Both UP and NS (and any Class I who would run heritage operations on their ROW) need to consider a multitude of factors, including liability, PSR and heritage's potential effect on those efficiencies, staffing, potential marketing benefits, etc. For now, UP has made a different choice than NS (lucky for all of us), but they're different railroads, and they always have been. You guys have certainly read it, but the excellent book "The Men Who Loved Trains" by Rush Loving Jr. gives great insights into how these huge railroads make decisions in this modern era, specifically re: the East Coast railroads and NYC / PRR --> Penn Central --> Conrail --> NS / CSX. To Rich's point, shareholder value seems to be the #1 decision point the execs at the very top of the pyramids use, while historically it was often the upper middle managers who were railroad "lifers" who knew their systems that knew how best to actually run the show.
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