Hard to believe, but CSX is offering the Mountain Sub, B&O's "West End", for sale. Course there's a story that CSX is trying to unload track to make it more profitable so that UP will buy CSX. Incredible!
CSX has had the West End AND the Cowen Line up for lease (or sale if price is right) for most of the summer. The last I heard, the original deadline arrived and CSX asked for 8 of the original bidders to bid again. Trust me.............CSX won't sell to a rival like Norfolk Southern or Union Pacific. CSX would let them have it but UP and NS would end up paying way above the line's worth. I talked to CSX engineer in grafton in late August and said he was told he had 90 days to decide either to find a new line of work or transfer to Richmond, VA at the beginning of the year. Two front runners for purchase or lease of the line are the Wheeling & Lake Erie (makes the most sense) or R.J. Corman.
The line isn't for sale. There are bids in to lease the line but no decisions have been made yet. Other potential operators have included RailAmerica and Genesee & Wyoming. As for the information about a Union Pacific takeover of CSX, that is pure speculation at this point. (And rather reckless, I might add, to be posted without information to back it up.) It's always fun to watch people post information like that without any solid basis for their claims, or even a mention of who the poster actually is.
ICC would shoot a UP/NS merger down in a heartbeat. UP already has problems with being literally too big for it's britches.
Maybe a UP/CSX combination. I wonder if the UP still owns all that B&O (now CSX) stock the PRR sold them years ago? Bill
TO Brian S- I read this in the October issue of Railpace Magazine - that the Sub is up for sale. Ok, from what I read here, maybe for lease, too. The magazine also said that CSX was divesting lines in a move to make itself more attractive to UP for purchase. So it's not my "speculation" per se, but what they reported. It's always interesting to watch other forumers cop an attitude and assume that something was just made up without simply asking the poster to clarify what their source was. Dave H. Baltimore [ 08. November 2004, 15:51: Message edited by: BnO_Hendo ]
This is crazy! I don't want to hear of CSX wanting UP to buy them out that will stink bad! But as fasr as this goes, being a CSX topic it should be in the CSX forum, so, I'm moving it to the CSX forum section of the site.
