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Joint railway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A diagram showing railways near Ilkley, West Yorkshire, including a joint railway

A joint railway is a railway operating under the control of more than one railway company.

United Kingdom

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There are many examples of joint railways in the United Kingdom. These include:

United States

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Most joint railways in the United States have historically been terminal railroads, which have typically been formed and co-owned by several connecting railroads serving a major urban center to reduce the need for redundant right of way and expensive infrastructure such as tunnels or bridges. Terminal railroads have often incorporated a union station, allowing for more convenient connecting service for passengers, particularly in the era before Amtrak when passengers may have needed to switch from one company's train to another to reach their ultimate destination.

Prominent joint operations in the U.S. include:

The concept of trackage rights is more common than joint railways in the United States. The railroad that owns the track permits trains from another railroad to use the line. The owner railroad normally charges a fee, but sometimes there is no charge because the arrangement results from a merger or sale of a line. For instance, when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad acquired the Monon Railroad a condition of the sale imposed by government regulators was a trackage rights arrangement over the southern part of the Monon for the Milwaukee Road, an agreement that was handed down to successive owners of the Milwaukee Road and finally the Indiana Rail Road.

Variations on trackage rights include "direction running" agreements between two railroads with parallel lines through an area, usually done to facilitate greater traffic volume. [citation needed] For instance, CSX and NS have a directional-running agreement between downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and nearby Hamilton, where northbound trains generally use NS trackage and southbound trains (with the exception of Amtrak's Cardinal) use CSX tracks. North of Hamilton, NS trains use CSX tracks on a traditional trackage-rights agreement for a two-mile (3 km) section. Another prominent example is the Colorado Joint Line between Denver and Pueblo, which originally consisted of a line owned by the Denver and Rio Grande Western and a parallel line owned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe and shared by the CB&Q under trackage rights. During World War I, the United States Railroad Administration operated the two lines as a bidirectional double-track railroad; after control of the U.S. rail system reverted to private companies following the war, the three railroads continued the bidirectional arrangement, and it continues today under BNSF and UP, the successors to the original companies.

Bibliography

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  • Casserley, H. C. (1968). Britain's Joint Lines. Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-0024-7

See also

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References

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