Rail road business plans – documents designed to articulate the construction and operation of a new railroad line – are technically-demanding and detail-driven documents. The major U.S. railway companies do not often expand the existing system of tracks, and new entrants to this market have been thin in recent years. However, the increasing demands of global trade and stretching the port systems past capacity, and new shipping ports and stockyards do call for fresh lines of tracks. But a rail road business plan needs to do more than give the backstory or describe the “market need†for an investor or bank-affiliated financier. They have to delve into the technical details of the new line, explaining the where, the why, and the how of the expansion. Plans like this typically address:
• The capacity of the new tracks and the intended purpose of their carriage
• The infrastructure cost and its financing plan
• The total capital requirements and the repayment or equity scenario
• The present competition and any external threats
• The timeline for development and implementation
Depending on the requirements of the lender or financial institution financing the expanded railway, you will most likely need a five year pro forma that shows the potential for expanded profits based on these new railways. If there are any services other than bulk transit you intend to offer, break those out separately and try to identify how much revenue will come from each category. Keeping your projections in line with generally accepted metrics for this industry is important, so have consultants double check your work and try to employ publicly-available data sets wherever possible. MasterPlans has a team of in-house research and financial modeling experts you can take advantage of rather than fumbling through this process on your own. With more than a decade of experience and 10,000 plans written to date, Team MP can be your top resource for a rail road business plan. Call a consultant at 877-453-2011 and we can explain more.
