St. Louis–San Francisco (Frisco) HO Scale Models

The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, universally known as the Frisco and carrying the reporting mark SLSF, was incorporated in Missouri on September 7, 1876, assembled from the Missouri Division and Central Division of the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. Despite the ambitious geographic promise of its name, the Frisco never came within a thousand miles of San Francisco, a distinction that became something of a standing irony in American railroad history. Its territory instead sprawled across the Midwest and South Central United States, with principal lines connecting St. Louis to Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and eventually Floydada, Texas, and a second major artery running from Kansas City through Memphis to Birmingham, Alabama. The two lines converged at Springfield, Missouri, which served as the operational heart of the railroad and the site of its principal shop facilities. Corporate headquarters were maintained at 906 Olive Street in St. Louis. The railroad's early decades were turbulent. Its predecessor, the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, had been one of two federally authorized lines permitted to build across Indian Territory, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe had taken an interest in the A&P's western right of way as a pathway to California. When the Santa Fe went bankrupt in 1893, reorganization stripped away the Frisco's Great Plains mileage, and the reconstituted St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad was incorporated on June 29, 1896. That entity also entered bankruptcy, and the railroad was eventually reorganized once more on August 24, 1916, emerging as the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway in the form that would persist through the remainder of its independent existence. Along the way the Frisco had briefly controlled the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway beginning in 1901, operating it as a subsidiary until financial pressures following the 1913 bankruptcy brought further extensions to a halt. The Frisco sold the Fort Worth and Rio Grande to the Santa Fe in 1937 for approximately 1.5 million dollars. Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, the Frisco built a reputation as an efficient regional carrier with a notable passenger operation. Its most celebrated train was the Texas Special, which it operated jointly with the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad from March 1917 through January 1959, running from St. Louis to Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio. The service was upgraded to streamliner equipment in 1947. Other named trains served destinations ranging from Wichita and Memphis to Birmingham and Pensacola, with the Meteor, the Will Rogers, and the Oklahoman among the more prominent examples. Freight operations grew to dominate the railroad's revenues as the postwar era advanced, and by the end of 1970 the Frisco operated approximately 4,547 route miles and reported roughly 12,795 million ton-miles of revenue freight with no remaining passenger service of its own. By the late 1970s the Frisco had become an attractive acquisition target, and Burlington Northern Railroad completed the absorption of the railroad on November 21, 1980. The merger brought Burlington Northern a dense network of well-maintained main lines reaching into markets across Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama that complemented BN's existing northern and western reach. When Burlington Northern merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe in 1995 to form BNSF Railway, the former Frisco core routes passed to the new company, where they continue to function as high-density freight corridors. The Frisco left a cultural imprint as well, most visibly in Frisco, Texas, a rapidly growing city that took its name from the railroad and adopted the Frisco's own logo as its municipal emblem.