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[Anonymous]

[8D] as i was lookin at some old maps i noticed there was only 1 hump yd on the old COTTEN BELT ROUTE can any body tell if there was more than that i know houston was SP & both were the same company SP SSW but they had diffrent routes ssw went from Chicago to KCMO to elpaso tx & stlouis to pine bluff to either dallas-ftworth
or houston i know the chicago kansas city elpaso line once CRIP ROCK ISLAND lines after the RI went bankrupt C&NW bought the rollin stock & SSW got the trackage which were in bad shape a lot of this old line is ripped up and gone but where i live there are signs of relocation some old tracks are buried but the original main line can still be found a few yards away from the present main line[8D]

[Anonymous]

Whoa. You've got the Cotton Belt going to Chicago, KC, Houston, El Paso, Ft Worth and other places it never served. The SSW swung south through Illinois from St. Louis crossing the Mississippi on the Illmo bridge. It traversed SE Missouri and NE Arkansas to Memphis. From Memphis it swung SE through Arkansas to Pine Bluff then west to Texarkana and on West through Texas to Dallas. The most significant branch of the SSW ran south from Lewisville, AR to Shreveport, LA where it connected with parent Southern Pacific's line to Houston (the old HE&WT)

Cotton Belt shops (car and locomotive ) were located at Pine Bluff, AR which was also the location of their only (to my knowledge) hump yard which was built in 1958.

[Anonymous]

but SSW aquired the CRIP trackage in the 1980's
which gave them a line from chicago to kc to elpaso where the SP took over the east & west routes this is part of the golden state route i belive although SP owned the cotton belt lines the SSW was a north\south carrier for the SP the C&NW got the rolling stock & loco's from CRIP the rock island trackage was in poor shape & could not afford to upgrade for a merger so they went under ive read this in a book years back
its about the SSW i think maybe some one can find it or some thing to show whats what [8D]

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Mark Foster

Whoa. You've got the Cotton Belt going to Chicago, KC, Houston, El Paso, Ft Worth and other places it never served. The SSW swung south through Illinois from St. Louis crossing the Mississippi on the Illmo bridge. It traversed SE Missouri and NE Arkansas to Memphis. From Memphis it swung SE through Arkansas to Pine Bluff then west to Texarkana and on West through Texas to Dallas. The most significant branch of the SSW ran south from Lewisville, AR to Shreveport, LA where it connected with parent Southern Pacific's line to Houston (the old HE&WT)

Cotton Belt shops (car and locomotive ) were located at Pine Bluff, AR which was also the location of their only (to my knowledge) hump yard which was built in 1958.

[8D] they also had a line from mt pleasent tx near texarkana through tyler to corsicana where SP lines went north & south[:D]

[Anonymous]

Once it got into TX, SSW went west to Mt Pleasant. From there it split with a branch going to Ft Worth (Hodge), which also spawned a branch from Addison to Dallas in 1903 (this branch was pulled up in the mid-60's and became the ROW for the Dallas North Tollway, except for about a mile at the far north end that is now a switch lead, with the trains routed into the SP Miller Yard via the belt line from Plano) and a branch from Commerce to Sherman . The other branch went to Tyler, thence to Waco via Corsicana and ultimately to Gatesville, Hamilton, Stephenville and Comanche (past Gatesville abandoned about 1940), with a branch to Lufkin, Kenard and White City (past Lufkin gone < 1950) and another branch from Corsicana to Hillsboro (pulled < 1950).

They used the line to Corsicana to connect to the SP. This allowed SP to circumvent both the Ogden Agreement and the Golden State Route to get the long haul from the east, and that's probably the only real reason the SSW was not ever absorbed, but always remained a separate entity.