Wisconsin & Southern Railroad HO Scale Models

The Wisconsin and Southern Railroad traces its origins to 1980, when the state of Wisconsin acquired a collection of branch lines from the financially troubled Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, commonly known as the Milwaukee Road, which was then undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. The state entered into a fifty-year operating agreement with the Wisconsin and Southern Railroad, an entity organized by the FSC Corporation, which also had interests in shortline railroad operations elsewhere in the country. This arrangement was designed to preserve freight rail service across rural southern Wisconsin, where branch line abandonment had threatened the agricultural and industrial communities that depended on rail access. The new railroad established its dispatching operations in Horicon and its headquarters in Madison, a configuration that largely persists today. Expansion came in stages over the following two decades. In August 1992, the Wisconsin and Southern absorbed control of the Wisconsin and Calumet Railroad, a carrier that had been organized in 1985 to take over state-owned trackage previously operated under the Chicago, Madison and Northern Railroad name. This acquisition brought the WSOR into Madison, Janesville, and Prairie du Chien, and also extended the railroad's reach into northeastern Illinois through trackage rights over Metra commuter rail lines south from Fox Lake to the Chicago terminal area. Additional growth came through a lease of former Chicago and North Western Railway trackage in the Madison area from Union Pacific in 1996, and the acquisition of an ex-Milwaukee Road line between Madison and Watertown that was originally leased from Soo Line Railroad in 1998 and purchased outright in 2003. In 2005 the state of Wisconsin purchased the former Milwaukee Road line between Saukville and Kiel, which Wisconsin Central had been preparing to abandon, and WSOR subsequently leased and eventually acquired portions of a former Chicago and North Western line extending to Sheboygan. By the time of its acquisition by Watco Companies, which was announced in November 2011 and completed on January 1, 2012, the Wisconsin and Southern had grown into one of the more substantial regional railroads in the upper Midwest. The railroad had been recognized as the Regional Railroad of the Year by Railway Age magazine in 2009, a reflection of its operational performance and growth trajectory. The transition to Watco ownership brought the WSOR under the umbrella of one of the largest privately held shortline and regional railroad operators in North America. Under Watco, the railroad has continued to develop its infrastructure, including the rehabilitation of trackage between Plymouth and Kohler with the support of approximately seventeen million dollars in Wisconsin state financial assistance announced in December 2012, with service on that segment resuming around 2015. Today the Wisconsin and Southern operates as a Class II regional railroad, though it is frequently grouped operationally with Class III carriers given the nature of its branch line network. Its system is divided into a Northern Division, anchored by the Milwaukee to Horicon corridor and branches extending to Oshkosh, Cambria, and Kiel, and a Southern Division centered on Madison and Janesville. The two divisions are connected not by WSOR-owned trackage but through trackage rights over a segment of Canadian National's Waukesha Subdivision. The railroad interchanges with all six North American Class I railroads, connecting with BNSF Railway, Canadian National, Canadian Pacific Kansas City, and Union Pacific at various points within Wisconsin, and reaching CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern through its Chicago access via the Metra trackage rights. Locomotive maintenance is based in Janesville, and the railroad's Horicon paint shops perform contract work on equipment belonging to other carriers.