Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway


The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the largest Class 1 railroads in the United States between 1859 and 1996.
The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport; at various times, it operated an airline, the short-lived Santa Fe Skyway, and the Santa Fe Railroad tugboats. Its bus line extended passenger transportation to areas not accessible by rail, and ferryboats on the San Francisco Bay allowed travelers to complete their westward journeys to the Pacific Ocean. The AT&SF was the subject of a popular song, Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written for the film The Harvey Girls.
The railroad officially ceased independent operations on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

History

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway

The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The railroad reached the Kansas–Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farmland from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress for laying track.
As the railroad was first being built, many of the tracks were laid directly over the wagon ruts of the Santa Fe Trail. In 1869, the first general office building of the company was built in Topeka. This building also served as a passenger station and freight depot. When the line was extended to Newton, Kansas in 1871, the railroad became a major cattle shipper to ensure a steady revenue stream, at the end of Texas cattle drive trails.
Despite being chartered to serve the city, the railroad chose to bypass Santa Fe, due to the engineering challenges of the mountainous terrain. In 1880, a branch line from Lamy, New Mexico, brought the Santa Fe railroad the 20 miles to its namesake city. It continued to connect with the Southern Pacific at Deming.
The system was eventually expanded with branch lines into California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Illinois. It reached Arizona and California by acquiring control of the western portion of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in 1880. It reached Chicago by acquiring the Chicago and St. Louis Railway in 1887. By 1887 the mainline had been completed from Chicago to Los Angeles, making it one of the country’s most important railroads and one of the few that directly connected the Midwest with the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean under one corporation. The principal lines consisted of:
  • Chicago to Kansas City to La Junta, Colorado, to Los Angeles;
  • Emporia, Kansas, to Oklahoma City to Fort Worth to Houston;
  • Emporia, Kansas, to Dalies, New Mexico;
  • Barstow to Richmond, California ;
  • Temple to Farwell, Texas;
  • Denver to La Junta, Colorado;
  • Albuquerque, New Mexico, to El Paso, Texas;
  • Dallas to Presidio, Texas; and
  • Kansas City to Tulsa.
The primary back shops at Topeka, Kansas, were first established in the 1860s. The original shops were relocated in 1878 to the south side of Seward Avenue and expanded in 1902 to double the repair capacity. The shops at Albuquerque, New Mexico, were built in 1880 and materially expanded in 1925. Another shop site was established at San Bernardino, California, in 1886. To maintain rolling stock in the state of Texas, a fourth major shop facility was built in Cleburne, Texas, in 1899.
Physical confrontations led to two years of armed conflict that became known as the Royal Gorge Railroad War. Federal intervention prompted an out-of-court settlement on February 2, 1880, in the form of the so-called "Treaty of Boston", wherein the Denver & Rio Grande railroad was allowed to complete its line and lease it for use by the Santa Fe railroad.
Building across Kansas and eastern Colorado was simple, with few natural obstacles, but the railroad found it almost economically impossible because of the sparse population. It set up real estate offices in the area and promoted settlement across Kansas on the land granted to it by Congress in 1863.
The Santa Fe entered Texas by starting what became the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway in 1886 and acquiring the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway in 1887. The Santa Fe reached San Francisco by buying the San Francisco & San Joaquin Valley Railway in 1891. They completed a Grand Canyon branch in 1901. The Santa Fe acquired the properties of the Southern California Railway in 1906. They acquired a Phoenix branch with the purchase of the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railway in 1911.

Expansion

In 1928, the Santa Fe acquired the Kansas City, Mexico and Orient Railway.
On, the railway was one of many companies that sponsored attractions in Disneyland with its five-year sponsorship of all Disneyland trains and stations until 1974.
In 1960, AT&SF bought the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad ; then sold a half-interest to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The TP&W cut straight east across Illinois from near Fort Madison, Iowa, to a connection with the PRR at Effner, Indiana, forming a bypass around Chicago for traffic moving between the two lines. The TP&W route did not mesh with the traffic patterns Conrail developed after 1976, so AT&SF bought back the other half, merged the TP&W in 1983, then sold it back into independence in 1989.

Attempted Southern Pacific merger

AT&SF began merger talks in the 1980s. The Southern Pacific Santa Fe Railroad was a proposed merger between the parent companies of the Southern Pacific and AT&SF announced on December23, 1983. As part of the joining of the two firms, all rail and non-rail assets owned by Santa Fe Industries and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company were placed under the control of a holding company, the Santa Fe–Southern Pacific Corporation. The merger was subsequently denied by the Interstate Commerce Commission on the basis that it would create too many duplicate routes.
The companies were so confident the merger would be approved that they began repainting locomotives and non-revenue rolling stock in a new unified paint scheme. While Southern Pacific was sold off to Rio Grande Industries, all of the SP's real estate holdings were consolidated into a new company, Catellus Development Corporation, making it California's largest private landowner, of which Santa Fe remained the owner. In the early 1980s, gold was discovered on several properties west of Battle Mountain, Nevada along I-80, on ground owned by the Santa Fe Railroad. The Santa Fe Pacific Corporation. Sometime later, Catellus would purchase the Union Pacific Railroad's interest in the Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal.

Burlington Northern merger

On September22, 1995, AT&SF merged with Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway. Some of the challenges resulting from the joining of the two companies included the establishment of a common dispatching system, the unionization of AT&SF's non-union dispatchers, and incorporating AT&SF's train identification codes throughout. The two lines maintained separate operations until December31, 1996, when it officially became BNSF.
18701945
Gross operating revenue$182,580$528,080,530
Total track length62 miles 13,115 miles
Freight carried98,920 tons59,565,100 tons
Passengers carried33,63011,264,000
Locomotives owned61,759
Unpowered rolling stock owned14181,974 freight cars
1,436 passenger cars

ATSF/GC&SF/P&SFOklahoma City-Ada-AtokaFtWorth & Rio GrandeKCM&O/KCM&O of TexasClinton & Oklahoma WesternNew Mexico Central
192513,862144233021
19338,7121218
194437,60345---
196036,63520----
197048,328----

ATSF/GC&SF/P&SFOklahoma City-Ada-AtokaFtWorth & Rio GrandeKCM&O/KCM&O of TexasClinton & Oklahoma WesternNew Mexico Central
19251,4105680.10.1
19335550.10.8
19446,2500.2---
19601,6890----
1970727----

Company officers

Passenger service

The AT&SF was widely known for its passenger train service in the first half of the 20th century. AT&SF introduced many innovations in passenger rail travel, among these the "Pleasure Domes" of the Super Chief and the "Big Dome" Lounge cars and double-decker Hi-Level cars of the El Capitan, which entered revenue service in 1954. The railroad was among the first to add dining cars to its passenger trains, a move which began in 1891, following the examples of the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads. The AT&SF offered food on board in a dining car or at one of the many Harvey House restaurants that were strategically located throughout the system.
In general, the same train name was used for both directions of a particular train. The exceptions to this rule included the Chicagoan and Kansas Cityan trains, and the Eastern Express and West Texas Express. All AT&SF trains that terminated in Chicago did so at Dearborn Station. Trains terminating in Los Angeles arrived at AT&SF's La Grande Station until May 1939, when Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal was opened.
The Santa Fe was the only railroad to run trains from Chicago to California on its own tracks. The railway's extensive network was also home to a number of regional services. These generally couldn't boast of the size or panache of the transcontinental trains, but built up enviable reputations of their own nonetheless. Of these, the Chicago-Texas trains were the most famous and impressive. The San Diegans, which ran from Los Angeles to San Diego, were the most popular and durable, becoming to the Santa Fe what New York City-Philadelphia trains were to the Pennsylvania Railroad. But Santa Fe flyers also served Tulsa, Oklahoma, El Paso, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona, and Denver, Colorado, among other cities not on their main line.
To reach smaller communities, the railroad operated mixed trains or gas-electric doodlebug rail cars. The latter were later converted to diesel power, and one pair of Budd Rail Diesel Cars was eventually added. After World War II, Santa Fe Trailways buses replaced most of these lesser trains. These smaller trains generally were not named; only the train numbers were used to differentiate services.
The ubiquitous passenger service inspired the title of the 1946 Academy-Award-winning Harry Warren tune "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe." The song was written in 1945 for the film The Harvey Girls, a story about the waitresses of the Fred Harvey Company's restaurants. It was sung in the film by Judy Garland and recorded by many other singers, including Bing Crosby. In the 1970s, the railroad used Crosby's version in a commercial.
AT&SF ceased operating passenger trains on May1, 1971, when it conveyed its remaining trains to Amtrak. These included the Super Chief / El Capitan, the Texas Chief and the San Diegan. Discontinued were the San Francisco Chief, the ex-Grand Canyon, the Tulsan, and a Denver–La Junta local. ATSF had been more than willing to retain the San Diegan and its famed Chiefs. However, any railroad that opted out of Amtrak would have been required to operate all of its passenger routes until at least 1976. The prospect of having to keep operating its less-successful routes, especially the money-bleeding 23/24 led ATSF to get out of passenger service altogether.
Amtrak still runs the Super Chief and San Diegan today as the Southwest Chief and Pacific Surfliner, respectively, although the original routes and equipment have been modified by Amtrak.