Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In reply to Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) :

There's a Delanson here in New York, which derives it's name from Delaware And Hudson. Before being renamed to Delanson, when the railroad came to town, it had the rather quaint name of Toad Hollow.

There's a shocking number of cities that are named for the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, better known as the Frisco. Frisco City, Alabama, Frisco, Texas, Frisco, Missouri and Frisco, Louisiana all attribute their names to the railroad. There were also some less obvious ones along the Frisco, named for company officers.  Merriam, Kansas, was named after Charles Merriam of Boston, a director of the road. Dana, Kansas was named for I. P. Dana, former attorney of predecessor, Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis. Sprague is named for the former superintendent of telegraph, H. C. Sprague. Between Ft. Scott and Springfield, the towns of Lockwood and Dumbeck appear, one of these named for the former general passenger agent; the other for a former general freight agent.

Langtry, Texas was named for George Langtry, a railroad engineer for the Southern Pacific. Judge Roy Bean, famous as the law West of the Pecos, rewrote that history by force of personality. He sold worldwide the fiction that he had named the town for Lillie Langtry, the British-American actress.

Abilene, Texas was created by the building of the Texas and Pacific Railway line, cattlemen and developers working in concert. They wanted a cattle market similar to Abilene, Kansas, and so they named it after it.

In 1860, the Houston and Texas Central Railways built a line through the region that would become College Station – so-named largely because the railroad was there. Texas A&M University, originally The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, opened its doors in 1876. The next year, the U.S. Postal Service designated the town College Station, since that was the name of the railroad passenger depot at the new college.

Summit, Oklahoma, platted as South Muskogee in 1910, had a post office as early as 1896. One of more than fifty All-Black towns of Oklahoma, Summit was one of thirteen Black towns still existing at the end of the twentieth century. The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway had a depot in the community. The town may have been named Summit because it was the highest point on the railroad between Arkansas and the North Canadian rivers. I believe there is quite a few towns named Summit, or with Summit in their name, for similar reasons.

There is also a Katy, Texas, named for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway, which went by the Katy.

There is a Helper, Utah, named because it was where D&RGW stationed helper engines for the shove up the Wasatch Plateau to Soldier Summit.

Damn, I believed Judge Roy....

In other news, Kansas City Southern's days are numbered. On April 14th, 2023 it will cease to operate as an independent entity, merging with Canadian Pacific to form the clumsily-named Canadian Pacific Kansas City. All signs indicate that Canadian Pacific will be the dominant partner. Kansas City Southern traces it's heritage all the way back to 1887 and, despite sometimes seeming like "the forgotten Class I", has never gone bankrupt and has expanded it's reach as far south as Mexico City, Mexico due to purchasing the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México from the Mexican government. That brilliant red, yellow and Brunswick green (yes, that's green, not black) will be missed, although I'm sure it will take considerable time for it to fully vanish.

Kansas City Southern stands out for making the final purchase of new intercity passenger cars for any U.S. railroad before Amtrak began placing orders in the early 1970s. It purchased ten new cars for their top train, the Southern Belle, in 1965. Of course, at the time, no one knew just how bad the passenger industry was about to turn with the loss of the postal contract in 1967.

The railroad mergers sure have been odd.  KCS will be missed.  My childhood favorite SP and SSP are long gone too.  Variety used to be the spice of life.... now it interferes with a small group of people all too much.  It's really odd seeing red engines with CN lettering in Jackson, MS.  I'm not sure I like how things are going, and this doesn't bode well for the average person IMO. 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

At least the general public has been getting an idea of just how berkeleyed up the railroads are, between the derailments this year & threat of strikes last year. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

At least the general public has been getting an idea of just how berkeleyed up the railroads are, between the derailments this year & threat of strikes last year. 

Infrastructure actually needs maintenance too?  That's crazy talk.  
 

Its interesting how companies and government sacrificed the infrastructure for other causes and quarterly profits to appease investors.  
 

It will be a tough path towards repairs now but it's possible.

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

I can't believe that the STB really approved the merger. They're having all these issues with poor service and mismanagement, they all got taken to task by the STB this summer over this (I think KCS was the one who was least problematic), and now they're going to allow a massive merger. And CP, which will be the dominant partner, has Keith Creel, prodigal son of Hunter Harrison, at the helm. If I were in charge, I'd have said "Nope, go and tend to your own affairs, prove you can run what you already have and then maybe we'll talk about mergers." I'm expecting some sort of service meltdown in short order.

I will say, that of the two railroads making a play for KCS, Canadian Pacific is the better option. Canadian Pacific was willing to pay what KCS was actually worth, and KCS and CP have multiple points where their systems overlap and interchange, which means you'll have a smoother integration of traffic. Canadian National was trying to wildly overpay for KCS just to steal it away from CP, which would have financially weakened CN and put them in a precarious position for the post-merger expenses, and CN and KCS had exactly one interchange point, which would have meant it would have been a chokepoint that all traffic would have had to funnel through.

The big thing that stands out to me is that this merger kind of leaves CN out in the cold. Honestly, this should have been handled like when ATSF and SP were fighting over Western Pacific: the ICC said "This affects either railroad too much, the Western Pacific should remain independent." And it makes me wonder what CN, and the other Class Is', next move will be. Will this kick off another big round of mega-mergers? Will we see CN pursue a merger with BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe Canadian National?) or UP? In response to the fact that CP now stretches coast-to-coast and from Canada to Mexico, will NS and CSX start looking at merging with UP or BNSF for a true transcontinental railroad?

The Southern Belle departs Kansas City, Missouri on October 18, 1968 on it's southbound run to New Orleans. The lead E7 was purchased secondhand from the Maine Central and still wears the full KCS Southern Belle livery, while the F7B behind it is in the simplified "red dip". Tucked in ahead of the baggage car is a Southern Pacific lightweight sleeper car that must be deadheading back to the SP.

A GP30 and an F7 resting at the yard in Alexandria, Louisiana. The GP30 is in the standard red dip livery, a matte medium red with a black roofline. The F7A is wearing the earlier version though, unofficially referred to as "blondes" with the yellow band around the windshield. This was pretty short-lived and ditched fairly early or further cost savings.

A single KCS Erie-Built A-unit and four Erie-Built boosters slumber at Kansas City, Missouri in 1966. The KCS was pretty much an EMD-only show early on, but they must have been tempted by the Raymond Loewy styling on the Erie-Built. They were not such a fan of the reliability on them though, and in '56 sent them back to EMD for repowering with 1500hp EMD 567s (New York Central did the same thing) and then shuffled them off into freight service. A couple years after this photo, they were traded back in to EMD and scrapped. There also appears to be a Union Pacific GP9B hanging out behind them.

Two F3As in the ill-advised "Ghost" livery that they introduced in 1966 on new second-generation power. Within two years, they replaced the white with battleship grey, which didn't age much better. The racks of pulpwood in the front cars is synonomous with southern railroading of this era.

A GP9, an F7B, and an end-cab switcher make for an odd lashup as they head through Reserve, LA with a local freight train.

While KCS had the best livery of the modern Class Is, with the revived Southern Belle livery, they do have the distinction of having the absolute worst bicentennial unit. School children were tasked with coming up with a design, and somehow this unharmonious blend of red, white, blue, green, brown, pink, purple and yellow was the winner. I would have hated to see what the losers were. KCS had two SD40-2s in this paint scheme, although they repainted them into regular paint schemes in short order.

Kansas City Southern in the steam era was almost completely ignored, and in truth, there wasn't much to miss. It's steam locomotives tended towards the small and conservative side, in terms of wheel arrangements. For example, they relied mostly on Consolidations, Pacifics and Ten-Wheelers, all of questionable aesthetic. They had headlights perched on top of smokeboxes, no number plate or builder plate in the center of the smokebox, Vanderbilt tenders, and the Pacifics had those clunky Cole trailing trucks and disc drivers on the center axle, and had parts painted with aluminum paint seeming at random. They did own a handful of Santa Fes, but those were purchased secondhand from the Wabash and their Wabash heritage was apparent. They also had some astonishing 2-8-8-0 Mallets, nicknamed Big Mallies by the crews, which were, in the words of Joe Collias, "possesed of a Silurian aspect" and resembled a mobile factory as much as they resembled a steam locomotive. The Mikado wheel arrangement was completely ignored, as was any sort of 4-axled express locomotive. 

So, it was a bit surprising when, in 1937, the Kansas City Southern placed an order with Lima for ten massive 2-10-4s. One of the more forgotten examples of the Lima SuperPower mindset, they packed a 310psi boiler, a number rarely surpassed by non-experimental locomotives, with 70" drivers and 27"x34" cylinders. As was the case with many midwest railroads, half were delivered as oil-burners and the other half burned coal. The oil burners weighed 509,000 pounds and the coal burners weighed 514,000 pounds, and the tenders weighed another 359,690 pounds. They generated 93,302lbs of tractive effort and were reportedly capable of meeting passenger schedules when assigned to troop trains during WWII. They were also unique in appearance amongst KCS power, with their centered headlights, graphited smokeboxes, bell hung out over the front, and dark green boiler jackets. Although originally intended for the Shreveport-KC run, World War II delayed upgrading the rail south of De Queen, Ark. to the 127lb/yard standard, so these engines worked on the Northern Division only.

Two of the 2-10-4s rolling out of the Pittsburg roundhouse.

I don't know why but to me GP7 and GP9s with high hoods just look right.  I really like that KCS GP9.  I've been trying to score a nice GP9 for my HO layout with DCC and sound.  I can paint and decal it if needed but a TX Pacific one would be ideal.  I wish I had your skill for searching railpictures.net.  I always get too many returns on my searches or too few. 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

When it comes to the early Geeps, I've always preferred the low-nose GP18s. They had the unique angle-cut hood that was rather jaunty looking. They weren't super common though. The GP18 was a comparatively slow seller (only 350 units compared to 4092 GP9s) and a lot of railroads were still opting for high hoods at that point in time.

I also really like the GP30, with that skyline casing over the flat-topped cab that gave it a real brooding look.

Most of the other EMD products are too hard to tell apart. Same on the SD side of things. The only ones there that I can really identify at a first glance are the SD45s, because of those big flared radiators. And then the SD45-2 took that distinguishing characteristic away.

SP had some GP9s that came very late in the GP9's life cycle, and by that point EMD had added a low nose option (it was never available on the GP7). It used an angled hood similar to the GP18. SP was the sole buyer of these factory-built low-hood GP9s, and pretty much all chop-nose jobs used a flat hood top, like the later GP30/GP35/etc.

The (original) Norfolk Southern GP18s went through a weird life. In 1974, Southern fully absorbed the Norfolk Southern. The GP18s went over to the Southern roster, where they stood out with their low noses and short hood forward configuration. Southern actually sent them through their shops and rebuilt them with tall hoods and flipped the control stands around so that they would run long hood forward, pretty much the opposite of what everyone else was doing. They then ended up on a Norfolk Southern roster again in '82, after Southern and Norfolk & Western merged. It was short-lived though, as they were traded in to EMD in '85.

Love the early GPs!  Yes T&P had some GP18s too and they were low nose!  They ended up in the MoPac fleet. It seems most of the HO GP18s are high nose though.   I was looking at another branch RR to model last night in the town I lived in during HS.  The branch line has existed since the late 1800s but it run by WATCO now.  It has one SW9, one 70 tonner and one GP35 to complete it's roster.  It still moves tank cars, gondolas, bulkhead flat cars, and covered hoppers to this day.  It has an interchange with the UP for it's traffic.  It's a 19 mile long branch in the middle of nowhere.  The scenery would be easy to model as well.  The tough part is getting it all onto a shelf.  I have a 12' by 15" shelf in the garage for HO.  For N scale I used to have a large room, but now it'll probably be on a portable table when I get to it.  My N scale is those big TX coal trains pulled by SP/SSP and BN power and local freights.  BN actually had rights to pull the coal train from Ft. Worth to San Antonio over the SP trackage.  SP / SSP always pulled the empties back though.  Most people don't know, but TX is actually a huge wedge with an almost continuous grade.  It took a lot of motive power to move those empties back north.