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Business View Magazine
Nashville & Eastern Railroad
Federal legislation helps a dying industry rebound and flourish
William Drunsic is a rail guy. The Nashville & Eastern Rail
Road president may spend over three quarters of his year
in Vermont, where he moved to raise his family, but his
entrepreneurial spirit lives on down south with the busi-
ness he created almost 30 years ago.
In 1986, Bill along with his partners, formed the Nash-
ville & Eastern Railroad (NERR) to resurrect short line
freight rail operations over one hundred and ten miles
of what was soon to be abandoned track in the heart of
Tennessee.
Stephen Drunsic – NERR’s Vice President of Operations
(and Bill’s son) – discusses just what the situation looked
like at the time and how NERR began.
“It all started with the Staggers Act,” Stephen says.
In the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War
II, many railroads were driven out of business due to in-
creased competition from the airline and trucking indus-
tries. The decline of commercial rail traffic, in particular,
was considerable. The Staggers Act was passed by Con-
gress in 1980. It, and another important piece of legisla-
tion, the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform
Act of 1976, was promulgated with the intent of reduc-
ing crippling federal regulation of railroads so that they
could more readily compete with the two other systems
of transport.
The reforms put in place with these two laws included
greater flexibility in the setting of rates and pricing, great-
er independence from collective rate making procedures
in rail pricing, service offers, and contract rates, and, to
a lesser extent, greater freedom for entry into, and exit
