UP–NS Transcontinental Merger — Docket Tracker
49 U.S.C. § 11325(b)(3) requires the Board to conclude evidentiary proceedings within one year of the publication of notice, and to issue a final decision within 90 days after that. The acceptance notice published on 29 May 2026 (91 FR 32171). On the statute's plain terms, the evidentiary record closes on or about 29 May 2027, with a decision due by late August.
Decision No. 21 holds the proceeding in abeyance — and never once mentions § 11325(b)(3). It suspends the Board's own procedural schedule. It says nothing about the statutory one. The abeyance rests instead on § 1321(b)(3) — the Board's power to gather information. The two are not the same thing.
So the clock is not established as paused, and it is not established as running. The Board has not said, and no party has put the question on the record. If it runs, every day of abeyance is a day subtracted from the evidentiary phase. This tracker counts the statutory date because it is the only one written into law. Mid-2027 is the applicants' target — not a schedule.
Reading the service numbers everyone's about to quote at the Board? See the Merger Desk's live six-road dwell-vs-speed view → steelwheels.co/railservice.
Docket Timeline
Primary Sources & Filing Links
| Source | What it is |
|---|---|
| STB UP–NS Merger Resources | The Board's consolidated docket resource page — check this first |
| ALJ Decision No. 25 (8 JUL 2026) | Custodians and production deadlines — 34 added, 66 ordered in total; the applicants' cap denied |
| Decision No. 21 (28 MAY 2026) | Acceptance, abeyance, the nine supplemental issues, full EIS — the load-bearing decision |
| Decision No. 13 (18 MAR 2026) | The HSR-style ordinary-course document order, entered on the Board's own motion |
| Decision No. 9 (16 JAN 2026) | The rejection for incompleteness — and the Schedule 5.8 privilege fight |
| 91 FR 32171 (29 MAY 2026) | The acceptance notice — the date the statutory clock runs from |
| 49 U.S.C. § 11325 | The one-year evidentiary clock and the 90-day decision deadline |
| 49 CFR § 1180.1 | The 2001 major-merger rules — the affirmative “enhance competition” standard, applied here for the first time |
| Applicants' STB Filing Hub | Party filings — applicant-curated. Note: the “Explore the Filing” button serves the December PDFs; the amended volumes sit at different URLs. Verify against the Board's own docket. |
| STB Rail Service Data (EP 770) | Weekly Class I service metrics — terminal dwell, train speed, cars online |
Related Dockets · Precedent Watch
Separate STB proceedings the Merger Desk tracks for precedent value — how the Board reads and enforces railroad-merger conditions elsewhere. These are not part of the FD 36873 docket above; the Board has drawn no connection between them and UP–NS. Any relevance noted here is SteelWheels.Co's analysis, labeled as such.
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Positioning before the schedule resumes?
SteelWheels.Co provides merger-impact readiness assessments for shortlines, shippers, ports, and lessors — interchange exposure, divestiture-candidate line analysis, trackage-rights operating-cost modeling, and motive-power fleet implications. Read the docket from the field, not the footnotes.