There are many people interested in former transportation companies, whether they were trucking companies, railroads, airlines or ocean lines. These companies are called “fallen flags,” and the term describes companies whose corporate names have been dissolved through merger, bankruptcy or liquidation.
Today’s FreightWaves Classics profiles another fallen flag in the railroad industry – the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (reporting mark MKT), nicknamed “The Katy.”
An assortment of Katy power...
There are many people interested in former transportation companies, whether they were trucking companies, railroads, airlines or ocean lines. These companies are called “fallen flags,” and the term describes companies whose corporate names have been dissolved through merger, bankruptcy or liquidation.
Today’s FreightWaves Classics profiles another fallen flag – the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (reporting mark LN; commonly called the L&N). The L&N was a Class I railroad that provided...
Background
Prior to 1930, railroads were the primary freight haulers in the United States. Then, during World War II railroads also moved much of the war materiel for the U.S. armed forces. But despite that, railroads lost freight traffic to the growing trucking industry.
In the eastern United States, the region’s railroads were hurt financially by the rapid decline in coal tonnage as the nation increasingly shifted to oil in the 1960s. A consequence of the shift was that between 1967 and...
In 1920, the U.S. railroad network was still near its peak. There were over 250,000 miles of track being used by over 1,000 railroads. Over 1.5 million men and women were employed in the industry.
By 2020, the number of railroads in the U.S. was down to about 700. However, the vast majority of the 700 are short line railroads; there are only seven Class I railroads operating (and that will drop to six when the Kansas City Southern Railway is acquired). The miles of railroad track in use has...