Ohio and National Railway Company

12/31/2025

Have a Happy New Year! 🎇

Let start this week off

12/31/2025

11/28/2025

Today, while many celebrate “Thanksgiving,” our company honora Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and acknowledge the immeasurable loss, violence, and displacement inflicted through colonization and genocide. To many, this day is not a celebration, but a reminder of stolen homelands, broken treaties, forced assimilation, and generations of grief carried by Native communities.

The Ohio and National Railway Company stands in solidarity with all Indigenous nations, who continue to resist erasure, protect their cultures, revive their languages, and fight for sovereignty and justice. May their stories be heard, their struggles recognized, and their resilience uplifted.

Day of Mourning, November 27, 2025

11/14/2025

Vanguard Group. Inc, BlackRock Inc, and State Street Corporation collectively own over 80% of the Union Pacific’s shares, with Vanguard holding the largest portion. The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and T. Rowe Price Group are the largest 3 shareholders of Norfolk Southern, with Vanguard also owning the majority (at 20.55M shares).

When Trains Magazine says that the shareholders overwhelmingly supported the merger, they do not mean working class shareholders; they mean large, multi-billion dollar private equity firms.

ATLANTA — Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern today cleared their first merger hurdle as shareholders overwhelmingly backed their deal to create the first transcontinental railroad. In separate votes, nearly 99% of NS shareholders and 99.5% of UP shareholders approved UP’s proposed $85 billion ac...

11/14/2025

In April 2019, Matt Rose stepped down as BNSF Executive Chairman. At the end of his tenure, Rose had been Executive Chairman for six years, and BNSF President and CEO for the

11/14/2025

Someday…..just not today…..

Progressive Railroading seeks Women Of Influence In Rail nominations

http://dlvr.it/TPBW5z

11/14/2025

As Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen Division 205, we urgently oppose the impending $85 billion takeover of Norfolk Southern by Union Pacific—a cataclysmic move that poses an immediate and pernicious threat to railroad workers, public safety, and the fragile American economy. This merger hurtles us toward a crisis of unprecedented consolidation in an industry already teetering on the brink of unreliability and inequity. We implore the Surface Transportation Board to act swiftly and decisively to block this deal, safeguarding the livelihoods of frontline workers and the vitality of our national freight system before irreparable damage is done.

Compounding our alarm is Union Pacific’s recent announcement to accelerate its merger application filing with the STB, aiming for late November or by December 1—months ahead of the original January 29, 2026, deadline outlined in their initial notice of intent. This brazen rush is a transparent grab to control the narrative, compressing the timeline for public scrutiny and stakeholder input, and forcing regulators into a hasty review that could overlook critical risks to competition, jobs, and safety. We cannot allow this expedited ploy to undermine a thorough examination of a transaction with such profound implications.

At the heart of this emergency are the dire perils to jobs and safety. Union Pacific’s track record of ruthless cost-cutting, including massive layoffs even in stable times, signals an imminent wave of job losses and eroded safety protocols if this merger proceeds. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) echoes our alarm, aligning with union fears on worker impacts and safety by stating, “I don’t know enough to know, but if they’re concerned, I’m concerned.” We cannot delay—these are not abstract risks but a looming catastrophe for engineers and trainmen who daily risk their lives to keep commerce flowing.

Furthermore, this takeover will precipitously escalate costs, shatter service reliability, and obliterate competition, inflicting immediate harm on shippers, consumers, and the supply chain. In their joint letter to the STB, U.S. Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) sound the alarm on these threats, declaring that “a merger of this magnitude would diminish options for industry to transport goods, increase costs, create unreliable service, and undermine efforts to strengthen American manufacturing and supply chains.” This bipartisan warning highlights the urgent danger of fewer routing choices leading to skyrocketing freight rates and crippling disruptions, fueling inflation at a time when economic stability hangs by a thread.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) intensifies the call to action, decrying the proposal as a plunge into “dangerous consolidation and monopoly power,” and branding it a “hostile takeover of America’s infrastructure” that risks rapidly deteriorating service, safety, working conditions, and consumer prices. Our members have seen the fallout from past mergers firsthand: skimped maintenance, understaffing, and accidents that devastate communities—we must halt this now before history repeats with even graver consequences.

Standing in solidarity with these lawmakers and our labor allies, we demand the STB intervene without delay to scrutinize and reject this transaction. The rail sector’s future demands bold investments in technology, training, and infrastructure—not a reckless consolidation that entrenches power and invites disaster. Time is of the essence: protect competition, preserve jobs, and ensure safety, or betray the nation’s trust at our collective peril.

11/12/2025

Choogie hates to see you stress about holiday travel. We're here to help:
🚨 Book early for best fares and guaranteed seats
🚉 Take advantage of extra capacity on Northeast Regional Nov 25–30
🚄 Enjoy expanded service in DC, Philly, NYC and Boston (including NextGen Acela trains)
💰 Unlock savings with Share Fares (discounted group travel), Night Owl (late night departures) and other offers
💺 Relax all the way with exceptional service, great views, extra space and no middle seats
🤳 Find trains on http://spr.ly/61857TXwZ and the mobile app (new Acela trains are marked with a unique 'NextGen' tag)

11/01/2025

This year, alone (2025), Union Pacific Railroad has hired Squire Patton Boggs to “lobby” the U.S. government with $60,000 and again with $25,000; revolving door with both former members of Congress and non-former members of Congress to push the merger between UP and Norfolk Southern through the Republican-led SEC. They are also one of the 37 donors that is funding the $300 million White House ballroom build.

According to Fortune and Yahoo Finance articles literally titled “Meet all 37 White House ballroom donors funding the $300 million build, including Silicon Valley tech giants, crypto bros and the Lutnicks,” Union Pacific is listed as one of the donors.

“A list released by White House officials and reviewed by Fortune shows all 37 donors footing the bill instead—and it includes some of the nation’s largest tech companies, companies with government contracts and members of the administration.

Their private, tax-deductible donations will be made to the nonprofit Trust for the National Mall. The White House did not release the size of the donations for all 37 listed. Trump has previously said he will pay for some of the project, though his name doesn’t appear on the list.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/guess-paying-trump-300m-ballroom-162934935.html

https://fortune.com/2025/10/26/37-white-house-ballroom-donors-funding-300-million-build-tech-ceos-trump/

This information is gathered from publicly available sources such as OpenCorporates and news articles. The Ohio and National Railway Company is not responsible for any reputational or financial harm caused to any of the mentioned corporations included in this post using the publicly available sources.

09/01/2025

The Ohio and National Railway Company and our founder, Elaina Fortherails show our respects to the Pullman Porters, who are often overlooked, but fought their way through both systematic racism on a societal level and workplace racism perpetrated by both the company and the white working classers, such as the American Railway Union. The American Railway Union refused membership to black workers, forcing them to form their own all-black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), in 1925. This systemic exclusion by white unions, often justified by discriminatory membership rules, was not even the worst of inter-working class racism in the labor movement during that era. We thank the Pullman Porters for not giving up and we support black people, today, who’ve taken up that torch for racial equity and equality.

06/18/2025

03/22/2025

The Ohio and National Railway Company (ONRC) isn’t another private equity firm chasing short-term returns. We’re not here to strip assets, cut costs, or flip short-lines for a quick ROI. We’re a short-line holding company built for the long haul—focused on sustainability, growth, and the future of the American railroad industry.

At the ONRC, we believe that railroads should do more than just move freight. They should:

✅ Invest in the well-being of their workforce—because a thriving workforce create stronger operations.

✅ Actively support outreach in their communities—because railroads are part of the towns they serve.

✅ Prioritize long-term sustainability—because cutting corners today leads to failures tomorrow.

✅ Modernize and innovate—because the future of railroading can include a balance between the time-tested reliability of traditional rail operations and the cutting-edge technologies that drive sustainability and efficiency.

We take a stakeholder-first approach, prioritizing the well-being of our workers, communities, and the environment. Instead of short-term cost-cutting, we focus on stability, modernization, and responsible growth—ensuring that each railroad we acquire is set up for long-term success.

Our approach isn’t just about acquisition—it’s about preserving and strengthening the rail industry for the next generation.