ABOUT

About Us

MidRail is a freight rail operating company focused on originating, acquiring, consolidating, and developing integrated rail assets and operations across North America. MidRail intends to acquire and operate private industrial rail operations and outsourcing opportunities, short lines, Class I spin-offs, independent rail facilities and operators, select rail technology businesses and logistics and transportation services companies. We are seeking to deploy a minimum of $1 billion of capital over the next two to three years in freight rail and logistics and transportation businesses. As an operating company, we have the permanent capital to make things happen in the smaller, undercapitalized and underfollowed segments. We seek out management and companies that have been overlooked by others. The company was founded by Gilbert H. Lamphere along with a team of railroad operating executives with over 200 years of combined rail experience.

Mr. Lamphere is the original financier of Precision Scheduled Railroading and is the former Chairman of the Illinois Central Railway (I.C.), Co-Founder of MidSouth Rail Corporation, and former board member of Canadian National Railway, CSX, and Florida East Coast Railway (FLE). Mr. Lamphere has led teams that bought, managed, and turned around I.C. and MidSouth (the first Shortline rail holding company), creating gains for investors over $2.3 billion; he was a critical director of Canadian National and FLE, led by former I.C. executives who produced gains of over $25 billion for shareholders. Former I.C. executives also turned around Southern Pacific Railroad with gains of $3 billion for shareholders. MidRail's management team includes co-founder Raj K. Gupta, a 30-year infrastructure and private equity investment team veteran. Mr. Gupta has been deeply immersed in the rail industry for ten years and has actively participated in most North American freight rail transactions in the last five years. Mr. Gupta has analyzed and negotiated over 25 rail transactions (exceeding $4 billion in TEV), including Dow Rail, which he conceptualized, the acquisition of Patriot Rail Holdings, and developing a new railroad company from scratch to run Shortlines railroad track spun-off from a Class I railroad.

MESSAGE FROM OUR FOUNDERS

Our team is known for doing what many say, "can't be done." We are railroad operators but above all we are 'Precision Scheduled Railroaders' who look for outside-the-box solutions combined with best-in-class practices.

Our team possesses deep rail and transportation industry contacts, valuation tools to isolate critical metrics for operational analysis and financial modeling, reputations to seal transactions with commitments and the hands-on experience to implement change and grow enterprises of all sizes. We have the expertise to close deals with larger railroads and customers (generally inhibited and cautious) and smaller owners or customers (generally wary and wise to operating control issues). Our team's relationships and credibility allow us to fill unexpected or potential capitalization gaps relatively quickly, and we have the critical desire and mobility to be the boots on the ground for any opportunity.

We see a gap in the rail industry between the Class I's, who excel at expedited, scheduled "hook and haul" over longer distances, and short lines, whose local focus, lack of analytic processes and lack of access to capital limit their opportunities; between fragmented rail suppliers/service providers and huge industrial corporations with ample resources that don't know railroading; and between large shippers with their own rail assets and rail logistics systems and experienced railroad operators. We aim to fill that gap.

We invite railroad, logistics and transportation business owners, executives, and entrepreneurs to become our partners in building long-lasting businesses.