Canadian National Railway (CN) has been given the green light by the Surface Transportation Board in USA to purchase the main lines of Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Co. from US Steel in a deal that is expected to close at the end of January.
CN will purchase from U.S. Steel Corp. 316 km of track of which EJ&E operates over 198 mainline miles of track in southern Illinois and northern Indiana.
Accordingly, the company is paying $300 million for the route and is planning to pay $100 million on infrastructure improvements and another $60 million on environmental mitigation to deal with concerns raised by a number of communities the rail passes through. CN has already negotiated a number of agreements with several communities.
The board's decision will take effect Jan. 23 and CN is expected to close the deal shortly afterward.