After all, who wants to stand by the side of the railroad and wave to the engineer as millions of tons of freight roll through, off to feed the commerce of one of your greatest competitor cities?

Imagining that this situation results from a lack of rail connections around Chicago isn’t realistic. The railroads of yesteryear probably moved ten times the tonnage around Chicago on the Belt Line and other connecting roads. Think of the ore for Pittsburgh from the Missabe Range, the pigs that famously did not get out of their cars in Chicago, and the Indiana Harbor 0-8-0 switchers. Believe it, freight moved, and they usually didn’t break bulk to move it.

A better way to learn about this would probably be to check some updated maps and see where the BNSF and the SP touch fingertips with the roads of the east. It seems safe to assume that Chicago holds sway as far south as Rock Island, and it may be that the traffic being talked about is from LA and San Diego and the Bay Area.

At the bottom line, you probably don’t want to build a new alignment to put 50+ mph freight movements through the city of Chicago. Sure, in the past, 100 roads converged on the town. Now, more like four or five.

And where Longman got the idea that those companies were “noncooperating” I do not know. Not the most informed comment he could have made about the situation.