I remember when New England textile manufacturers moved to the non-union southern states. Today, that business has moved on again, to outside the country. Those non-union southern states experienced the same effect that unionized New England did.
Ft Worth is just a factory in a field, no historical connections to the company, just a temporary stop before it all ends up in Brazil anyway.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7384062n" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (the Brazil plant is featured here)
As for Erie, the writing was on the wall back when they stopped assembling locomotives the old way, all individual parts from the ground up, which required 14 days, and got the process down to 5 days by using pre-built sections. Assembly today is just a simple task of connecting the pre-built sections in those 5 days. Such a simple process can be easily relocated anywhere, and they can rely upon a less skilled workforce in other locations to do the 'lego-like assembly". Its also why railroads have less and less choice in options anymore, they all come with the same look, same features, and only the paint is different.
All this dialog of states competing, or failing to compete, with other states is just nonsensical, as the masters of the universe are going to do what they want to do anyway until the global economy crashes and we re-learn (the hard way) that economic compartmentalization originally designed to stabilize all the individual ships wasn't a bad thing after all. Our sidebar discussions comparing standards of living of one part of the country to another will have no affect on their decisions.