If you think about it, the dissolution of both the Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific was inevitable. Either the SPSF merger would have been consummated and most likely the western super system would suffer the same ill fate as Penn Central, or they would be merged into the BN and UP, as what actually happened. Most likely, the result of a hypothetical SPSF merger may have caused the UP and BN to draw up a merger plan, as a southwestern super system would have tipped the balance of competition solely in favor of the new system, so most likely the UP would need the BN to survive. The redundancy of the new SPSF system would most likely be grounds for abandonment of thousands of miles of trackage, and almost certainly a mass lay-off of thousands of employees as well, triggering a massive labor dispute. I'd imagine this would cause the SPSF to collapse, leaving either the Santa Fe or SP as a sole survivor, or another western road to take it's place, either UP, BN, a combination of the two, or possibly some sort of Conrail like system put in place to pick of the pieces. So I guess, critically speaking, it was it good thing the cards fell the way they did.