Chicago Area Shortline Railroads

Canadian National

Statement of ownership for subsidaries

This covers the following railroad:
Elgin Joliet & Eastern Rwy
Wisconsin Central RR
Chicago Central & Pacific RR

CNR is the parent company of Grand Trunk Corporation, a holding company that owns 100% of the stock of IC, GTW, CCP, GTW, and EJ&E. While CNR and its subsidiaries collectively provide freight rail transportation services under the “CN” name, each of the subsidiaries has been maintained as a separate corporation, owning its own real estate and tracks, and each maintains separate collective bargaining agreements with its operating unions (although IC and CCP are covered under one agreement with each union).
Because CN provides service through subsidiaries that have separate corporate identities, it must abide by the terms of each subsidiary’s franchise and labor agreements. To increase the flexibility of its operations among its subsidiaries, CN initially provided for the exchange of trackage rights in the Chicago area between certain Applicants, including all grants of trackage rights now intended over the EJ&E property itself. Thus, six notices of exemption were filed simultaneously with the application in CN-EJ&E, providing for trackage rights for CCP, GTW, IC, and WCL over the EJ&E arc between Leithton and Gary, and for trackage rights for EJ&E over certain CCP and IC lines. Then earlier this year, when WCL sought to extend its operations from Matteson to Homewood to operate on IC’s tracks into IC’s Markham Yard, WCL filed a notice of exemption for authority from the Board to do so. See Illinois Central Railroad Company – Trackage Rights Exemption – Wisconsin Central Ltd., STB Finance Docket No. 35223 (STB served Mar. 13, 2009).
Rather than continue to confront these operating issues individually, Applicants have entered into the trackage rights agreements that are the subjects of the notices of exemption in these dockets, in order to further increase the operating flexibility for all CN railroads within the arc of the EJ&E. When these agreements become effective, all of the Applicants will have the contractual right and regulatory authority to operate on any CN line on or within the EJ&E arc. Thus, they will be able to structure their operations in the way that is more efficient. The trackage rights CN seeks here will not have any impact on the authority it received in CN-EJ&E, nor will they have any effect on the Board’s review of CN’s Operating Plan or of the environmental impacts of the transaction approved in that case. The Operating Plan in that transaction was developed with the assumption that CN would be free to move any of its trains over any of its lines in the Chicago area. The trackage rights at issue in these dockets are intended to ensure further flexibility in carrying out that Operating Plan, and they constitute part of the coordination referred to in the CN-EJ&E Application, where CN said that, in order to better realize the potential efficiencies and service benefits of the proposed acquisition, there could be further post-transaction coordinations to facilitate operations in and through the Chicago terminal.
CN has no plans use these trackage rights to reroute any train whose rerouting was not already taken account in the CN-EJ&E Operating Plan. CN seeks only to further increase its efficiency by having the flexibility to move CN crews throughout the Chicago terminal area.
Finally, CN’s operations pursuant to these trackage rights, like CN’s operations pursuant to the trackage rights that were the subject of the notices of exemption submitted with the CN-EJ&E application, would be subject to continuing scrutiny under the monitoring and oversight conditions provided by the Board when it approved the CN-EJ&E transaction