>> . . . so I don't think high altitude issues were ever part of the reason for the line's closing.


I don't think so either. But the UP did claim the high altitude and steep grades ran up the cost of operating the line; therefore they diverted all its traffic to the much lower Wyoming line - or so they claimed.

Then with no through traffic and not much local business, they tried to outright abandon it. Within a month or two of that announcement, the BNSF filed a claim with the STB for the line. Too which, the UP acted swiftly, rescinding their abandonment application, leaving the line embargoed but not abandoned. UP likes to call it "Mothballed".

I believe this rather obvious "Dog in the Manger" behavior on the part of the UP, reveals the real reason for the line closure. Recall that the STB had made trackage and traffic rights on this and several other lines a condition of the SP take-over; in order to mitigate its rather serious and widespread anti-competitive effects. But the closure of this line gummed up the works, it being potentially very strategic for BNSF, as a second route for St Louis and southeast / central west traffic. UP closed it short of abandonment, solely to deprive their potential competition of its use.

This action, and several other similar tricks, has effectively negated the STB's intent to provide for rail competition over millions of square miles covering several western states. The the only effective competition to UP in these vast areas, is the truck. And sure enough, rail market share in the effected area has declined significantly, even before the economic crash.

Of course, BNSF has its own non-competitive enclaves as well. In all these areas, rail market share has declined. There is nothing particularly new about this phenomenon. Rail market share has always been higher where there was good rail competition.

This widespread anti-competitive circumstance concerns me, because it is in the long run, not good for the industry, the economy, or even the UP itself, which would benefit from a more robust rail industry. And no - it is not really robust, if it needs the public treasury to fund needed capital projects, as they have all applied for in the past decade. But of course, they do hesitate some; not liking the strings that come attached.

But of most pressing concern is its depressive effect upon the economy in general. Many thousands of businesses (especially grain cooperatives) have had to close down, primarily because switching to trucks simply is not a viable option, when your own competition has access to competitive rail rates and you don't. Either way you go - you go broke; when if only you had competitive rail access (thus lower rates), you could have made of go of it.

It is this very problem, that has fueled recent widespread demands for "Re-regulation". They do have a valid point; but I would hope that such re-regulation is limited to fully addressing the real problem, which is the widespread and acute lack of rail competition - and not just re-instituting inflexible pre-Staggers rate fixing by the gov't.

To provide real rail competition, this might instead include forced line sales where feasible (such as most ex WP+DRG lines to BNSF or others). Where not feasible, then equally shared access, via neutral third party track ownership. Such arrangements were very common in terminal areas in the past. A current example is the shared assets trackage owned by the current Conrail corp, shared by NS and CXS.

The economic benefit to the rail industry as a whole, of widespread customer access to multiple private railroad companies, would be staggering. It might even put long-haul trucking into the realm of the dinosaur; and most certainly, would stop the perennial shrinkage of rail route miles. And with the drag that woefully inefficient long-haul trucking imposes upon the economy and ecology largely gone, the benefit to the nation would be even more staggering!

But of course, the short-sighted parsimonious monkeys at UP (and others), will frantically disagree; thus will never get their hand out of the proverbial cookie jar with any cookies still intact.

OPB