My research studies mergers of American railroads. Below I illustrate the geographic information of American railroads that I collected and the information of virtual networks that I constructed.

Figure below illustrates the network of the seven Class I railroads in 2004: the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railway (BNSF) competes with the Union Pacific railway (UP) in the west, the CSX Transportation (CSXT) and the Norfolk Southern railway (NS) competes in the east. Two Canadian Class I railroads the Canadian Pacific railway (CP) and the Canadian National railway (CN) connect freight shipment between Canada and U.S., and the Kansas City Southern railway (KCS) locates in the south and connects freight shipment between Mexico and the United States.

Virtual Networks

Figure below shows the virtual networks in 2004 that I built from the actual railroad networks. First row (from left to right): Network of CSXT, NS, CN. Second row: CP, BNSF, UP. Third row: KCS.

History of Merger

Below is a merger history of American railroads from 1985 to 2004. The number of Class I railroads is the same from 2004 to today (2020).