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I don't know, people say their management was infiltrated and sabotaged by competitors, could be partly true but they'd been in and out of bankruptcy more than once before they went defunct and never were a financially strong railroad.
I think the main reason for their departure was that they were trying to exist in an era of industry contraction & mergers and they ended up being the odd man out with electrics, deteriorating tracks, and an untenable rolling stock leasing situation that made the railroad unappealing to potential merger partners.
Had they caught some breaks here or there (like the planned merger with the CNW that the ICC shot down) maybe they could have made it; as it stands they were the weakest of the western lines at the nadir of railroading in the US, and that was that.
