Southern Pacific HO Scale Models

The Southern Pacific Railroad traces its origins to 1865, when it was founded in San Francisco as a land holding company by a group of businessmen led by Timothy Phelps. The enterprise took on far greater significance in September 1868 when it was acquired by the so-called Big Four, the same quartet of investors who had organized the Central Pacific Railroad in 1861: Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins Jr., and Collis P. Huntington. Under their direction, Southern Pacific grew into one of the most powerful railroad systems in the American West, extending its lines from New Orleans through Texas and across the southwestern deserts to California, north through Oregon to Portland, and eastward via the Central Pacific corridor across Nevada to Ogden, Utah, where connections were made with transcontinental traffic. By the early twentieth century the railroad had absorbed numerous subsidiaries, among them the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (commonly known as the Cotton Belt), and the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, making it one of the largest rail networks in the country by total route mileage. The Southern Pacific was reorganized several times over the course of its history, passing through incarnations as the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Southern Pacific Company, and ultimately the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, which was established in 1969 to assume control of the broader system. By that period the railroad operated roughly 10,400 route miles, a figure reduced from earlier highs largely through the abandonment or sale of lightly used branch lines. The company's physical plant included major locomotive and car shops at Sacramento, California, which at their wartime peak employed approximately 7,000 workers and were among the largest railroad shop complexes in the United States. Additional heavy maintenance facilities were maintained at Ogden, Houston, and Algiers across the river from New Orleans. The railroad's headquarters for much of its history was in San Francisco, and its presence was long marked by a distinctive gothic SP sign atop the Southern Pacific Building at One Market Street on the Embarcadero. A significant chapter in the railroad's later history began on October 13, 1988, when Rio Grande Industries, the holding company that controlled the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, acquired the Southern Pacific Transportation Company along with its Cotton Belt subsidiary. Rather than formally merging the two railroads, Rio Grande Industries transferred ownership of the Denver and Rio Grande Western to Southern Pacific, and subsequently renamed itself Southern Pacific Rail Corporation, trading on Southern Pacific's stronger brand recognition. The addition of the Denver and Rio Grande Western's routes, along with the SPCSL Corporation's corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, brought the combined system to nearly 16,000 route miles. Despite the expanded network, persistent financial difficulties eroded the railroad's position through the early 1990s, and by 1996 total mileage had declined to approximately 13,700 miles. Union Pacific Corporation announced its acquisition of Southern Pacific Rail Corporation in 1995, and after receiving regulatory approval the transaction was completed in 1996. Union Pacific did not immediately dissolve the Southern Pacific Transportation Company but instead, on February 1, 1998, merged the Union Pacific Railroad into Southern Pacific Transportation Company, with the latter becoming the surviving legal entity before being simultaneously renamed Union Pacific Railroad. In this way the Southern Pacific Transportation Company became, in a technical legal sense, the current Union Pacific Railroad. Beyond its railroad legacy, Southern Pacific left a lasting imprint on American telecommunications: a data and voice network it built using microwave and fiber optic technology in the 1970s eventually evolved into the Sprint communications company, whose name derived from Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Networking Telephony.