January 16, 2026: In a decision predicted by Railway Age (“Why Not a Merger Timeout?,” Watching Washington, November 2025 issue), the Surface Transportation Board in a unanimous decision rejected, “without prejudice,” the Union Pacific (UP)-Norfolk Southern (NS) major merger application as incomplete “because it does not contain certain information required by the Board’s regulations.” “Merger applicants should be required to demonstrate, with specificity, the merger’s likely harm, as well as benefits, to small railroads, communities and modal competition; how they intend to attract on their lines new factories and warehouses as domestic manufacturing is revived; and how they will poach market share from non-union truckers, given rail volumes were stagnant following the 1990s merger wave,“ Railway Age Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner wrote. (See also Wilner’s December 2025 Watching Washington column, “Is a UP-NS ‘Fix’ In? Don’t Bet on It!”, in which he opined: “Although [POTUS 47] said the proposed merger ‘sounds good to me,’ and notwithstanding his being transactional—every interaction in expectation of a trade—the STB is independent of the Executive Branch. Beyond Vena denying a quid pro quo, those alleging his ‘gift‘ [of a contribution to the President’s White House ballroom] assures a ‘fix’ are ignoring contrarian evidence. Today’s Republican Party embraces a populist ideology opposing concentrations of corporate power. Consider that a UP-NS merger will create the only U.S. Atlantic-Pacific railroad, with an enterprise value of $250 billion, dwarfing rival CSX’s $83 billion value and some 50% greater than that of BNSF (estimated, as BNSF…
