If at first Canadian Pacific could not succeed in buying a fellow railroad operator, it looks prepared to try again with another target.

Canadian Pacific has held preliminary discussions with Norfolk Southern, one of only a handful of operators that control the roughly 95,000 miles of top-quality railroad tracks in the United States, a person briefed on the matter said on Monday.

Canadian Pacific, one of Canada’s biggest railroad operators, has also hired advisers.

Still, the two railroads ultimately may not reach a deal, this person cautioned. In a statement on Monday afternoon, Canadian Pacific said that it had no “material news” to report at the moment, and declined to comment further. A spokesman for Norfolk Southern declined to comment.

If a deal is reached, it would be the latest reshaping of the North American rail industry, which has rapidly consolidated since the government deregulated the sector in the early 1980s. That has led to a severe winnowing in the number of companies, from 56 so-called Class I railroads in 1975 to seven in 2005.