Joint Railway - United States

United States

"Joint railways" are called terminal railroads in the United States. Most true example of joint railways are in terminal areas, including union stations. Terminal railways are often co-owned by the railroads that connect with them. Among the more prominent joint operations were:

  • Belt Railway of Chicago (BRC), the largest terminal switching railroad in the U.S., co-owned by all the "Big Six" American Class I railroads: Union Pacific Railroad, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern Railway, BNSF Railway, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway.
  • Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis (TRRA), with extensive operations in East St. Louis, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri, and co-owned by all the Big Six except the Canadian Pacific.
  • Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CSAO), the last corporate remnant of Conrail, which was formed from the remains of several bankrupt railroads in 1976; that company was split between CSX and Norfolk Southern, which formed CSAO in northern New Jersey, greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and greater Detroit, Michigan. Unlike the BRC and TRRA, CSAO uses crews and locomotives from its two parent companies, though the former Conrail paint scheme is still seen on numerous locomotives and freight cars that CSX and NS inherited.
  • The Powder River basin joint line, co-owned by BNSF and Union Pacific to serve the area's numerous coal mines.

The concept of trackage rights is more common than joint railways in the United States. The railroad that owns the track permits trains from another railroad to use the line. The owner railroad normally charges a fee, but sometimes there is no charge because the arrangement results from a merger or sale of a line. For instance, when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad acquired the Monon Railroad a condition of the sale imposed by government regulators was a trackage rights arrangement over the southern part of the Monon for the Milwaukee Road, an agreement that was handed down to successive owners of the Milwaukee Road and finally the Indiana Rail Road.

Variations on trackage rights include "direction running" agreements between two railroads with parallel lines through an area, usually done to facilitate greater traffic volume. For instance, CSX and NS have a directional-running agreement between downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and nearby Hamilton, where northbound trains generally use NS trackage and southbound trains (with the exception of Amtrak's Cardinal) use CSX tracks. North of Hamilton, NS trains use CSX tracks on a traditional trackage-rights agreement for a two-mile (3 km) section.

Read more about this topic:  Joint Railway

Famous quotes related to united states:

    I hate to do what everybody else is doing. Why, only last week, on Fifth Avenue and some cross streets, I noticed that every feminine citizen of these United States wore an artificial posy on her coat or gown. I came home and ripped off every one of the really lovely refrigerator blossoms that were sewn on my own bodices.
    Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)

    ... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.
    Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.
    Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)

    Steal away and stay away.
    Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
    Join the United States and join the family
    But not much in between unless a college.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)