Jim,
You might want to remember that the SSW bought this line, but like the Memphis Amarillo line that Mudchicken mentioned, decided that it did not make sense to spend what it would cost to rehab it to competitive condition and secured trackage rights on MP between Kansas City and St. Louis. As it happened MP was merged into UP as was SP/SSW so the correct decisions were made from a resource allocation standpoint.
Going forward it will be much cheaper to add incremental capacity to the existing line when and as needed than to pull this line out of the grave.
Mac McCulloch
The line has economic possibilities and serves a large area not close to other railroads. Previous owner had a gameplan, but could not advance it far enough before Amaren took over from a non-US investor, eh...Current operator is more of a disinterested caretaker than entrepreneur.
Add to that the schmoozing of the State of Arkansas into creating a lease/buyback arrangement (failed), the Cotton Belt pushback and you just about have the bulk of the story. An awful lot of folks did not want to see ATSF in Memphis or St. Louis (an ATSF obsession more than once).
What DC is talking about in the sixties can be found in the ICC archives as FD-23919 (12-13-65) which would have lopped off everything Rock south of Herrington & Salina except the CottonRock Tuccumcari Line. [1780 miles of main and 895 miles of branch lines)...Some of the Rock's files on this survive at Norman (OU Library)
(HGW & AKP woulda had us hoppin' on either line had things been different - we heard more about StL -KC than we did Sunbelt)
Perhaps my former college will also participate with some analysis of the Memphis to Amarillo RI line. He is invited to correct anything I may remember(??) below.
The competition for the RI in the 60's resulted in ICC hearings in several locations including Chicago where I was stationed in the Santa Fe Chief Engineers office. I took the opportunity to attend some of them which were held in a Michigan Ave. Hotel just a short walk from the ATSF Railway Exchange Building. These hearings resulted in the RI remaining whole (partially) until it was bankrupt.
When the SP (SSW) had acquired the Tucumcarri to KC line (another story) ATSF wanted to create a shorter route to the southeast via Memphis rather than exchange traffic at Avard, OK with the BN (Frisco). There was a helicopter inspection made of the decrepit Memphis-Amarillo line so that an estimate could be made of the expense to rehabilitate it to Santa Fe standards with the result being that it was not ecomomically justified. Of course the Santa Fe sales staff also analyzed the potential for originating and terminating business between Mem-Amo which might augment the overhead business diverting at Avard that was already quantified. It did not take Santa Fe very long to conclude that acquiring this line was not something which they wished to do.
Now with the BNSF merger those issues are resolved and the Avard connection traffic revenue is all going into the same account.
Paul: SSW ran it irregularly at 20mph or less, post-Rock (they took it away from ATSF that had big plans for it - ironically it was ATSF $$$$ that built it originally circa 1904.)... Diningcar and I both almost got involved in it at some level along with the Little Rock- Memphis Sunbelt & Santa Fe scheme in the 1980's. When CRIP folded, there were shooflys around old derailments and equipment abandoned in the field.
This line was out of service long before the Rock Island folded. Throwing money at it in an attempt to bring it up to reasonable operating standards would have been a complete waste since nothing was running on it anyway.
Duopoly?? Sounds like a word that I last heard on AM, or was it FM?
MoP line east of Pueblo is NOT abandoned (yet / currently only STB "Discontinuance of Service" Haswell to NA Junction, east portion still in service). Scrapper A&K is playing games with it.
News flash - it was embargoed in the '80's.....The western part of that is just abandoning now. Amaren, who owns it now, has gotten what leverage they could out of it and the front company is now putting the west end up for abandonment as Missouri Central RR.
AB 1068_1 Wingate to Windsor 42 Miles IN CASS, HENRY, JOHNSON, AND PETTIS COUNTIES, MO.
I walked the entire line for the previous owner in the late 1990's.
Has anyone ever walked any portions of this line that was abandoned in the 80's? I understand that the trestle over the Gasconade river is still intact; and that the bridge at Henley over the Osage, is; also.
A fiber optics line installed a cable along it in 1996; supposedly they used hi rail equipment to do it. Said they had to cut a lot of vegetation and trees to move their equipment down the line.
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