The GTW Mainline isn't going anywhere, since it is a direct Chicago-Toronto link.Racer wrote:What concerns me the most about this whole story is what's next for the other Class I mergers to stay competitive. Also, the "open source" railroading sounds like it could remove the boundaries of railroad interchanges as we know it. I'm curious if this will endanger more trackage in Michigan that the Class Is have still held onto, especially the lines across the state such as the NS, CN, and especially CSX trackage.
The CSX trackage is all branchlines anyways...won't go anywhere, regardless of who gets it. Only major change would be a CP-CSX merger, since then *maybe* they'd stop running traffic on the B&O and come back to the PM.
And NS...well that's all Detroit stuff and won't go anywhere.
I don't think that we'd see any meaningful line reductions in Michigan. Everything will basically continue to exist as long as on-line traffic remains - unlike the otherwise barren coal routes like the Clinchfield and Virginian.