CSX Acquisition of Pan Am Railways

Yes, good point.

Pioneer Valley and CN both filed intent to participate in the Pan Am / CSX deal. Pioneer I get, but CN I'm curious, maybe haulage rights to Ayer? We shall see. Sappi did as well not sure if that was noted last week. Quite a long list of participants now.

I’m guessing CN wants to get involved because they know their Maritime carload business is going to be in danger.

Hard to believe the CN legal team has any time at all to file on this one.

My guess is it's also about protecting the Maritime traffic but the deal will open up new New England markets for them via the SaintA/GWI gateway.

Re: CN - it could also be that they're looking at some possible horse trading - they'll support/oppose CSX's plans depending on how CSX responds to the current CN/CP contest over KCS...

This is what I was thinking. CSX with their recent acquisition of chemical trucker Quality Carriers would be a good choice to take over KCS's New Orleans-Baton Rouge which they need to sell if CN-KCS is to be approved.

I don't understand why CN would file to protect their J.D. Irving traffic. They didn't even file during CP-CMQ if I remember correctly. With some limited exceptions (Chicago-Detroit being the main example) CSX and CN don't really complete and even cooperate in the Chicago region and in the Montreal-Toronto-New York City corridor. I doubt CSX could steal away enough traffic from CN for CN to care all that much. They have far more pressing concerns right now.

Also Canadian Pacific and the New York & Atlantic filed notices of intent to participate a while back. CP I can understand (they have haulage rights over PAS to Ayer) but what could the NY&A filing be about?

newpylong wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 6:09 am What a giant waste of everyone's time.

Agreed. I was a toddler when RS3 powered coal trains passed this station almost daily. I actually have memories of this.... I suspect they vibrated....

The CP acquisition of CMQ is not nearly the carload threat to the CN that CSX buying Pan Am is. CP still can't single line traffic into the states, while CSX most definitely can, and that's a huge difference. In a nutshell, anything CN handles with CSX to or from the Irving roads is history and any non-CSX traffic going into/out of the states will be in a lot more jeopardy.

While cp cannot single line traffic to the southeast USA, they certainly can to the upper Midwest USA where cp has a substantial footprint

There is no comparison between what Irving does in CSX territory vs CP territory in the upper Midwest, with the one exception obviously being CBR. The vast majority of that carload business is to and from points South and East of Chicago.

Remember that filing a notice to participate means you get copies of everything directly, including at least some of the non-public/confidential material that's redacted in what the STB posts on their site. It doesn't necessarily say that you're planning on objecting or supporting the activity - just that you have the potential to be affected, and need to be informed.

Now the Dept. of Justice has chimed in and has some major issues with CSX joint control of PAS and their selection of G&W as the operator.

https://dcms-external.s3.amazonaws.com/ ... 302909.pdf

Jeeze . . . do they think things were better when we had all these small struggling but competing railroads barely surviving in New England?

Think NS will consider buying out PAS if the price is right? Seems like the DOJ wants that.

It's pretty obvious that CSX doesn't have interest in the 50% stake of PAS.... but NS certainly hasn't seemed forthcoming with any sort of deal making on that side.

I think you can look at the lines on the map... but in reality, what's the freight competition between White River and Connecticut look like... we're talking very low volumes. And again no shippers have come fourth with specific objections...

The DOJ basically said "NS should buy PAS now" to solve the problem. Clearly for some reason NS has been hesitant to do so at this point in time, as it was the more obvious answer as has been indicated many times in this thread.