Home
Short Lines

Short Line Railroads (Class 3): List, Revenue & Definition

Last revised: August 10, 2026

Short lines—designated by the Surface Transportation Board as Class III carriers, and including many terminal and switching railroads—make up the bulk of today’s freight railroad count. They are the industry’s first- and last-mile specialists: the roads that still switch the plastics plant, the grain elevator, the paper mill, and the port lead that Class I operating plans no longer treat as core business.

According to the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA), Class II and Class III freights together number more than 600 railroads. The typical short line is a small business: on the order of 30 employees, about 80 route miles, and roughly $8 million in annual revenue—though many are smaller, and a handful approach Class II scale.

Lycoming Valley SW9 239 at Lock Haven Pennsylvania

Lycoming Valley SW9 #239 (built as Pittsburg & Shawmut #239) is seen here at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania in March, 2003. American-Rails.com collection.

Definition: What Is a Class III Short Line?

The STB classifies freights by annual operating revenue (49 C.F.R. Part 1201), with thresholds adjusted for inflation. For 2025 (latest published deflator year as of this revision):

Class I: about $1.095 billion or more
Class II: from about $49.1 million up to the Class I floor
Class III: below ~$49.1 million

Source: STB Economic Data. Older pages that still quote a Class III ceiling near $36–40 million (2016-era) or the pre-2021 base-year ladder are out of date for formal classification language. Trade writing often still says “under about $40–50 million” as a rounded rule of thumb.

In everyday speech, “short line” usually means any non-Class I freighter that is not clearly a multi-state regional. ASLRRA often groups Class II and Class III together as the short line / regional community—the first- and last-mile network that feeds the six Class Is.

Octoraro Railway Alco S2 at Kennett Square Pennsylvania 1981

Octoraro Railway S2 #4 (built as Baltimore & Ohio #490, later renumbered 9034) lays over in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania during August of 1981. This short line operated the former PRR’s Octoraro Branch between Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the state line near Sylmar, Maryland from 1977–1994. American-Rails.com collection.

At a Glance

Item	Approximate industry order of magnitude
Class III revenue ceiling (STB 2025)	Below ~$49.1 million annual operating revenue
Short line + regional count	~600+ freights (ASLRRA / AAR-style tallies)
Route miles (Class II + III combined)	Often cited near ~47,500 miles / ~30% of U.S. freight rail mileage
Employees (Class II + III)	On the order of tens of thousands; ~10% of industry employment in many AAR summaries
Industries served	Thousands of customers nationwide (ASLRRA often cites ~10,000)
Typical short line	~30 people, ~80 miles, ~$8 million revenue
Class I freights (AAR)	Six: BNSF, UP, CSX, NS, CN (U.S.), CPKC

The FRA’s October 2014 capital-needs table (7 Class Is / 21 regionals / 582 short lines, etc.) remains a useful historical snapshot but is not a current census—and its Class I count of seven is pre-CPKC consolidation.

Historical FRA snapshot (October 2014 report)

Railroad type	Number	Mileage	Employees	Revenue (billions)
Class I	7 (then; now 6 freights in AAR usage)	95,264	163,464	$67.6
Regional (Class II)	21	10,335	5,507	$1.4
Short line / local (Class III)	582	37,165	12,293	$2.6

Source: FRA, “Summary of Class II and Class III Railroad Capital Needs and Funding Sources” (October 2014). Retained here for comparison with older American-Rails editions.

How Short Lines Work—and Why They Survive

Class III freights keep alive a style of railroading that Class Is largely abandoned: small lots, flexible local service, and relationships measured in carloads rather than unit trains. Cabooses are gone, crews are shorter, footboards are history, and less-than-carload merchandise is a museum memory—but customer focus remains the short line’s edge.

Some roads depend on a handful of annual carloads. Others nearly reach Class II revenue: RJ Corman properties, Iowa Northern, Twin Cities & Western, Livonia, Avon & Lakeville, and similar systems sit in that gray zone between “big short line” and regional. Historic survivors such as Indiana Harbor Belt, St. Marys Railroad, Utah Railway, and the reborn Ann Arbor still carry century-old names into the present.

When a single shipper vanishes, the railroad can shrink overnight. The Elk River Railroad in West Virginia, built around coal on former B&O Coal & Coke and Buffalo Creek & Gauley trackage, lost its mine and later survived largely on car storage and repair. That story is common enough to be a cautionary tale for every industrial short line.

Falls Creek Railroad Alco S2 at Falls Creek Pennsylvania 1982

Falls Creek Railroad S2 #2/#62 (built as Long Island Rail Road #452), and other equipment, are tied down in Falls Creek, Pennsylvania on July 11, 1982. In 1980, this short line acquired from Conrail the 4.5 miles between Falls Creek and Mcminns Summit that remained of the former PRR branch which once linked Falls Creek with Ridgway. Operations were suspended in 1988. The paralleling Baltimore & Ohio line through this area remains active (ex-Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh). American-Rails.com collection.

Holding Companies and the Post-Staggers Boom

Short lines are not new—Maryland & Pennsylvania, Great Western of Colorado, Virginian & Truckee, and countless belt and terminal roads predating deregulation prove that. What changed after the Staggers Act of 1980 was scale: Class Is shed secondary mains and branches by the thousands of miles, and entrepreneurs (then holding companies) stepped in. Numbers more than doubled.

Genesee & Wyoming began as a small New York salt-country short line (Genesee & Wyoming Valley, later G&W) and grew into a continent-spanning holding company after purchasing Chessie castoffs as Buffalo & Pittsburgh in 1986 and later absorbing rivals such as RailAmerica. Watco, OmniTRAX, Patriot Rail, Rio Grande Pacific, Pinsly, Anacostia, and others followed similar multi-railroad models. Railfans may grumble about orange-and-black paint standardization; the business record is that professionally managed short lines have kept thousands of industries on rail.

Carbon County Railway SW9 at East Carbon Utah

Carbon County Railway SW9 #1201 lays over at the road’s small engine terminal in East Carbon, Utah during the 1970s. This system was organized in 1922 by Utah Coal & Coke/Columbia Steel to run from a connection with the Rio Grande’s Sunnyside Branch at East Carbon to coal mines at Columbia, 4.8 miles away. During World War II it was extended to serve the Geneva Mine. The Columbia mine closed in 1967; the Geneva mine in 1982; track was later removed in 2008. American-Rails.com collection.

Motive Power: Where Classics Still Work

If you care about first-generation diesels, short lines remain the best hunting ground: GE 44-tonners, Alco S-series switchers, EMD GP7s and SD9s, and occasional rarities still earning revenue. Some roads deliberately specialize—Livonia, Avon & Lakeville’s Alco fleet, SMS Rail Lines’ Baldwins—while others mix whatever secondhand power is cheapest to keep online. New Class IIIs still appear; the revived Grafton & Upton in Massachusetts is one recent example of a historic name returning to freight life.

Holding Company Profiles on American-Rails.com

Selected Company Profiles

Northeast

Southeast

Midwest

Southwest

Northwest

Selected defunct lines (profiles)

State Directory

Jump to state short-line pages (or notes) on American-Rails.com:

Alabama
Alaska — Alaska Railroad (ARR): the state’s principal freighter and passenger carrier; Class II regional scale (~500+ miles including secondary trackage; Seward/Whittier–Fairbanks core). Founded 1914 on the Alaska Northern project.
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota — Dakota, Missouri Valley & Western (DMVW); Dakota Northern (DN); Northern Plains Railroad (NPR); see also Red River Valley & Western and Yellowstone Valley (Watco) for regional Dakotas/Montana agricultural and energy traffic
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island — see Providence & Worcester; Seaview Railroad (Quonset/Davisville)
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Trade association: ASLRRA. Industry companion pages: Regionals · Class Is.