Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway

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The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway was an affiliate of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in east Texas with terminus in Galveston , Houston and Purcell , Oklahoma .

history

Independent

Bridge over the Brazos River

In 1873 Houston and Galveston emerged as rivals; the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad was the only connection between the two cities. Dispute between Houston and Galveston repeatedly found new food through quarantine imposed on trains traveling between Galveston and Houston. They were mostly based on yellow fever outbreaks or epidemics . Therefore, Galveston decided to build its own railway line through Texas, its so-called pan handle, around Austin , which led across the state line to Santa Fe (New Mexico) in order to bypass Houston. To this end, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad Company (GCSF) was founded, and the state of Texas provided the necessary building site.

The law was passed in 1873, but construction only began two years later. The first building plans were drawn up by a former Confederate Army commander , General Braxton Bragg . On February 8, 1875, the Board decided on the location of the operating plant and terminal or junction with the route Galveston, Harrisburg San Antonio . In early 1875 it was about a bridge over Galveston Bay and the connection from Arcola, Texas. On April 30, 1875, Henry Rosenberg, President of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway Company signed a contract with Burnett & Kilpatrick to build the bridge over the Bay, including a lifting bridge.

May 1, 1875 saw the groundbreaking for the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad. After the lengthy prelude, on May 28th there were tracks as far as Arcola and plans reached as far as the Brazos River .

In September 1876, the Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Railroad built their new passenger train depot, which the CSF then shared.

In March 1877, construction work from Galveston to Arcola was finished and the first trains were running. The bridge over the Brazos River followed in October, including a connection to Richmond (Texas) with the route to San Antonio (Texas) . This created a direct connection that was 11 miles shorter from Galveston than any other existing railway. In the following year the iron bridge over the Brazos River with a length of 480 feet was completed and in October the regular train service was able to dispose of the whole route.

In December 1878 there were financing difficulties, at the end of which the company got its route to Richmond expanded, but even passed into the possession of George Sealy after it had been publicly auctioned. The new board planned to continue building the route to Brenham .

The new chief engineer Bernard Moore Temple developed plans for the center of Texas, the board of directors procured route rights into Houston. Over time, this route developed into the lifeline of society: in 1880, the GCSF took over the first railroad distribution of a daily newspaper in the United States. When a quarantine was again imposed between Galveston and Houston, the Galveston News could get on a separate train from Galveston to Rosenberg with a special train and from there the daily news about Texas could be distributed with the Houston and Texas Central Railway.

The railway line reached a length of 226 miles in March 1886 when Belton, Texas was connected. The line had been provided with a telegraph line and the benefits of this investment were felt in the same year. In 1882 the railway reached Lampasas and a branch line from Alvin to Houston was added.

Many cities and towns sponsored railroad construction with amounts ranging from $ 70 like Nickleville to $ 85,000 from Fort Worth . Rosenberg, Sealy, Somerville, Killeen, Moody, Wallis, Ballinger and Temple became important hubs.

In the mid-1880s, Walter Justin Sherman took over the post of chief engineer. Sherman introduced new methods of raising the morale of railroad workers with moderate alcohol rations.

As early as 1881, the GCSF attracted the attention of some railway magnates. Jay Gould held a monopoly in North Texas that threatened the railways in Texas, including the Gulf, Colorado route. William Barstow Strong , President of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, was Gould's adversary in seeking commercial and commercial contracts.

Sealy and his managers of the Gulf, Colorado route soon realized that it would require traffic beyond Texas to keep it going. William Strong solved the problem by connecting the two routes. On March 25, 1886, the shareholders gave George Sealy the clearance to exchange shares in both companies.

Through the agreement, the GCSF was able to expand its route from Fort Worth through the Indian Territory to Purcel, in order to connect there to the railroad to Atchison. Then the Gulf, Colorado route was built to Paris and created the connection to St. Louis and San Francisco as well as a branch line from Cleburne to Weatherford. On April 26, 1887, Sherman and his workers reached Purcell four hours ahead of schedule and ahead of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Company. The first trains ran from Kansas City to Galveston in June .

With the completion of the line to Purcell, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe should get control of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe. The contract concluded on March 3, 1886 between Sealy and Strong provided for the transfer of all GCSF shares to Atchison for eight million dollars in Atchison shares. On March 23, ATSF managers were elected to the board of directors of Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe, completing the merger .

The Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe route was officially transferred to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, but remained an important railroad for the company because it connected many of the larger cities in Texas to its main port.

In 1897 the growing interest in the GCSF route was confirmed by Fred Harvey's restaurant and hotel chain, who entered into an agreement with the ATSF whose restaurants, along with the railroad, went into a song, book and other entertainment media.

As an investment company

The GCSF also helped rebuild Galveston after the storm of 1900. In 1904, the railway company made a strip of land available on which a canal was laid to rebuild the city at an elevated level. In 1908, the GCSF and other railway companies built a new causeway from Galveston to the mainland.

In 1912 the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Company announced plans for a new Galveston facility with offices in an enameled reinforced concrete structure for the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe. In 1932 the building was expanded and supplied with its own thermal power station.

After the Second World War , the Santa Fe tried to expand its freight traffic. For this purpose, block train transports were introduced, for example the “Cotton Special” in 1949 as a cotton transport from Lubbock in west Texas to the spinning mills in Galveston.

In the 1960s, Santa Fe worked with many companies to expand their network on a large scale. In one such case, Santa Fe took over the removal of the Duval Corporation from their sulfur mine in Rustler Springs, Texas. For this purpose, the Santa Fe built a connecting line and realized the pioneering idea of ​​transporting sulfur in the molten state from the mine to the processing in Galveston, after which it could then be shipped. This made it easier to transport sulfur over longer distances than before. To do this, it was heated to 290 degrees Fahrenheit and loaded into tankers. The concept was so good that three block trains with 66 tankers each were purchased and used in a 930-mile (1,467 km) cycle.

The Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad Company merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. Together they are known as the Santa Fe Railroad. It was not until 1965 that the ownership of the Gulf Company was also notarized to the ATSF and it lost its formal independence.

The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad Company was swallowed up by the later Santa Fe Company , but its legacy is spread across Texas. Without the GCSF, many cities and towns in Texas would never have existed. Galveston, as well as commerce and textiles in Texas, developed by rail. It connected Galveston with the cotton fields of the upper Brazos region and the wheat fields of the Midwest. Although the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railroad Company no longer exists, their railroads live on in the "Gulf Section" of the ATSF .

credentials