TRAINS August 2002

Union Pacific’s desert bloom - Mergers do more than connect dots—they can stick a dagger into the heart of your enemy. That what UP intends for its Texas & Pacific. Once, the T&P was a dead-end railroad; now it’s a short-cut route for fast freight from Los Angeles to Dallas-Fort Worth and the Southeast. And it’s igniting a traffic war in Texas. Real railroaders never quit - Floods, hurricanes, mudslides, 36 years of civil war, and squatters on the right-of-way. So what? Guatemala has a railroad to run. Uphill both ways - Helper districts weren’t required only on mountain grades. Case in point: Omaha Road’s helper base at Hudson, Wisconsin, in the waning days of steam. Featuring photographs by David Plowden. Map of the Month: C&NW’s system in 1930. If two railroads practiced seamless service decades before it became a rail industry buzzword, it would be the Chicago & North Western and the Omaha Road.