The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, The Katy The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, better known as simply The Katy (for the Houston, Texas suburb of Katy where the MKT operated), was a large granger system that, like the Illinois Central and Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroads ran, unconventionally, north-south (instead of the more common, east-west). As its name implies, the Katy connected all of its namesake states with connections to cities such as Omaha and St. Louis in the north and Galveston and San Antonio, Texas in the south. The railroad was somewhat successful over the years but it ran into financial trouble a number of times throughout its life. As finances again became an issue in the 1980s the MKT sought a merger with the Union Pacific Railroad in 1986 and in 1989 the Katy became yet another part of the UP empire.
Of note the Katy was leased to the Missouri Pacific in 1880 and became part of the burgeoning Jay Gould empire for a time, which lasted until 1888. The biggest advantage the Katy gained from this leasing was that it acquired new markets and reached cities like Fort Worth, Dallas, and Waco, Texas. Throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th century the Katy would continue to grow and update its system, albeit its lines were not always the fastest/most direct or built to the highest standards (a particular reason why it would have financial troubles for much of its life). In 1895 it reached St. Louis and while its dreams were to reach all of the way to Chicago, financial problems, again, kept this from becoming a reality; although other new markets it did reach included Kansas City, Omaha, and Lincoln, Nebraska.  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). The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad also never had an extensive passenger network (which, looking back at history today this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, particularly as the service began to eat away severely at profits across the industry following WWII) and as early as the 1950s the railroad began to wholesale abandon unprofitable rail lines and shutdown passenger operations where possible.
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 Railroad 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 Railroad and finally in December, 1989 the Katy officially became part of the UP system. While much of the original Katy system has since been either abandoned or railbanked some of its lines continue to carry on, including with the Union Pacific. Although now gone, the Union Pacific recently paid homage to several of its predecessors, including the Katy, by painting one of its new EMD SD70ACe locomotives into a version of the railroad’s famous red and black passenger livery complete with a version of its well known livery (like the one featured at the top of the page). The Katy All-Time Locomotive Rosters
For more on the fallen flag railroads like the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad consider one (or all) of Mike Schafer's Classic American Railroads books (listed below is the first in the series). He has published three thus far covering virtually all of the most well known fallen flags. I have all three in my collection and highly recommend them, the photography is excellent along with learning a general history of each railroad. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing one of these books please visit The Railroad Diamond by clicking the tab in the menu to your left marked "TRD Store".
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