Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern Discuss Merger
USAgNet - 07/24/2025
Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern are in merger talks to create the largest railroad in North America that would connect the East and West Coasts.
According to the Associated Press, the merger discussions began during the first quarter of this year, according to a person familiar with the talks who isn't authorized to discuss them publicly. It would combine the largest and smallest of the country's six major
freight railroads. Both railroads declined to comment.
Within the industry there is widespread debate over whether such a merger would be approved by the Surface Transportation Board even though those regulators approved the deal that created CPKC railroad two years ago with the Canadian Pacific's $31
billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern railroad.
That merger combined the two smallest major railroads in North America and left only six major freight railroads. But it was the first major rail merger approved in more than two decades, the AP reported.
The bar for railroad mergers in the U.S. was raised substantially at the start of the century after a disastrous combination of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific in 1996 that snarled rail traffic for an extended period, followed by the 1999 split of Conrail between
Norfolk Southern and CSX, which created backups in the East.
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