Missouri Pacific Railroad
The Missouri Pacific Railroad ( AAR Reporting mark: MP ) was one of the first railroad companies in the United States west of the Mississippi River .
history
On July 4, 1851 , the groundbreaking for the construction of the Pacific Railroad took place in St. Louis , Missouri . It was also the beginning of the history of the Missouri Pacific Railroad . The first section of the line was completed in 1852, and in 1865 the Pacific Railroad was the first railroad company to serve Kansas City after construction was interrupted by the Civil War. In 1872 the Pacific Railroad was reorganized into the Missouri Pacific Railway .
Jay Gould , a New York financier, ran the company from 1879 to 1915 . Under his leadership, the route network was expanded to Colorado , Nebraska , Arkansas , Texas , and Louisiana . In 1917 the company merged with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway and was renamed Missouri Pacific Railroad .
The Missouri Pacific was a Class-1 , which had grown out of several mergers and acquisitions -Eisenbahngesellschaft. Some of the so integrated companies were the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway , Texas and Pacific Railway , Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad , St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway , Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf Railway , Midland Valley Railroad , Gulf Coast Lines , International-Great Northern Railroad , New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railway , Missouri-Illinois Railroad and the small Central Branch Railway as well as joint ventures like the Alton and Southern Railroad .
In 1933 the company had to file for bankruptcy and was under administration until 1956. From 1959, the much smaller pipeline company Mississippi River Fuel Corporation began acquiring shares in the railroad company. From 1962 she had the majority of votes in the shareholders' meeting. In 1976 this company was renamed Missouri Pacific Corporation.
In the 1980s, the Missouri Pacific owned 18,458 kilometers of track in eleven states, over 1,500 mostly modern diesel locomotives and was a pioneer in computer-based rail operations. It was one of the most important railroad companies for the transportation of grain, coal, ore and cars. In 1982 the Missouri Pacific had more and more modern locomotives and more route kilometers than its merger partner, the Union Pacific Railroad .
On December 22, 1982, the Missouri Pacific merged with the Union Pacific and the Western Pacific Railroad to form the Union Pacific System . The company was now subordinate to the Union Pacific Corporation and retained its entrepreneurial independence until January 1, 1997.
Passenger trains
From 1915 onwards, individual "flagship trains" were given names. For example, the Scenic Limited between St. Louis, Kansas City and Pueblo or the Sunshine Special , which ran between St. Louis, Little Rock , Austin and San Antonio . The Sunshine Special was one of the first air-conditioned trains in the American Southwest in the 1930s.
In the times of streamlining, all Missouri Pacific trains were known as Eagles. For example, there was the Missouri River Eagle (between St. Louis, Kansas City and Omaha ), the Delta Eagle (between Memphis and Tallulah ), the Colorado Eagle (between St Louis, Pueblo and Denver ), the Texas Eagle (from St. Louis to Texas) and the Valley Eagle (from Houston to Corpus Christi and Brownsville ). In the 1960s, the volume of passenger traffic fell sharply, so that Amtrak only took over the Missouri River Eagle route into its route network after it was founded in 1971 . In 1974, however, the Texas Eagle route was added to the Amtrak network.
Type designation Pacific
The internationally common name Pacific for express train steam locomotives with a 2'C1 ' wheel arrangement goes back to the fact that the Missouri Pacific Railroad was the first railway company to put a larger series of this type into service at the beginning of the 20th century.
literature
- Joe Welsh: The railroad in the USA . transpress Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-613-71321-5
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erhard Born: 2 C 1. Development and history of the Pacific locomotives. Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung Stuttgart 1964, page 21