The rail industry has been trying to complete and end to end lashup merger since the 50's - had that been allowed in the 50's we might not have needed to spend billions on Conrail in the 70's and 80's.

A different regulatory attitude in the 50's, not just towards M&A but rates and routes, and mandatory services, would have prevented the bailouts we had to do in the aftermath of the Penn Central. Nearly every Class I carrier was in poor financial shape by the time the industry was deregulated in the late 70's, much of the 'capacity crunch' we have today in the rail industry is related to the contraction the industry went thru in that period, where they shed assets and lines in an attempt to resize their cost structure to the amount of revenue they were allowed to realize from their route networks.