Midland Valley Railroad HO Scale Models

The Midland Valley Railroad was incorporated on June 4, 1903, with the backing of C. Jared Ingersoll, a Philadelphia industrialist who held coal mining interests in Indian Territory, the region that would become the state of Oklahoma. The railroad took its name from Midland, Arkansas, a coal mining town it served in the western part of that state. Its intended purpose was to link Hope, Arkansas, with Wichita, Kansas, passing through the communities of Muskogee and Tulsa in Indian Territory along the way. The line reached Tulsa by 1904 and completed its initial construction program in 1906 upon arriving at Arkansas City, Kansas. That same year the railroad opened a branch to the Glenn Pool oil field south of Tulsa, a move that proved highly profitable and helped sustain the railroad through its early years. Wichita was finally reached in 1911 through the lease of the Wichita and Midland Valley Railroad. Access to Fort Smith, Arkansas, was achieved not through independent construction but through trackage rights negotiated over the Frisco from Rock Island, Oklahoma. Muskogee, Oklahoma, served as the operational heart of the railroad, housing its headquarters and principal shops. The Midland Valley was owned by a holding company known as the Muskogee Company, which, despite having its corporate offices in Philadelphia, concentrated its railroad activities around Muskogee. The Muskogee Company expanded its regional footprint in 1925 by acquiring the Kansas, Oklahoma and Gulf Railway, and then in 1929 it purchased a third property, the Oklahoma City-Ada-Atoka Railway. The three railroads were collectively known among industry observers as the Muskogee Roads and were operated essentially as common property under the Muskogee Company umbrella. Passenger service across the Midland Valley system came to an end in 1934, a casualty of the Great Depression and intensifying competition from other carriers and highway transportation. The railroad experienced a serious operational tragedy on February 1, 1958, when a westbound freight collided head-on with an eastbound train on a curve near Bokoshe, Oklahoma, killing four crew members and injuring seven others. By the early 1960s the Muskogee Company was prepared to sell all three of its railroads, and in 1964 the Missouri Pacific Railroad acquired the entire group. The Midland Valley itself was formally merged into the Texas and Pacific Railway, a Missouri Pacific subsidiary, on April 1, 1967. When the Missouri Pacific was absorbed by Union Pacific in 1983, whatever remained of the Midland Valley's former lines passed along with it. Service to Wichita had already ended in 1966, and the northern reaches of the system had been cut back to Barnsdall, Oklahoma. Over subsequent decades most of the former Midland Valley route was abandoned, though portions of the old right-of-way have since been converted to recreational trails, including a segment between Tulsa and Skiatook in northeastern Oklahoma.