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As to recent mergers, I am fairly sure the BN and Santa Fe could have survived separately.
As to earlier mergers of the 60's and 70's, there is surviving and there is prospering. The pre BN roads probably could have survived (especially the NP and CB&Q after the Wyoming and Montana coal fields were opened), but would they have necessarily prospered?
As a kid I lived five years in Sikeston, MO (pronounced "Misery"). An east-west MoPac branch line ran through town as well as a north-south Frisco (St. Louis-Memphis ?) main line. From what I can tell by looking at satellite imagery, the MoPac branchline is gone and the former Frisco line is now BNSF and serves a large coal fired power plant west of town.
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