. White tired of reading public comments which exposed the governor's own apathetic approach to the issue. Bill Pollard |
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Gerald Hook
THANK YOU, DOCTOR POLLARD. Gerald Hook – Russellville, AR
From: RS-TALON@groups.io [mailto:RS-TALON@groups.io] On Behalf Of arkrail2001 via groups.io
There are a lot of opinions and speculation being voiced in this discussion. Bart Jennings provides some of the best fact based commentary, but excruciating coverage of the entire fiasco of the loss of the Sunbelt route was provided by both Little Rock newspapers, the Arkansas Gazette and the Arkansas Democrat. To get a full understanding of what happened, the newspaper coverage of the political activity compliments the ICC coverage that Bart cites. Secondary commentary on the Sunbelt line such as the abbreviated version offered by Gregory Schneider in Rock Island Requiem is a gross oversimplification that omits many details available in contemporary newspaper reports. |
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James Robichaux
Bill Pollard, this is very insightful, helpful, and interesting! Thanks so much.
I am interested in the timeline of the Katy's trips on the line. You mention the first votes in the legislature for the entire state to acquire the line, then you mentioned MKT's interests and inspection trips, and then you mention the final effort for county rail districts. Did it happen in that chronological order? (Perhaps you intended to convey exactly that with how you structured your message with the order of paragraphs, but I just wish to clarify.) I know that Barton Jennings asserted that Santa Fe's interest in the line has probably been overblown, but, to me, that's not the most interesting and, especially, most relevant question, because I am interested in the implications of this story. As I said before, what I think is most relevant is the degree to which SSW and MoPac felt threatened by the idea of Santa Fe acquiring the line and, also, why they felt threatened by the idea of Santa Fe acquiring the line irrespective of how much Santa Fe actually wanted the line. I would guess that they felt less threatened by the prospect of MKT acquiring the line, but I'd also guess that the broader picture is that they felt threatened for as long as the line existed at all. I appreciate the history lesson, and I'm going to have to search for the legislation, I guess. I'm probably the only person who is too young to have remembered any of this who is as fascinated by this story as I am! Thanks. James |
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Barton Jennings
As Dr. Pollard stated, the details on this issue can go on forever, and some of it is cloudy with hearsay reports, decades of rumors, etc. Even some of the newspaper reports from the time seem to be based upon speculation. During the 1970s and 1980s, Arkansas was basically a 3-railroad state. With the elimination of the Rock Island, Little Rock became a Missouri Pacific city and the grain business (rice mainly) in east Arkansas would mainly go to the Cotton Belt. Having any 3rd financially healthy railroad through central Arkansas would impact this, especially some of the Memphis interchange business. Oklahoma did eventually acquire the Rock Island Choctaw Route in its state, and most of it was used by the Katy. It became UP with the acquisition of the Katy in the mid-1980s. For the Rock Island trustee, the goal was to get money to pay bills and get the investors something back. They were no interested in taking years to do this, so a price of $50K per mainline mile was established, and $35K for non-mailines. If the money didn't show up quickly, the track materials were sold, land was sold or held on as needed (some was kept due to leases for telephone cables and pipelines, or land rented for factories and warehouses), and decisions were made about other assets pretty much the same way. For the Arkansas property, Dr. Pollard has some nice reports out on his Arkansas Railroad History website. The trackage from Memphis to Little Rock and on west to the papermill at Perry, and then south into Louisiana, was initially assigned to Southern Pacific/Cotton Belt for operations. This lasted only about a month before Missouri Pacific began operating the tracks. In reality, few operations ever took place. For the Cotton Belt, they could operate Memphis to Brinkly and then southwest on their mainline and then to Little Rock using their branch through England. This they did, stating that it was in better shape than the Rock Island mainline. Missouri Pacific had their Memphis-Bald Knob-Little Rock route, so they didn't really need it either. Looking at the entire Choctaw Route today (I've driven it many times and spent lots of time looking at the route), there is little local business on it. The heaviest traffic is certainly Memphis-Brinkley. The next heaviest is Oklahoma City-El Reno which is used to connect local business at Oklahoma City with the north-south former Rock Island mainline. Any hope of saving the entire line was/is based upon overhead traffic, which at the time (1980) was 4 to 6 trains (total) a day, and getting fewer the farther west you were. The ICC didn't even consider efforts, or have plans for, the track west of Amarillo. The Santa Fe used its junction in northeast Oklahoma to reach the Memphis gateway. This route was in much better shape, much faster, and didn't cost and arm-and-a-leg to make usable. It basically gets down to some railroads trying to protect their territory and other railroads not having enough interest to make it worth their while to enter it. If the Choctaw Route was there today, it would still be an overhead route, probably making more sense for an eastern carrier - could you see CSX or NS in Amarillo? This would have opened up a new route for Wyoming coal to the southeast, but one that BNSF and UP would hate to see today as it would greatly reduce their haul distance. In some ways, it would operate similar to the KCS-NS plan across Louisiana, but with a much smaller city at its west end. Bart Jennings On Sat, Mar 18, 2023 at 9:43 AM James Robichaux <robichauxenterprises.jr@...> wrote: Bill Pollard, this is very insightful, helpful, and interesting! Thanks so much. |
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arkrail2001
James,
I have a copy of the final rail district legislation as passed, but I haven't looked for it in decades and would have to do a deep dig to find it, but could do so if you are unable to locate it. As I recall, without going into newspaper clippings, there was first discussion about the state simply buying the line as Oklahoma was then in the process of doing. The Arkansas Highway Department (a much larger and more powerful entity than the Arkansas Transportation Commission) was not in favor of spending state money for a railroad, and basically torpedoed that idea. Never mind that keeping the railroad running would have saved highway maintenance costs; remember that a lot of highway policy was and is being driven by highway contractors and related interests who might not have gotten a piece of the pie if any significant amount of the state transportation budget was diverted to rail. The general chronology was shutdown, assessment of outright state purchase and lease to an operator, and continuing negotiation with Gibbons who was determined to extract maximum value. Gibbons was also beginning to use the Sunbelt as an example of a line that he would happily scrap if his purchase price was not met, thus putting the fear into purchasers of other segments to conclude their transactions at similarly inflated prices. The Santa Fe had run at least one inspection train from Amarillo to Memphis back in 1975 (See Remember the Rock Magazine, Vol 7 #4, "Santa Fe Scouts the Choctaw") so the interest in the Memphis gateway had been present well before shutdown. Santa Fe even put out a brochure touting "El Venado" (The Deer), Zippy run-thru freight service between Memphis and the Santa Fe southwest via RI and Amarillo, so the other carriers were well aware of what could happen if the Sunbelt/Choctaw line was acquired by the Santa Fe and rehabilitated. Unfortunately, I do not have a copy of the proposed legislation that would have enabled Arkansas to get into the railroad business; this was the legislation that needed to pass to allow the state to get involved in the financing of rehabilitation as part of the Santa Fe acquisition. After the Santa Fe deal fell through, MKT expressed some interest and one of more hi-rail inspection trips were made over the line, focusing generally on the McAlester to Memphis segment, and with the understanding that McAlester to Howe was likely to be saved anyway. I do not believe that there was any actual Arkansas legislative action with regard to the MKT interest, it may not have ever progressed to that level. After the MKT effort fell through, L.B. Foster was beginning to scrap secondary lines in the area and in fact even ran a rail sled over a segment of the line in eastern Oklahoma (which was later spiked back down). When the rail district idea surfaced in western Arkansas, everyone understood that this was the final chance to preserve the line. Intense lobbying by former RI employees, rail advocates and others was not enough to overcome the wining, dining and political prowess of the MP and RI hired guns, however, and the public interest took a beating at the hands of the 1980s version of the "greedy rail barons." There is absolutely no question in my mind that MP and SSW wanted to see the east-west route destroyed as a through route, eliminating the threat of some future operation siphoning off some of their lucrative long-haul freight traffic to and from the west. Once the rail district legislation was neutered by the MP and SSW lobbyists, L.B. Foster began scrapping operations at two points on the line, between Brinkley and Hazen, and eastward from the Oklahoma border. With great effort, the segment from Perry west to Danville was saved and became a part of the LR&W operation (although much of that segment is now inactive and at risk). Scrapping operations continued up to the west end of the Petit Jean River bridge at Danville. The picture below is at Havana AR during the scrapping process - what it looks like when a welded rail mainline is cut into lengths to be hauled out by truck during dismemberment of the Sunbelt line. It was a sickening scene to observe in person. 40 years later, the question still lingers, what could have been done differently to have achieved a better outcome? Bill Pollard  |
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John Hodkin Jr.
Dr. Pollard is the leading Arkansas railroad history historian. He and Bart know what they are talking about. The thing that amazes me is this was before intermodal really exploded into what it is today. I believe Santa Fe was trying to position themselves to be the southern leader of intermodal. They eventually proved the importance of it before BNSF. The what if game of what would I-40 be like today if that line had been saved is interesting to discuss. It took the UP years to realize the importance of intermodal traffic to the Memphis gateway to the east.
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On Mar 18, 2023, at 11:41 AM, arkrail2001 via groups.io <arkrail@...> wrote:
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arkrail2001
A bit more on the Katy possibility. Some years back I had some very informative exchanges with a former management person in the MKT operating department. Katy was apparently close enough in their planning that they had actually identified which of their people were going to be assigned as operating officials (Supt., Asst Supt, etc.) in Little Rock. The MP-UP merger was going down at the same time and the Katy was also posturing to be included in that merger or else have a lot of protective conditions imposed. Reportedly Harold Gastler (MKT President) got word from D.B. Jenks (MP) that the way to play ball was to let the Memphis line go. MKT had already gotten a taste of other MP "cooperation" when they were supposed to get reciprocal switching of Wichita industries by the OKT (a similar arrangement was expected to prevail with all the Little Rock Rock Island industries). All that plus the somewhat tenuous condition of parts of the Sunbelt line was enough to make MKT walk away at the last minute. At every opportunity, it appears that MP and SSW representatives were there to make sure their position prevailed. As a result, industrial development in a large area of western Arkansas is permanently stunted, much as happened along the line of the M&NA/M&A/A&O decades earlier. In Oklahoma its a little better, but not much. Long branchline railroads with no overhead traffic just do not have a great long-term prognosis.
Bill Pollard |
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