Oklahoma Railroading and Railfanning In "The Sooner State"

Oklahoma railroading is one of those unique places in the country that offer a mix of mountainous and flat, wide open operations. The eastern half of the state is somewhat mountainous and difficult while the western half is your stereotypical scene of America’s Western Plains, flat and open country with farmland and grain elevators dotting the landscape. With Oklahoma being situated roughly in the middle of the country it was home to several well known railroads and is still an important state with both the Union Pacific and BNSF Railway having their Chicago-West Coast main lines running directly through Sooner country.

Oklahoma railroading has its beginnings dating back to 1871 (36 years before Oklahoma officially became a state) when the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, long known in late years as The Katy, entered Indian Territory (as it was then known) heading south to connect to New Orleans. In the coming years the region would become home to several fabled western lines. These included the Santa Fe, Southern Pacific (via trackage rights), Rock Island, Missouri Pacific, Kansas City Southern and the Frisco.

Of these railroads it is perhaps the smaller Frisco and Katy systems that had the most far-reaching impact in Oklahoma. The Katy has its beginnings dating back to 1865 when the Union Pacific Railway (later changed to the Missouri Kansas and Texas Railroad in 1870) was chartered to build a line connecting Junction City, Kansas to New Orleans. Around the same time the railroad was able to reach Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri when it took control of the Tebo & Neosho Railroad which connected places like Sedalia and Clinton, Missouri with Nevada, Missouri.

While profits and the overall health of Katy ebbed and flowed through its early years, after the lucrative World War II traffic ended following 1945 it became increasingly difficult to remain solvent. The Katy, of course, never had the most direct lines and in a region choked with other railroads it comes as no surprise that trying to survive became an increasingly tricky task as the years progressed (to add to its problems the railroad had poor management on and off throughout its existence).

By the 1970s things were looking better for the Katy as a new president, Reginald Whitman, worked to abandon unprofitable lines and passenger operations and bring in new freight business, which had become quite successful by the early 1980s. However, the merger movement of the 1980s was, unfortunately, the final blow for the Katy. With the loss of profitable overhead traffic provided by such railroads as the Missouri Pacific and Frisco and now a David among Goliaths surrounding the MKT it simply had no choice but to find a merger partner somewhere, which it did in 1986 with the Union Pacific and finally in December, 1989 the Katy officially became part of the UP system.

The Frisco’s story began in 1849 when the Pacific Railroad was chartered by the State of Missouri. The Pacific Railroad, as you might know, itself would go on to form the later Missouri Pacific which today is part of the Union Pacific system. The Frisco’s link to the PR is a line it constructed known as the South-West Branch, built to connect today’s Pacific, Missouri with Rolla. Interestingly this line would later become its own railroad known as the Southwest Pacific Railroad when it was sold to General John Fremont from the State of Missouri.

Soon the railroad was stretching out across not only Missouri but also Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas by the late 19th century. While the Frisco would indeed serve St. Louis as its name implies it would never reach the Pacific Coast and San Francisco or California at all for that matter. It’s predecessor, the A&P, was originally planned to do just this and the new St. Louis & San Francisco carried through with these plans but was thwarted by the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific in the late 19th century. That story in itself is quite complicated but in short Santa Fe wound up controlling the SL&SF in 1890 but was forced to spin it off just two years later in lieu of the 1893 stock market panic that caused both railroads to fall into bankruptcy.

Once again independent and now known as the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad the company lost its rail line into California and would remain a Midwestern road serving points to the south and southwest for the rest of its life, never reaching the coast as its name implied. Still struggling by the early 20th century the railroad again fell into receivership, this time in 1913. It reemerged in 1916 as the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, as it is best known today.

Perhaps the largest boost to the Frisco began in the 1960s and 1970s when industries began moving to the south and the regions it served whereby it not only diversified the railroad’s traffic base but also increased it exponentially! Of course, as is almost always the case, success does not go unnoticed and as the railroad prospered other larger lines began taking interest. The Frisco received a number of offers beginning in the 1960s and 1970s but eventually settled with the Burlington Northern in the early 1980s as the Frisco gave the BN a much more diversified traffic base and extended it into the southeastern regions of Memphis, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Gulf Coast (which today contains very lucrative chemical traffic business).

Today, Oklahoma railroading is predominantly made up of the BNSF, Union Pacific and Kansas City Southern although there are also a number of shortlines. Some of these smaller systems include the Arkansas & Oklahoma Railroad, Blackwell Northern Gateway Railroad, Farmrail, Hollis & Eastern Railroad, Port of Muskogee and the Sand Springs Railway.

In total these systems together operate over 3,000 miles of railroad although at one time the Sooner State was home to over twice that number. For more information about Oklahoma railroading, in terms of its route mileage over the years please have a look at the chart below.

In any event, if you tire of watching the live freight railroading then be sure and visit one of Oklahoma’s many museums or tourist lines. For instance, the Farmrail shortline system operates an excursion train and the Oklahoma Railway Museum offers train rides and features a large collection of equipment.

For more information about tourist railroads and museums located in the Sooner State please click here. In terms of Oklahoma’s passenger rail operations it has had a slight resurgence since 1999 when Amtrak began operating the Heartland Flyer that connects Oklahoma City to Fort Worth.

In all, Oklahoma railroading offers a variety of operations that should appeal to most railfans. And, if all else fails then take a break and enjoy a comfortable train ride aboard Farmrail’s excursion train or even book the train for yourself!