International-Great Northern Railroad: Map, History, Timetables

Last revised: September 20, 2026

The International–Great Northern was the Texas spine of the Gould Southwest: Longview on the Texas & Pacific to Laredo on the Rio Grande, with a Gulf stem through Palestine to Houston. Texas chartered the two ancestors after the Civil War. They consolidated on September 30, 1873. Jay Gould took control in December 1880. The Missouri Pacific bought the reorganized company, through the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico, on January 1, 1925, and merged the paper railroad on March 1, 1956.

International and Great Northern Railroad system map 1910 Longview to Laredo Houston and Fort Worth

International & Great Northern system map, 1910. Author’s collection. Longview at the northeast corner, Laredo at the Rio Grande, Houston and Galveston on the Gulf, the Fort Worth line still new. January 1910 Official Guide plates are the timetable companion.

On this page: At a glance · Houston & Great Northern · International Railroad · September 30, 1873 · Bonds, land, receivership · Palestine · San Antonio and Laredo · Gould and the Katy lease · Fort Worth and 1,106 miles · Frisco, Gulf Coast Lines, Missouri Pacific · Sunshine Special · Steam and diesel · March 1, 1956 · What remains

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	International & Great Northern (1873–1922). International-Great Northern Railroad from August 17, 1922. Mark IGN. Slogan International Route
Headquarters	Palestine, Texas (general offices from 1875)
States	Texas
Genesis	Houston and Great Northern Railroad, chartered October 22, 1866. International Railroad Company, chartered August 5, 1870
Consolidation	September 30, 1873
Dates	September 30, 1873–March 1, 1956. Ancestors from 1866/1870
Route-miles	756 (end of 1882). Peak 1,106 (August 31, 1911). 1,053 miles of main track at the end of 1955
Gauge	4 ft 8½ in
Principal lines	Longview–Laredo; Valley Junction–Fort Worth; Palestine–Houston–Galveston/Velasco; Spring–Valley Junction; Navasota–Madisonville; Troup–Mineola
Gould	Control, December 1880. Leased to the Missouri, Kansas & Texas June 1, 1881–March 2, 1888
Missouri Pacific	New Orleans, Texas & Mexico bought the company June 20, 1924. Missouri Pacific acquired the NOT&M January 1, 1925. Merger March 1, 1956
Successor	Missouri Pacific. Union Pacific from 1982/1997
1910 Guide	January 1910 Official Guide timetables

Charters, mileage, receiverships, and the 1924–56 Missouri Pacific dates follow George C. Werner in the Handbook of Texas. International construction dates follow S. G. Reed in the same handbook. Information compiled September 20, 2026.

Houston & Great Northern, October 22, 1866

The first Texas legislature after the Civil War chartered the Houston and Great Northern on October 22, 1866, to build from Houston to the Red River and on toward the Canadian border. Local capital sat on the board with New York money. Nancy Beck Young, in the Handbook of Texas, names Ebenezer B. Nichols, William Marsh Rice, W. J. Hutchins, H. D. Taylor, and B. A. Shepherd of Texas, and Moses Taylor of New York City. First officers: Charles G. Young, president; E. C. Stockton, secretary; P. J. Willis, treasurer. Wayne Cline, in The Texas Railroad, records that Young was killed on an inspection trip in August 1871. New York thereafter steered the company.

Reconstruction delayed the work. The contract for the first hundred miles was let December 14, 1870. Fifty-five miles, Houston to New Waverly, opened in 1871; fifty-six more, New Waverly to Crockett, in 1872. In 1873 the company took the Houston Tap and Brazoria Railway and the Huntsville Branch, fifty-eight miles, merged May 8, and laid eighty-four miles Crockett to Palestine and Troup to Mineola. At the September 30 consolidation it owned 252 miles: Houston–Palestine, Houston–East Columbia with the Phelps–Huntsville branch, and Troup–Mineola. The Tap and Brazoria was the Gulf piece, Houston toward East Columbia and Velasco. The Canadian-border charter was already a dead letter. The useful north end would be a connection with the Texas & Pacific, not the Red River.

International Railroad, August 5, 1870

Texas chartered the International Railroad Company on August 5, 1870, to run from the south bank of the Red River near Fulton, Arkansas, to Laredo and into Mexico by way of Austin. At Fulton it expected a St. Louis railroad coming south. S. G. Reed called the charter the most liberal the legislature ever granted. The Constitution of 1869 had banned land grants. In their place the act promised $10,000 in state bonds per mile completed, thirty years, 8 percent. Directors included John S. Barnes, James W. Barnes, Paul N. Spofford, and Thomas W. House. Barnes was president. H. M. Hoxie was general superintendent—later a Gould lieutenant, and the namesake of Hoxie, Arkansas, on the Iron Mountain.

Work started at Hearne in December 1870, where the Houston & Texas Central already ran. Fifty miles were down by December 1871. Palestine opened July 11, 1872. Longview opened January 31, 1873: 177 miles Hearne to the Texas & Pacific. That crossing, not Fulton, became the north door.

September 30, 1873

The two companies consolidated on September 30, 1873, as the International & Great Northern Railroad Company. The Panic of 1873 was already in the banks. The map they put together was a Texas X with Palestine at the joint: Houston north to Palestine, Hearne east to Longview, and a southwest charter still unbuilt. Combined mileage at the merger was about 429. The Red River and the Canadian border dropped out of the business plan. Longview, the T&P, and—once Gould arrived—St. Louis over the Iron Mountain were the northern idea that paid.

Bonds, twenty sections, and the first receivership

On November 25, 1871, the International told the governor it had finished fifty-two miles and asked for bonds on fifty. The governor and treasurer signed $500,000. Comptroller Albert A. Bledsoe refused to countersign. He called the bond clause unconstitutional, a fraud in the enactment. The Texas Supreme Court upheld him. The Constitution of 1876 then let the legislature grant land again, not more than twenty sections to the mile. The compromise that saved the state’s credit gave the railroad twenty sections per mile instead of the usual sixteen, and a twenty-five-year exemption from state tax. No $10,000-a-mile state debt. Werner’s totals for all the I&GN ancestors: 6,432,000 acres earned, sold for a net of $4,668,850, about seventy-two cents an acre. The company published immigration pamphlets and kept an Immigrant’s Home at Palestine.

Even with the land, the panic caught the new company. It entered receivership on April 1, 1878, was sold at foreclosure, and was conveyed on November 1, 1879 to a new company organized under the original charter.

Palestine: shops, offices, and a court fight

Palestine sat where the Houston line met the Hearne–Longview main. Company officials moved the general offices there in 1875. Nicholas J. Clayton designed a three-story French Second Empire office building in 1879. Shops and a roundhouse followed. The railroad became the town’s largest employer. After a fire the company worked from the Redlands Hotel. Texas courts kept the legal domicile at Palestine when later management tried Houston. A 1900 brick depot replaced the wood one; it stood into the 1950s. The shops could build and repair cars. That plant, not a St. Louis office, is why the glance table still says Palestine.

Southwest: Rockdale, Austin, San Antonio, Laredo

Despite the panic, the southwest charter kept moving. Rockdale opened in 1874. Austin opened December 28, 1876. Building paused, then resumed in 1880. San Antonio, the second railroad into the city after the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio, opened in January 1881. Laredo, on the Rio Grande, opened December 1, 1881. That was the international in the name: a standard-gauge Texas railroad at the border, facing Mexico. The first railroad bridge across the river was not this company’s; the Texas Mexican put that structure up in 1883 at the same town. I&GN’s contribution was the inland main from Longview and Palestine down to the crossing.

On August 5, 1879, the company bought the Georgetown Railroad at foreclosure and merged it June 2, 1882. The Henderson and Overton Branch was acquired September 27, 1880, operated as part of the I&GN, and not legally consolidated until August 31, 1911. Galveston was reached by a half interest in the Galveston, Houston & Henderson. The company also owned the Austin Dam and Suburban.

Jay Gould, the Katy lease, and a second receivership

Gould took control in December 1880. He already had the Missouri Pacific (1879), and he was gathering the Texas & Pacific, the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas. The three Texas pieces—T&P, I&GN, Katy—were run as one system through his holdings. They kept separate corporations and separate seniority. On June 1, 1881, I&GN was leased to the Katy for ninety-nine years. The lease died on March 2, 1888, when the Katy ran out of money. I&GN went back to its own organization. Gould recovered the stock he had sold into the Katy. Attorney General James S. Hogg’s later suit against the Katy as a foreign corporation in Texas is the Katy page; it is not a fifth I&GN bankruptcy.

Mileage at the end of 1882 was 756. It did not grow in a serious way until after 1900. The second receivership ran from February 21, 1889, to July 11, 1892. This time there was no foreclosure sale and no change of name, only a financial reorganization. At that reorganization the company owned 88 locomotives, 61 passenger cars, 1,919 freight cars, and 80 company-service cars. Earnings: $1,076,695 passenger, $2,530,451 freight. George Gould tried to rebuild a transcontinental after his father’s death; the Panic of 1907 took the Gould grip off Missouri Pacific, the T&P, and the I&GN together. His biography is the George Gould page.

Calvert, Fort Worth, and the 1,106-mile peak

On May 1, 1901, I&GN merged the Calvert, Waco & Brazos Valley, which had built sixty-six miles of a Spring (north of Houston)–Fort Worth line. I&GN finished Fort Worth in 1902. In 1903 it built a forty-five-mile branch Navasota to Madisonville and acquired the Houston, Oaklawn & Magnolia Park Railway. Those are the Valley Junction–Fort Worth and Spring–Valley Junction entries in the glance table. Troup–Mineola was already H&GN iron.

Receivership returned on February 27, 1908, in the wash of 1907. A new company, the International & Great Northern Railway Company, was chartered August 10, 1911, and bought the old company at foreclosure on August 31. The Henderson and Overton Branch was folded in the same day. That is the peak: 1,106 miles. Less than three years later the railway was in receivership again. It was sold at foreclosure on July 28, 1922. Texas chartered the International-Great Northern Railroad Company on August 17, 1922. Operations transferred December 31. The hyphen in the 1922 name is the paper company Missouri Pacific later bought.

Frisco, the Gulf Coast Lines, and January 1, 1925

Missouri Pacific, the Texas & Pacific, and the I&GN had never been one legal system. They had been Gould stock. By the early 1920s that stock was gone. The St. Louis–San Francisco tried to buy the new I-GN in 1922. The Interstate Commerce Commission refused in 1923. Losing the Longview–Laredo connection would have broken Missouri Pacific’s Texas map. The answer was a side door. The New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway—the corporate shell of B. F. Yoakum’s Gulf Coast Lines, New Orleans to Brownsville—bought the International-Great Northern on June 20, 1924. Missouri Pacific bought the NOT&M on January 1, 1925. I-GN became a Missouri Pacific Line and kept running under its own name. Texas still wanted a Texas corporation on Texas rails.

The parent, and with it the I-GN, entered receivership on March 31, 1933. That filing lasted twenty-three years because the bondholders could not agree on a plan. During it the I-GN abandoned five miles Calvert–Calvert Junction in 1934 and the forty-five-mile Navasota–Madisonville branch in 1944.

Sunshine Special, Palestine cut, Texas Eagle

Through varnish from St. Louis used the Iron Mountain to Texarkana, the T&P to Longview, and the I&GN southwest. The train that advertised it was the Sunshine Special, inaugurated December 5, 1915, on the Iron Mountain: St. Louis to Texas, with a Memphis section at Little Rock. Dallas, Fort Worth, and El Paso cars came off at Longview or Marshall for the T&P. Houston cars came off at Palestine. The San Antonio/Laredo section, before 1948, continued over the National Railways of Mexico as the Aztec Eagle to Mexico City. Air-conditioning arrived in 1933. The diesel streamliner that replaced the name as flagship was the Texas Eagle, August 15, 1948. That train encyclopedia is the consist, the Eagles fleet, and Amtrak. This railroad’s part was the Texas miles south of Longview and the Palestine cut for Houston.

Ten-Wheelers, Mikados, eighty-eight diesels

Nineteenth-century power was the usual Texas mix of Americans, Ten-Wheelers, and Consolidations. The Missouri Pacific Historical Society’s builder photograph of I&GN 2-8-2 No. 501 is the twentieth-century freight engine in one picture. Ten-Wheeler 382 was still on a passenger train at Richards, Texas, on Valentine’s Day 1935. After 1925 the engines were Missouri Pacific engines on I-GN paper. There is no separate steam roster page. Missouri Pacific’s class tables are the parent encyclopedia.

Dieselization on this subsidiary showed up in the builder records under the I-GN name even while the parent advertised Missouri Pacific Lines. GE 44-tonner 812, serial 13178, January 1942, is the small switcher. Baldwin S-12s 9220–9226 and 9230–9232, March–April 1952, are the last new I-GN Baldwins in that roster. At the 1956 merger the company owned eighty-eight diesel units, 4,959 freight cars, 69 passenger cars, and 149 company-service cars. Missouri Pacific finished system dieselization about 1955. Unit-by-unit after the merger is the Missouri Pacific roster, not a second I-GN table.

March 1, 1956

A reorganization plan finally stuck. At 12:01 a.m. on March 1, 1956, the International-Great Northern was merged into the reorganized Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. So were the other Gulf Coast Lines subsidiaries. At the end of 1955 the I-GN still had 1,053 miles of main track. That year it reported freight revenue of $29,745,000, passenger revenue of $1,681,300, and total revenue of $34,359,900. Craig Miner’s The Rebirth of the Missouri Pacific, 1956–1984 is the book for what the parent did next. In 1950 that parent was already about 9,700 route-miles, every major southern-Midwest and Texas city except Amarillo and Oklahoma City.

After the merger Missouri Pacific trimmed the old I-GN. In 1965 it abandoned twenty-seven miles Bryan–Navasota and took Southern Pacific trackage rights between those points. In 1967 it abandoned Fort Worth through Waco and Mart to Marlin, took Katy rights Fort Worth–Waco, and bought a former Southern Pacific branch Waco–Marlin. The East Columbia branch was cut back to Arcola, thirty-one miles out. Those are Missouri Pacific abandonments on I-GN iron, not a fifth I-GN bankruptcy.

What remains

Union Pacific took Missouri Pacific in 1982 and folded the paper company in 1997. The Longview–Laredo main and the Palestine–Houston stem are still UP. Laredo is still the inland port the December 1, 1881, spike aimed at. Amtrak’s Texas Eagle uses the Austin–San Antonio piece. The 1908 International & Great Northern depot in San Antonio is VIA Metropolitan Transit’s headquarters, the Grand at VIA Villa. Rockdale’s depot has been restored. Palestine is still a railroad town; the Texas State Railroad tourist line east to Rusk is a different company, a prison road, not this one.

The I&GN as a name ended March 1, 1956. The route that made Gould’s Texas map work—T&P at Longview, shops at Palestine, border at Laredo—did not.

Sources

Werner, George C. “International-Great Northern Railroad.” Handbook of Texas. Texas State Historical Association. Consolidation September 30, 1873; H&GN 252 miles and International 177 miles at merger; Rockdale 1874; Austin December 28, 1876; San Antonio and Laredo December 1, 1881 as TSHA groups them; Georgetown 1879/1882; Henderson and Overton 1880/1911; land 6,432,000 acres / $4,668,850; receiverships April 1 1878 / November 1 1879 and February 21 1889 / July 11 1892; Gould December 1880; Katy lease June 1 1881–March 2 1888; 756 miles end of 1882; 88 locomotives and 1890s earnings; Calvert, Waco & Brazos Valley May 1 1901; Fort Worth 1902; Navasota–Madisonville 1903; receivership February 27 1908; Railway Company August 10 / 31 1911; 1,106 miles; foreclosure July 28 1922; Railroad Company August 17 1922; Frisco attempt; NOT&M June 20 1924; Missouri Pacific January 1 1925; parent receivership March 31 1933; Calvert 1934 and Navasota–Madisonville 1944 abandonments; merger March 1 1956; 88 diesels, 1,053 miles, 1955 revenues; 1965 Bryan–Navasota; 1967 Fort Worth–Marlin; East Columbia to Arcola
Reed, S. G. “International Railroad.” Handbook of Texas. Charter August 5, 1870; Fulton–Laredo via Austin; $10,000-a-mile bonds; Bledsoe and the Texas Supreme Court; twenty sections and twenty-five-year tax exemption; Hearne December 1870; fifty miles December 1871; Palestine July 11, 1872; Longview January 31, 1873; John S. Barnes and H. M. Hoxie
Young, Nancy Beck. “Houston and Great Northern Railroad.” Handbook of Texas. Charter October 22, 1866; Rice, Nichols, Hutchins, Moses Taylor; Charles G. Young president; 1870 contract; 1871–73 construction; Houston Tap and Brazoria and Huntsville Branch May 8, 1873; 253.1 miles to the I&GN
Missouri Pacific Historical Society, “International-Great Northern.” Werner text; August 1924 public-timetable map; Ten-Wheeler 382 at Richards, February 14, 1935 (Monypenny); builder photograph of 2-8-2 501
Cline, Wayne. The Texas Railroad: The Scandalous and Violent History of the International and Great Northern Railroad, 1866–1925. Lexington, 2015. Charles Young’s death; Gould-era narrative cited on the live Missouri Pacific page
Miner, Craig H. The Rebirth of the Missouri Pacific, 1956–1984. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1983
Schafer, Mike. More Classic American Railroads. Osceola: MBI Publishing, 2000
Union Pacific, “Sunshine Special” historical-equipment note. Inaugural December 5, 1915; Laredo and Mexico City sleepers 1930; air-conditioning 1933; replaced as flagship by the Texas Eagle August 15, 1948
San Antonio Express-News / Texas Transportation Museum. I&GN second railroad into San Antonio, January 1881; Laredo later that year
National Register nomination, Palestine. General offices 1875; Clayton 1879 building; shops as largest local employer; court fight to keep the domicile in Palestine
The Diesel Shop / American-Rails GE 44-tonner and Baldwin S-12 rosters. IGN 812 (GE 13178, January 1942); IGN S-12s 9220–9226 and 9230–9232 (1952)
Live American-Rails Missouri Pacific, Texas & Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, Jay Gould, Texas Mexican, Texas Eagle, and January 1910 I&GN timetable pages as linked above

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