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Since 1980, over 200 new local or regional railroads have been established in the United States, mostly through the sale of light-density lines by Class I carriers. With these new additions, this sector of the railroad industry now numbers over 400 strong. Collectively, these firms operate over 40,000...

The overall purpose of this report is to evaluate the perspectives and practice of economic and safety regulation of local and regional short line railroads. Specific objectives are to: (1) review the dynamics of the short line railroad spin-off movement in the United States and the Mountain-Plains Consortium...

The goal of this research is to estimate productivity gains and cost savings in the railroad industry since 1978. Further, prior work was extended by separating output and size variables into measures of high and low density output and miles of track. For purposes of comparison, a translog cost function...

The overall objective was to determine the extent that economies of size and density are available to short line railroads. Size economies are limited for short line railroads. For example, doubling the size of the network (from 56 to 129 miles) decreases costs by only 6.9 percent. The elasticity of...