Frisco Mississippi River line Memphis to Saint Louis aka Frisco River Division

[SPer]

Had the Frisco line between Memphis and Saint Louis via Cape Girardeau,MO hosted steam locomotives in the steam era, if so, what wheel arrangement used on that route.

[Overmod]

There are Memphis-specific experts here and on the Trains Magazine forum.  (Ironically enough I live there now but have little idea which actual classes were used).

Suspect a good range of classes used that line.  

[Jones1945]

Before someone revealing the answer, let's enjoy some photos of Frisco's steam streamliner. Some photos were taken in Memphis:

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/frisco/friscoline/streamline1.cfm

https://thelibrary.org/lochist/frisco/friscoline/streamline2.cfm

 

 

[Overmod]

The true streamlined engines were, I think, used on the Firefly, which was a far west-end train, between Kansas City and Oklahoma.  The semi-streamlined engines were on the Sunnyland (which I think was combined with the Firefly much later, in the E-unit era).

Here's stuff around Memphis:

https://condrenrails.com/MRP/MemphisCentralStation/Frisco-Memphis-Pass-Pixs.htm

Note the comment down the page about splitting northbound trains so one 'section' could go to St. Louis and the other to KC.  These would diverge at Turrell, on the west side of the Mississippi bridge, with the St. Louis trains taking the aforementioned 'river' line through Hayti and Cape Girardeau to St. Louis.  You cannot judge that power seen at Memphis would necessarily appear on the River Line.

Frisco traffic, like Frisco history, could be a little peculiar.  As I recall, at one point the idea was to establish a west-bank line from St. Louis all the way to New Orleans (essentially in competition with the IC line which of course missed St. Louis considerably and ran via Carbondale) but the Frisco's actual "gulf" connection only came later, via a line diverging just east of Tupelo.  This left Memphis as the 'nexus' of a bunch of routes, but much of the traffic from the West had its own route 'direct' to and from St. Louis.

[WILLIAM O CRAIG]

In the book Frisco Power by Joe G. Collias (MM Books, 1984) there are photos of Mikados working freight on the Frisco's River Division, one of them double-headed with a Ten-Wheeler, and 1000-class Pacifics working passenger trains.  I doubt that there was any need for the 1500-class Mountains as passenger power on that line, let alone the heavier 4000-numbered locomotives used  during the later 1940s on the St. Louis-Southwest and Kansas City-Southeast lines. Incidentally, my Dad was an office supervisor for the Frisco for almost 50 years at the Springfield, Mo. hub.