Southern Pacific Railroad


The Southern Pacific was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company.
The original Southern Pacific began in 1865 as a land holding company. The last incarnation of the Southern Pacific, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, was founded in 1969 and assumed control of the Southern Pacific system. The Southern Pacific Transportation Company was acquired in 1996 by the Union Pacific Corporation and merged with their Union Pacific Railroad.
The Southern Pacific legacy founded hospitals in San Francisco, Tucson, and Houston. In the 1970s, it also founded a telecommunications network with a state-of-the-art microwave and fiber optic backbone. This telecommunications network became part of Sprint, a company whose name came from the acronym for Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony.

History

The original Southern Pacific Railroad was founded in San Francisco in 1865, by a group of businessmen led by Timothy Phelps with the aim of building a rail connection between San Francisco and San Diego, California. The company was purchased in September 1868 by a group of businessmen known as the Big Four: Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Jr. and C. P. Huntington. It later acquired the routes of the Central Pacific Railroad in 1885 through leasing. By 1900, the Southern Pacific system was a major railroad system incorporating many smaller companies, such as the Texas and New Orleans Railroad and Morgan's Louisiana and Texas Railroad. It extended from New Orleans through Texas to El Paso, across New Mexico and through Tucson, to Los Angeles, through most of California, including San Francisco and Sacramento. Central Pacific lines extended east across Nevada to Ogden, Utah, and reached north through Oregon to Portland. Other subsidiaries eventually included the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, El Paso and Southwestern Railroad, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad at, the Southern Pacific Railroad of Mexico, and a variety of narrow-gauge routes.

The company was headquartered in the Flood Building in San Francisco's downtown shopping district in 1907. Ten years later, they moved into the historic 11-story, Southern Pacific Building, also known as "The Landmark", located at One Market Street on the Embarcadero whose construction started in 1916. At its completion, the building's first floor was devoted to retail except for the portion facing the rear courtyard, which was reserved for Southern Pacific. SP rented the second floor to a tenant, but occupied floors three through ten with various offices. For nearly a century, the building was topped with a large sign emblazoned with a gothic "S·P" marking the company's San Francisco roots.
The SP was known for its mammoth back shops at Sacramento, California, which was one of the few in the country equipped to design and build locomotives on a large scale. Sacramento was among the top ten largest shops in the US, occupying 200 acres of land with dozens of buildings and an average employment of 3,000, peaking at 7,000 during World War II. Other major shop sites were located at Ogden, Utah; Houston, Texas; and Algiers, New Orleans. After the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco, including the SP shops there, new shops and yards were built six miles south of the city at Bayshore. The Alhambra Shops in Los Angeles consisted of 10 buildings and employed 1,500 but declined in importance when the Taylor Yard was built in 1930.
The SP was the defendant in the landmark 1886 United States Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, which is often interpreted as having established certain corporate rights under the Constitution of the United States.
The Southern Pacific Railroad was replaced by the Southern Pacific Company and assumed the railroad operations of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1929, Southern Pacific/Texas and New Orleans operated 13,848 route-miles not including Cotton Belt, whose purchase of the Golden State Route circa 1980 nearly doubled its size to, bringing total SP/SSW mileage to around. The T&NO was fully merged into the SP in 1961.
File:SP 6453 EB Floriston PRS spc Feb 1971.jpg|thumb|right|An EMD FP7 leads a Pacific Rail Society Special through Floriston, California, in February 1971.
In 1969, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company was established and took over the Southern Pacific Company; this Southern Pacific railroad is the last incarnation and was at times called "Southern Pacific Industries", though "Southern Pacific Industries" is not the official name of the company. By the 1980s, route mileage had dropped to, mainly due to the pruning of branch lines. On October 13, 1988, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company was taken over by Rio Grande Industries, the parent company that controlled the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Rio Grande Industries did not merge the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad together, but transferred direct ownership of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad to the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, allowing the combined Rio Grande Industries railroad system to use the Southern Pacific name due to its brand recognition in the railroad industry and with customers of both the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. A long time Southern Pacific subsidiary, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway was also marketed under the Southern Pacific name. Along with the addition of the SPCSL Corporation route from Chicago to St. Louis, the former mainline of the Chicago, Missouri and Western Railroad that once belonged to the Alton Railroad, the total length of the D&RGW/SP/SSW system was. Rio Grande Industries was later renamed Southern Pacific Rail Corporation.
By 1996, years of financial problems had dropped Southern Pacific's mileage to. The financial problems caused the Southern Pacific Transportation Company to be taken over by the Union Pacific Corporation; the parent Southern Pacific Rail Corporation, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway and the SPCSL Corporation were also taken over by the Union Pacific Corporation. The Union Pacific Corporation merged the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway and the SPCSL Corporation into their Union Pacific Railroad but did not merge the Southern Pacific Transportation Company into the Union Pacific Railroad. Instead, the Union Pacific Corporation merged the Union Pacific Railroad into the Southern Pacific Transportation Company on February 1, 1998; the Southern Pacific Transportation Company became the surviving railroad and at the same time the Union Pacific Corporation renamed the Southern Pacific Transportation Company to Union Pacific Railroad. Thus, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company became, and is still operating as, the current incarnation of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Locomotives

Like most railroads, the SP painted most of its steam locomotives black during the 20th century, but after 1945 SP painted the front of the locomotive's smokebox silver, with graphite colored sides, for visibility.
Some passenger steam locomotives bore the Daylight scheme, named after the trains they hauled, most of which had the word Daylight in the train name. The most famous "Daylight" locomotives were the GS-4 steam locomotives. The most famous Daylight-hauled trains were the Coast Daylight and the Sunset Limited.
Well known were the Southern Pacific's unique "cab-forward" steam locomotives. These were 4-8-8-2, 2-8-8-2, and 4-6-6-2 locomotives set up to run in reverse, with the tender attached to the smokebox end of the locomotive. Southern Pacific had snow sheds in mountain terrain, and locomotive crews nearly asphyxiated from smoke in the cab. After engineers began running their engines in reverse, Southern Pacific asked Baldwin Locomotive Works to produce cab-forward designs. No other North American railroad ordered cab-forward locomotives.

List of locomotives used

Steam locomotives

Source:
  • T.D. Judah -
  • C.P. Huntington -
  • E class - Eight Wheeler/American
  • A class - Atlantic
  • S class - Switcher
  • M class - Mogul, M-6
  • Pr class - Prairie
  • MM/AM-class / - Cab forward Mallet/Articulated Mogul
  • T class - Ten Wheeler
  • P class - Pacific – P-10
  • Se class - Switcher
  • C class - Consolidation, C-9
  • Mk class - Mikado – Mk-11;
  • MC/AC class - / - Cab Forward Mallet/Articulated Consolidation
  • AC-9 - - Yellowstone/Articulated Consolidation
  • TW-class - Twelve Wheeler
  • Mt-class - Mountain
  • GS-class - Golden State/General Service, GS-5, GS-6
  • D-class - Decapod
  • F-class - Fourteen Wheeler
  • El Gobernador -
  • SP-class - Southern Pacific
Narrow Gauge Locomotives