Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad (Katy): Map, History, Rosters
Last revised: October 27, 2026
By: Adam Burns
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas was the railroad that won the race into the Cherokee Nation, and then spent a century trying to make a living on light iron between the Missouri River and Texas. People called it the Katy. The reporting mark was MKT. The name dates from May 23, 1870, when the Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch, took it. That Southern Branch had no corporate connection to the Union Pacific Railroad. The Katy became a subsidiary of the Missouri Pacific on August 12, 1988, and was merged into that company on December 1, 1989.
Two books carry the story the railroad told about itself and the story the locomotives tell. The Opening of the Great Southwest, a publicity booklet the Katy issued in 1970, is the account of the land-grant race. Joe G. Collias and Raymond B. George Jr., in Katy Power, follow the engines from 1912 to 1985 and argue that a Depression receivership, which the road refused, might have left it a stronger property.
A quartet of Katy GP40s, led by 207, between Troy and Eddy, Texas, in the summer of 1978. Steve Bledsoe: “This photo was in the 1983 Katy Railroad calendar. Our father always said that it was the best picture he ever took. We were heading to Colorado for a family vacation and someone yelled, ‘There’s a headlight!’ So our dad pulled off the side of the road and ran through a patch of weeds and just barely got the picture. The Katy president at that time contacted our father to create a large picture on canvas. The original picture seen here hung in the company offices in Dallas for years. We did have an artist enhance our framed canvas picture of this image and for our business we sold posters of the enhanced version of this image. The big canvas picture that was in the Katy offices is now part of the Red River Museum in the old Katy depot in Denison, Texas.” Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.
On this page: At a glance · The race south · Jay Gould · St. Louis, Oklahoma, and the wheat line · The 1923 railroad · The Texas Special · Barriger, Whitman, and the sale · Motor cars
At a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nickname | The Katy |
| Reporting mark | MKT |
| Headquarters | Dallas in the later years. Earlier offices included the Railway Exchange Building in St. Louis |
| States | Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Trackage rights reached St. Louis |
| Gauge | 4 feet 8½ inches |
| Chartered | Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch, filed September 25, 1865, under the Kansas act of February 13, 1865 |
| The Katy name | May 23, 1870, as the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway |
| Dates | May 23, 1870–December 1, 1989. Union Pacific closed the purchase on August 12, 1988 |
| Route miles | 2,787 in 1950. 3,860 before the 1923 cuts shed nearly 500 miles |
| Main corridors | St. Louis and Kansas City to Parsons; Parsons to Dallas, Fort Worth, Waco, Houston, and San Antonio; the Oklahoma City line; the western Oklahoma wheat branch |
| Slogan | The Katy |
| Steam since 1900 | 715 in the quantity column. 710 road numbers, counted once |
| Diesels | 406 frames, each once |
| Successor | Missouri Pacific, December 1, 1989. That company merged into the Union Pacific Railroad on January 1, 1997 |
The race south
The Pacific Railroad Act, as amended on March 3, 1863, was not only the law behind the transcontinental line. The government also promised alternate sections of land, ten sections deep on each side, for a railroad down the Neosho valley to the southern boundary of Kansas. Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, and Fort Gibson were supposed to be tied together. The Confederacy was still in the field, and the Army wanted the forts supplied. Three companies were incorporated for the job. The Kansas & Neosho Valley, later the Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf, started south from Kansas City. The Leavenworth, Lawrence & Fort Gibson gave up early. The third was the Union Pacific Railway, Southern Branch.
Kansas approved the Southern Branch act on February 13, 1865. The company’s certificate was acknowledged on September 20 and filed with the secretary of state on September 25. The charter ran from Fort Riley toward the state’s southern line. The Texas legislature accepted that Kansas charter on August 2, 1870, which is why a Kansas corporation could keep building past the Red River. Construction reached Burlington, Kansas, in February 1870. On May 23 the company took the name Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway.
Tracklayers then came into Chetopa, 182 miles from Junction City, and the first train entered Indian Territory on June 6, 1870. The Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf had reached the border first, down the east edge of Kansas through Fort Scott, Girard, Columbus, and Baxter Springs. It had entered Quapaw land. The federal act required a railroad to enter the Neosho valley in the Cherokee Nation. On that reading the Katy was declared the winner. The Indian Nations later voided the land grant. What the railroad actually built, it built with construction and with the lines it bought.
A new 160-mile line left the original main at Parsons, named for Judge Levi Parsons, and opened to Sedalia, Missouri, on February 3, 1871. Parsons became the shop town and stayed the shop town. South of the state line the publicity booklet dates the crossing of the Arkansas River to July 4, 1871. The first regular train reached Denison, Texas, on Christmas Day, December 25, 1872. Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907. The railroad was already an old resident by then.
Inspection car 1045 tied down in Denison, Texas, circa 1983. Denison Shops built it in 1973 from a 40-foot Pullman boxcar. It stayed in use until the 1988 takeover and is preserved at the Oklahoma Railway Museum. Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.
The early railroad lived on the Chisholm Trail cattle trade and on whatever grain the country produced. Population was thin. On January 10, 1874 a line opened from Sedalia to Moberly, across a bridge over the Missouri River, and connected with the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern, a Wabash predecessor, for Chicago. The Panic of 1873 caught the company anyway. It entered bankruptcy on December 31, 1874, and left receivership on March 1, 1876, under the same name and with new officers.
Jay Gould
William Bond, a confidant of Jay Gould, became general manager. Gould himself took the presidency on January 26, 1880. He ran the property the way he ran the others: maintenance deferred, wages squeezed, and the mileage pushed out so the system would fit a transcontinental scheme. In Texas that scheme already included the Missouri Pacific, the Texas & Pacific, and, from June 1, 1881, a lease of the International & Great Northern. The Katy was made the MK&T Division of the Missouri Pacific. Timetables shortened that to the K&T Division, and from K&T came KT, and from KT came Katy.
The Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad logo. Author’s work.
The Texas building of those years is a string of short lines tied together. Early in 1881 Gould picked up a road out of Denison toward Greenville and another that ended at Gainesville. On April 1 the Katy took trackage rights over the Texas & Pacific from Whitesboro into Fort Worth. Greenville to Mineola opened on June 25, 1881. Dallas service began the same year through control of the Dallas & Wichita. Rails reached Taylor, south of Fort Worth, on June 9, 1882. The Dallas & Greenville came in 1886. In 1890 the Dallas & Waco reached Hillsboro and gave Dallas its own line to Waco and to the points farther south. An extension to Henrietta in 1887 was the start of what became the long agricultural branch into western Oklahoma. Houston was reached in 1893. Galveston was a half interest in the Galveston, Houston & Henderson, held jointly with the International & Great Northern. San Antonio was reached from the east in 1901. A direct line from Granger to Austin opened in 1904, and south of San Marcos the trains used International & Great Northern trackage rights into the city.
SD40-2 616 leads a southbound past the depot at Taylor, Texas, circa 1983. Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.
The International & Great Northern lease did not survive the decade. It ended on March 2, 1888, when the Katy ran out of money. A court order separated the Katy from the Missouri Pacific effective November 1, 1888. The company went into a voluntary receivership and came out on July 1, 1891, as an independent Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway. Texas law wanted a Texas corporation on the Texas mileage. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company of Texas was chartered on October 28, 1891.
St. Louis, Oklahoma, and the wheat line
Kansas City was finished without Gould. A line from Parsons to Paola opened in 1887. On July 8, 1889 the Katy took 43 miles of trackage rights over the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Memphis, a Frisco predecessor, and reached Kansas City that way. St. Louis was a new railroad. The Missouri, Kansas & Eastern, chartered in February 1892, opened on April 1, 1894, 161.7 miles from Franklin Junction, at New Franklin, to Texas Junction at Machens. From Machens about 24 miles of trackage rights over the St. Louis, Keokuk & Northwestern, a Burlington road, carried the trains into the city. In 1895 an 86-mile cutoff from Bryson, in Pettis County, to Paola gave the Katy its own east-west bridge between St. Louis and Kansas City.
Oklahoma City came next, a 169-mile branch southwest from Coffeyville, finished in February 1904. A 79-mile connector from Osage to Wybark, opened in August 1903, tied that branch to the main line south. The western wheat and cotton line was assembled rather than built in one season. The Wichita Falls Railway was leased in 1895, from Henrietta to Wichita Falls. The Wichita Falls & Northwestern was acquired in July 1911. Its line had reached Wellington, Texas, from Altus on November 10, 1910, and Forgan, Oklahoma, on November 1, 1912. Together that trackage was 363 miles. In 1931 the Katy bought the Beaver, Meade & Englewood and extended the branch from Forgan to Keyes, 105 miles. The point was wheat and cotton. The branch north of Altus was abandoned on January 31, 1973.
On May 1, 1914 the Texas company leased the Texas Central, 309 miles, the line that ran northwest from Waco through De Leon and Cross Plains toward Rotan. That lease, not an earlier purchase, is the transaction that put the Texas Central on the Katy.
An official 1931 system map of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Author’s collection.
One property that did not stay was the narrow-gauge East Line & Red River. George W. Hilton, in American Narrow Gauge Railroads, has it chartered on March 22, 1871, and built to 124 miles between Greenville and Jefferson. The Katy acquired it on November 28, 1881, and extended it from Greenville to McKinney in May 1882. A fight with the Texas attorney general produced an order, on April 12, 1891, separating the company from the Katy. Control did not actually leave. The McKinney–Greenville section was widened in 1887. The remaining 122 miles were standard-gauged in a single day, September 13, 1892. The line was then pushed east to Waskom, and in 1900 twenty miles of trackage rights over the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific reached Shreveport. When the Katy was reorganized on April 1, 1923, that trackage was not kept. It went to the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company, a Kansas City Southern predecessor, the McKinney–Waskom line that road still describes as its way toward Dallas.
The 1923 railroad
The Railway went into receivership in September 1915. It came out on April 1, 1923, as the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, a different company from the Railway that Gould had run. The reorganization dropped nearly 500 miles from a system of 3,860. The 2,787 miles usually quoted for the Katy are a 1950 figure, the railroad after that pruning, not the largest map it ever published. Parsons, Denison, and Bellmead were the operating points the property was run from in the later years. The 1931 map above is the system after the wheat branch had reached Keyes and after the East Line had gone.
Matthew Sloan is the officer the 1930s are remembered for. By 1934 operating revenues were little more than half of what they had been in 1930. A Reconstruction Finance loan of nearly $3 million in 1938 helped the Railroad stay out of a Depression receivership. Collias and George thought the road would have been better off going through one. The debt stayed. So did the light rail, much of it 90 pounds or less, which is why the Katy never owned a 2-8-4, a 4-8-4, or an articulated. The Mikado and the Pacific were as large as the track would carry. World War II filled the trains and wore out what was left of the iron. Locomotive maintenance was no better than the track.
A crewman takes train orders from a Katy freight at Temple, Texas, in September 1981. Gary Morris photo.
The Texas Special
The passenger train people remember is the Texas Special, run with the Frisco between St. Louis and Fort Worth, Dallas, and San Antonio. The joint train dated from 1915. In May 1948 the two railroads put a streamliner on it. The Frisco canceled its leg on January 4, 1959. Katy track and Katy equipment were the reasons the partner gave. The Katy Flyer and the Bluebonnet were the other named trains on the home road. The August 1952 public timetable is a separate page.
Motor cars covered the branches the named trains did not. Five of them, and one trailer, are listed below. They are not locomotives, and they are not in the diesel count. No. 20, a Budd RDC-3 delivered in 1956, was the last.
Barriger, Whitman, and the sale
John W. Barriger III was elected president in May 1965. Gross revenue moved from $56 million in 1964 to $68 million in 1968. He had done this kind of work on other tired railroads, and he treated a merger with a stronger system as the Katy’s real chance. Reginald N. Whitman followed him, abandoned or sold the branches that could not pay, and in 1980 watched gross revenue reach $220 million. By then the neighbors were the Santa Fe, Burlington Northern, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific. The interchanges that had once given the Katy a reason to stay single were gone.
SD40-2 608 leads a unit coal train southbound past the depot at Granger, Texas, circa 1984. Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.
GP40 200, still in bicentennial colors, at Austin, Texas, in the summer of 1979. Mike Bledsoe photo. American-Rails.com collection.
A sale was agreed on May 23, 1985. The Missouri Pacific would buy the Katy for $108 million in cash and securities. The agreement died. The Chicago Tribune reported the end of it on January 14, 1986, and Whitman said both sides were “back to square one.” The second negotiation held. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved the purchase on May 13, 1988. Union Pacific Corporation completed it on Friday, August 12, 1988. The Katy became a subsidiary of the Missouri Pacific, which had itself been merged into the Union Pacific in December 1982 and lived on as a corporate shell. The Katy, and the Galveston, Houston & Henderson with it, merged into the Missouri Pacific on December 1, 1989. The Missouri Pacific’s own merger into the Union Pacific Railroad came on January 1, 1997. Much of the map has since been abandoned or turned into trail. The Katy Trail across Missouri is the best-known piece. Other segments still carry Union Pacific trains.
Union Pacific painted SD70ACe No. 1988 in a Katy-inspired livery and unveiled it in September 2005. The number is the year Union Pacific bought the railroad.
Motor cars
Five motor cars and one trailer. M-1, the Grasshopper, and its trailer were sold to the Chicago & Alton in 1934.
| Road Number | Type | Horsepower | Builder | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| M-1, Grasshopper | B-B | 175 | J.G. Brill | 1925 | Sold to the Chicago & Alton in 1934, with trailer T-1 |
| T-1 | Trailer | — | J.G. Brill | 1925 | Accompanied M-1 |
| M-10 | B-B | 200, Winton | St. Louis | 1926 | |
| M-11 | B-B | 400, Winton model 148 | St. Louis | 1932 | |
| M-12 | B-B | 415, Brill-Westinghouse | St. Louis | 1932 | |
| 20 | B-B, RDC-3 | Two 275-horsepower General Motors engines | Budd | 1956 |
Related Reading
- Missouri-Kansas-Texas steam roster
- Missouri-Kansas-Texas diesel roster
- August 1952 timetable
- Texas Special
- Missouri Pacific
- Texas & Pacific
- International & Great Northern
- St. Louis-San Francisco
- Kansas City Southern
- Union Pacific
Sources
- Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, The Opening of the Great Southwest: A Brief History of the Origin and Development of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Publicity department, 1970.
- Joe G. Collias and Raymond B. George Jr., Katy Power: Locomotives and Trains of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, 1912–1985. M M Books, 1986.
- George W. Hilton, American Narrow Gauge Railroads. The East Line & Red River.
- Donovan L. Hofsommer, “Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad,” Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association. The Texas company’s charter, the Texas Central lease, and Barriger’s term.
- Poor’s Manual of Railroads. Missouri, Kansas & Eastern, opened April 1, 1894.
- J. Parker Lamb, Classic Trains, November 30, 2022. The 1923 mileage cut, Matthew Sloan, and 1934 revenues.
- Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1986. Journal of Commerce, August 15, 1988.
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