Very true. The railroad barons worked hand-in-glove with Andrew Carnegie and William Clay Frick to keep Pittsburgh the king of steel. Walk around town here and look at buildings from that period and the opulence is just amazing.
Carnegie and Frick (Henry not William) were long dead and gone before the feds started setting rail road rates. And the mills in Birmingham and the mills in Pittsburgh were owned by the same companies. Why would they conspire to limit the market for their own mills in the South?