Now here's an interesting little exercise:Take the systems of the Rock Island, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and C&NW in their Mid-Late 60's to their Early 70's state, and parcel it out. All three railroads were afraid that if the other got the Rock, that they'd be next on the list of fallen flags.
Here is the breakdown:
UP wanted access to Chicago and Texas to compete with SP and get it's own Chicago connection, so that it could drop the Crumbling C&NW. This would have affected the C&NW negatively, as much of it's run-through traffic was from the UP.
The C&NW wanted to save itself from worthlessness! If UP-RI went through, then an SP-C&NW counter-merger would be the natural response. A C&NW-RI merger would be excessively monopolistic as C&NW would become Iowa's dominant railroad, and block SP from Kansas City and Chicago.
SP wanted it all, the fit between SP and Rock Island was a definite fear to the UP people, it's biggest competitor would get it's own route to Chicago to Texas, UP could compete Via C&NW, but The Texas routes would have been somewhere UP could never reach without a merger with a larger company. If UP Didn't merge with the Rock, It'd be forced to absorb the sprawling C&NW, or be assimilated into another larger system.
But, all of these fears never came true with the RI merger case taking 13 years to complete. But had this all never happened, heres how the merger would have played out:
Like the Conrail split up of 1999, this would have involved parceling out the Rock Island to the three other railroads, each gaining pieces that It wanted the most.
Southern Pacific would get the Golden State route, and would connect to Kansas city, along with the Tucumcari-Memphis route.
UP's share would be the Omaha-Chicago route, along with Rock Island's branches in Iowa. C&NW would have the Omaha-Denver-Colorado springs route, where it would connect to the D&RGW, and later to WP, getting C&NW to San Francisco via a trackage rights agreement with both railroads. The spine line would also become part of the C&NW.
Now what about the railroads that the C&NW merged with, eg. the Chicago Great Western and the M&ST.L? And the Rocks Kansas City-St.Louis line for that matter? Well, The M&ST.L would go to UP, putting it on par with C&NW, C&NW would get the Kansas City-St.Louis line from the Rock Island, while SP would get the Chicago Great Western, giving it access to Omaha, Minneapolis, and Chicago, like the others.
In the end, with a lot of complex trackage rights agreements, divorces, and Marriages, you'd have 3 well balanced systems.
C&NW Map
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UP Map
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SP Map
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Here is the breakdown:
UP wanted access to Chicago and Texas to compete with SP and get it's own Chicago connection, so that it could drop the Crumbling C&NW. This would have affected the C&NW negatively, as much of it's run-through traffic was from the UP.
The C&NW wanted to save itself from worthlessness! If UP-RI went through, then an SP-C&NW counter-merger would be the natural response. A C&NW-RI merger would be excessively monopolistic as C&NW would become Iowa's dominant railroad, and block SP from Kansas City and Chicago.
SP wanted it all, the fit between SP and Rock Island was a definite fear to the UP people, it's biggest competitor would get it's own route to Chicago to Texas, UP could compete Via C&NW, but The Texas routes would have been somewhere UP could never reach without a merger with a larger company. If UP Didn't merge with the Rock, It'd be forced to absorb the sprawling C&NW, or be assimilated into another larger system.
But, all of these fears never came true with the RI merger case taking 13 years to complete. But had this all never happened, heres how the merger would have played out:
Like the Conrail split up of 1999, this would have involved parceling out the Rock Island to the three other railroads, each gaining pieces that It wanted the most.
Southern Pacific would get the Golden State route, and would connect to Kansas city, along with the Tucumcari-Memphis route.
UP's share would be the Omaha-Chicago route, along with Rock Island's branches in Iowa. C&NW would have the Omaha-Denver-Colorado springs route, where it would connect to the D&RGW, and later to WP, getting C&NW to San Francisco via a trackage rights agreement with both railroads. The spine line would also become part of the C&NW.
Now what about the railroads that the C&NW merged with, eg. the Chicago Great Western and the M&ST.L? And the Rocks Kansas City-St.Louis line for that matter? Well, The M&ST.L would go to UP, putting it on par with C&NW, C&NW would get the Kansas City-St.Louis line from the Rock Island, while SP would get the Chicago Great Western, giving it access to Omaha, Minneapolis, and Chicago, like the others.
In the end, with a lot of complex trackage rights agreements, divorces, and Marriages, you'd have 3 well balanced systems.
C&NW Map
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UP Map
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SP Map
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