He has some good points about "Precision Scheduled Railroading." It was invented mainly to get good Wall Street numbers by reducing the amount of capital tied up in the plant and workforce. Really, it's more of what the RRs did after Staggers, reducing capacity and targeting business that supports long hauls and trainloads. Shazaam: just what BNSF has done all these years! But Matt's point is that you can cater to Wall Street only so long before your railroad fades out of existence. At some point, you have to *grow the business* in order to keep growing the bottom line after the "fat" is worked out. Note that BNSF mothballed lines like Stampede rather than tearing them out - a good move when they needed more capacity, even if it hasn't panned out the way people thought it would at first.

Who is big enough and with a long-enough range outlook to be like Berkshire for, say, UP? Just a standard merger won't cut it - they're mainly intended to reduce cost, not grow the business.