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January 12, 2000 10:34 AM, EST

The waning days of 1999 brought on an announcement that some feared would set the stage for a sequel to that shippers’ horror flick, “Nightmare on the Conrail Lines.”

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Teeth were chattering with the news that Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and Canadian National Corp. would seek to combine to form the largest railroad on the North American continent — with 50,000 miles of track, 67,000 employees and $12.5 billion in revenue.

The announcement shocked rail customers, competitors and government officials. Linda Morgan, chairman of the Surface Transportation Board, questioned the timing of the proposed $6 billion merger — coming after two of the top railroad companies had set out to change the face of freight transportation in the eastern half of the country and ended up with egg on their corporate faces.

The railroads were Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation, which agreed to pay more than $10 billion to divide the assets Conrail after a brief bidding war in 1997.

For the full story, see the Jan. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. .