The rail regulator restarted the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern review and told the applicants to hand back the data their own experts had screened out

Fifty-nine percent. That is the share of intermodal locations the Surface Transportation Board says an expert for Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern screened out of the diversion projections filed in support of their merger. The comparable figures are at least 31 percent of merchandise and bulk locations and 30 percent of automotive locations. All three are the Board's own reading, and the applicants have said the excluded locations are statistical outliers.

The Board is not settling that argument. It is ordering the data.

In Decision No. 30, effective 18 August, the regulator lifted the abeyance it imposed in May, adopted a procedural schedule, and directed the applicants to refile every workpaper to which any screening or filtering criterion was applied. The refiling must be regenerated without filters, making programming changes if necessary, and each one must show which rows were in the previous version and which have been restored. The deadline is 28 August. The order reaches the workpapers only, not the narratives or the verified statements built on them.

What the record now says was left out

The filtering was not confined to one exhibit. The verified statement of Elizabeth Bailey told the Board that the share analyses in Appendices D, E and F were restricted to major points on the combined system and major commodity pairs, and the Board writes that those appendices appear to rest on 80 percent of the traffic in the proceeding. David Hunt's statement recorded that Market Share Exhibit E-2 covered major commodity flows amounting to 80 percent of current Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern traffic. The Board's phrase for all of it is that what was provided was partial rather than exhaustive.

The applicants had already told the Board, in a letter dated 26 June, that they would address all routes on which their combined market share would rise and not just the major corridor and commodity pairs.

A schedule that runs into 2027

Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern asked for 345 days from filing to final decision, down from the 390 they first proposed, arguing that an end-to-end transaction raises no complex competitive or operating issues. BNSF, CSX Transportation, CPKC, the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern, and shipper groups including the National Grain and Feed Association asked for the longest evidentiary period the statute allows.

The Board took neither. It declined the compressed schedule, noting that the applicants themselves have called the transaction unprecedented and described it as creating the nation's first transcontinental railroad, and that this proceeding will be the first application of the Board's 2001 merger rules. Notices of intent to participate are due 4 September. Opening comments, protests and requests for conditions are due 18 November, with preliminary comments from the Justice Department and the Transportation Department on 3 December. Responses and rebuttal fall on 16 February 2027, rebuttals in support of responsive applications on 29 March, and final briefs on 28 May 2027. A public hearing will be scheduled before final briefs in a decision still to come.

Requests for a round of sur-replies from BNSF, CPKC and five shipper associations were refused, because the Board's rules give applicants the last word in a merger case.

The St. Louis question stays inside the main case

The applicants had asked the Board to decide separately, and on a 90-day clock, whether their proposed options for divesting control of the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis would satisfy the divestiture condition. They kept the request alive even after agreeing that CN would acquire Norfolk Southern's interest in that terminal railroad as part of a settlement. BNSF and CSX Transportation objected.

The Board declined, holding that control of the terminal railroad is best evaluated inside the larger transaction and that deciding it early would be premature.

Several motions asking the Board to deny the application outright are still pending, from chemical, fuel, fertilizer and shipper associations and from BNSF and CSX Transportation, along with a joint letter from seven state attorneys general. The Board says it will deal with those separately, and that restarting the clock says nothing about the merits.