Over on the Railspot group on Yahoo!, there has been discussin' and cussin' over BNSF's plans to remove signals on the line from Sapulpa, OK south to Joe Jct., TX (just south of the Red River). This line, once part of the Frisco, current;y only sees one pair of manifest trains daily, plus a unit rock train and locals (most other trains having been rerouted to the ex-ATSF line thru central OK). Removal of the signals would put a 49 MPH speed limit on the entire line, plus save money in signal maintenance on a railroad that sees little traffic. There is substantial business on this railroad at Irving, Sherman, Madill (which is also the Kiamichi RR interchange) and Ada, as well as work at Muskogee and Sapulpa. However, speculation has abounded (wild rumor?) as to whether this line would be a candidate for sale or lease to another concern.
Well, another potential attack by bean counters. One of these days, they'll wake up, I hope, and start hiring railroaders to run railroads. If true, and they do remove signals, there won't actually be savings for a while. The cost of taking them out will need to be recovered. But even worse, the viability of their own line is reduced. And, it's less attractive to other companies for takeover. Boxcab E50
Funny you should mention that..... RailAmerica has both Dallas, Garland & Northeastern and iamichi as interchange partners (Sherman and Madill, respectively), while Watco's South Kansas & Oklahoma swaps cars at Tulsa. IIRC, BNSF has embarked on the strategy that BN had in the 1980s of shedding low-profit & unprofitable stretches of its system. So don't be too surprised to see a line sale or lease involving the Sapulpa-Irving line.
Bob- I've had the interesting experience of being around while some of these processes were ongoing. Unfortunately, it's often the "shredding" process that makes the lines less profitable. Or even a loser. Amazing what can be done on paper to change "appearances" of making money, or not. Even stranger, is how much money they'll flush away to concoct these scenarios. An odd way of doing business! If they'd only spend the time and money on bringing in more customers instead..... Boxcab E50
As I recall didn't Santa Fe have a similar policy in the 80s? I seem to remembe it being a big deal when they no longer served Atchison and Santa Fe.
Yes, they did- the Atchison line went to A&K Railroad Materials, a company of buzzards that buy rail lines under thinly disguised "railroads" for the sole intent of scrapping & salvaging rail lines (a subject for another thread), most of the Kansas branches were shed, the TP&W was turned back into a shortline, some chunks went to Watco- those are the examples I can think of right now. I'm sure there are others.
I remember seeing an old SF route map starting at its biggest with branches all over the place, then removing them every decade it dropped to basically the Chicago to LA line and some stuff in Texas and that was all.
