The Stone Consulting team has been involved in over 25 shortline freight and tourist railroad startups. We have handled the process from conceptual planning and business plans through negotiations for acquisition and implementation of the actual operations. In five of these cases our staff has assumed the role of General Manager of the resulting operation. The majority of these cases included rehabilitation planning and project management.

We have been asked to look at existing branch and shortline operations. In these cases we have looked at the financial viability of the property, analyzed opportunities for increasing revenue and/or controlling costs. Although our goal is always to find a realistic way the make a property successful, and we take pride in our creative approaches, we have in two cases found no redeeming factors and recommended the rail operations to be discontinued.

The Stone Consulting team is ready to respond to your needs. 100% of our startup projects were successfully implemented. We look forward to bringing this success record to your freight rail project.