New Orleans Terminal Railroad would buy and dispatch the Back Belt

The New Orleans Terminal Railroad is the company County Line Rail wants to place between six Class I railroads and the tracks they share in New Orleans, under a filing lodged with the Surface Transportation Board on 4 September 2026.

County Line Railroad Interests, LLC, the Houston-based rail infrastructure developer that trades as CLR, has told the Board it intends to form the New Orleans Terminal Railroad Company (NOTR) as a wholly owned terminal railroad. The document is a Description of Anticipated Responsive Application in Docket No. FD 36873, the proceeding on Union Pacific’s proposed control of Norfolk Southern, and the fuller responsive application follows later in the schedule. Bryan Boaz, CLR’s chief commercial officer, would be NOTR’s president.

Six Class I railroads, two dispatchers

New Orleans is the only deep-water port in the United States served by all six Class I railroads, and all six, together with Amtrak, own track and run trains through the terminal area. Control of the two decisive pathways is split between two carriers. Norfolk Southern dispatches the New Orleans Terminal Back Belt Line, and Union Pacific dispatches the Mississippi River crossing at the Huey P. Long Bridge, the only rail crossing of the river for roughly 130 miles below Baton Rouge. Canadian National and CPKC hold no present rights to move their own trains over either.

CLR’s filing argues that combining Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern without conditions would place ownership and dispatch control of substantially all cross-terminal freight movements, and of as many as 48 Amtrak trains a week, with a single carrier that also competes for the traffic running over those tracks. Its position is that the answer is a durable structural remedy rather than a temporary pricing condition.

What NOTR would own and dispatch

The responsive application will ask the Board for authority to:

• acquire the New Orleans Terminal Back Belt Line from Norfolk Southern — about 7.7 miles from Oliver Junction to East City Junction and from East City Junction to the CN/IC Connection — on compensation terms agreed by the parties or set by the Board, with NOTR taking on maintenance and upgrading of the line;
• dispatch freight and passenger trains over the Back Belt and related terminal trackage, including the tracks between West Bridge Junction and East Bridge Junction and between East Bridge Junction and the CN/IC Connection, the Huey P. Long Bridge crossing, and about 3.5 miles between Control Point Seabrook and Oliver Junction — roughly 13.6 route miles of dispatching authority in total;
• align the CN interlockers at East Bridge Junction Tower, which CLR describes as a long-standing constraint on cross-terminal interchange.

Amtrak trains would be dispatched by NOTR consistent with STB decisions, Federal Railroad Administration regulations and applicable agreements.

Neutrality written into the structure

Under the structure set out in the filing, no Class I railroad would hold an ownership interest in NOTR, at formation or at any time afterwards. NOTR would publish a single tariff, with prices and terms applying on the same basis to every Class I carrier and to Amtrak. It would take no part in line-haul movements, so it would not change the rates, routes or terms any Class I offers its own customers, and it would not seek to disturb the existing rights of carriers to serve shippers already located on the affected lines.

Boaz put the case for a structural fix rather than a temporary condition: the point, he said, is “same tariff, same rules, same dispatcher for everybody”, with no Class I railroad on the new company’s share register. He also drew a boundary around the proposal — “We are not looking to take anyone’s traffic or reprice anyone’s move” — describing the aim as making the gateway fluid and keeping it that way.

NOTR would be staffed by operating and dispatching personnel with direct experience in freight and passenger operations, including in the New Orleans terminal area, and would have its own financial resources alongside access to further capital through CLR. The filing states that the proposed transaction qualifies as a minor transaction under the Board’s regulations at 49 C.F.R. § 1180.2.

Where the case sits in the merger schedule

The timing follows the Board’s own calendar. On 18 August 2026 the STB removed the UP-NS proceeding from abeyance and adopted a procedural schedule that set 9 September 2026 for descriptions of anticipated responsive applications and 18 November 2026 for the responsive applications themselves, alongside comments, protests and requests for conditions. NOTR’s formation, the proposed acquisition and the dispatching authority all remain subject to Board approval.

The schedule sets the outer limits for the New Orleans proposal: NOTR’s responsive application shares the 18 November 2026 deadline with every other responsive filing, and rebuttals in support of such applications run to 29 March 2027. Dates as adopted in the Board’s decision of 18 August 2026 and its amendment of 31 August 2026, published by the Surface Transportation Board.

Terminal control is therefore not a side question in this case. Three existing terminal railroads are already covered by the applicants’ own proposals and by the CN settlement, and the New Orleans proposal would add a fourth. Compiled from the Board’s decision of 18 August 2026 and County Line Rail’s announcement of 4 September 2026.