Missouri Pacific Railroad HO Scale Models

The Missouri Pacific Railroad traces its origins to the Pacific Railroad, whose groundbreaking ceremony took place in St. Louis on July 4, 1851. That line holds a distinction as one of the earliest railroads constructed west of the Mississippi River, reaching Kansas City by 1865 after construction delays caused by the Civil War. Following a period of financial difficulty, new investors reorganized the property in 1872 as the Missouri Pacific Railway. The railroad came under the control of New York financier Jay Gould in 1879, and under his direction the system expanded aggressively into Colorado, Nebraska, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. After Gould's death in 1892, his son George inherited leadership but proved unable to sustain the enterprise, and the company entered bankruptcy in 1915. The Missouri Pacific Railroad as a corporate entity was formally constituted in 1917 through the merger of the old railway with the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway. The new railroad carried the reporting mark MP and maintained its headquarters in St. Louis. Through subsequent decades the railroad absorbed or gained controlling interests in a substantial collection of regional lines across the South and Southwest, including the Gulf Coast Lines, the International-Great Northern Railroad, the Texas and Pacific Railway, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad, and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, among many others. This growth eventually produced a system stretching across eleven states, running roughly from Chicago in the northeast to Pueblo, Colorado in the west, north to Omaha, and south to Laredo, Texas, with additional trackage serving Gulf Coast ports in Louisiana and Texas. The railroad suffered a second bankruptcy during the Great Depression in 1933 and operated under trusteeship until 1956, when it was reorganized and returned to independent operation. Under the presidency of Downing B. Jenks, who took the top position in 1961, the Missouri Pacific became an early adopter of computer-assisted operations and rebuilt much of its locomotive fleet, emerging by the late 1970s as one of the most modern and efficient Class I railroads in the country. Union Pacific Corporation announced an agreement to acquire the Missouri Pacific on January 8, 1980, but legal challenges brought by competing railroads delayed regulatory approval for more than two years. The merger ultimately took effect on December 22, 1982, at which point the Missouri Pacific was combined with Union Pacific and the Western Pacific Railroad into a single operating system, though each of the three railroads initially retained its separate corporate and commercial identity under the umbrella name Pacific Rail Systems. The Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad and the Galveston, Houston and Henderson were folded into the Missouri Pacific on December 1, 1989, further consolidating the Union Pacific family of properties. By 1994 all Missouri Pacific motive power had been repainted into Union Pacific colors, and on January 1, 1997, the Missouri Pacific was formally and fully merged into the Union Pacific Railroad, bringing an end to its existence as a distinct corporate entity after eight decades of operation under that name. The Missouri Pacific's legacy endures through the extensive network of routes it contributed to the modern Union Pacific system, particularly across Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Kansas. Its early investment in computerized rail management helped shape operating practices that the industry would broadly adopt in later years. The railroad's former headquarters building at 210 North 13th Street in downtown St. Louis served Union Pacific as a customer service center until 2005 and has since been converted to residential use. Among railroad enthusiasts, the Missouri Pacific is remembered fondly under its nickname MoPac, and its Eagle passenger trains, introduced beginning in 1940, remain notable examples of mid-century streamlined rail travel in the American heartland.