Texas Mexican Railway: Serving The Border Since The 1880s

Last revised: September 16, 2026

The Texas Mexican Railway—Tex-Mex, reporting mark TM—is 160 miles of South Texas that became the first railroad to put a bridge across the Rio Grande. Texas chartered it in March 1875 as the Corpus Christi, San Diego & Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Railroad, three-foot gauge, sheep from the King and Kenedy pastures to the Gulf. A Palmer syndicate renamed it the Texas Mexican Railway in June 1881 and finished Laredo that September. The international bridge to Nuevo Laredo opened in 1883. The Mexican government held the stock from 1900 until privatization in 1982. Kansas City Southern took control at the end of 2004. The paper company is a Canadian Pacific Kansas City subsidiary today. The iron is still the Laredo gateway.

It was never a big railroad. It did not have to be. Corpus Christi to the border, a connection into Mexico City once Palmer’s Mexican National opened in 1888, and, after 1996, trackage rights through Houston to Beaumont were enough to make a Class I’s NAFTA map work. Seven Whitcomb boxcabs dieselized the whole property in 1939. The map and public timetable on this page are from the March 1940 Official Guide.

Texas Mexican Railway F7A 800 at engine facilities Corpus Christi Texas August 1965

Tex-Mex F7A #800 lays over at the railroad’s engine facilities in Corpus Christi, Texas, in August 1965. Rick Burn photo.

On this page: At a glance · Three-foot to Laredo · The 1883 bridge · Standard gauge and Mexico · March 1940 Official Guide · Whitcombs to GP60s · Tex Mex Express · TMM, KCS, CPKC · What remains

At a glance

Item	Detail
Legal name	Texas Mexican Railway Company
Reporting mark	TM
Headquarters	Laredo / Corpus Christi, Texas
Charter	Corpus Christi, San Diego & Rio Grande Narrow Gauge, March 1875. Name changed June 1881
First main	Corpus Christi–San Diego, 52 miles of 3-foot gauge, complete 1879
Laredo	Remaining ~110 miles open September 1881
International Bridge	Rio Grande to Nuevo Laredo, 1883. First Mexico–United States rail connection. Tex-Mex still owns the U.S. half of the structure
Standard gauge	Entire main converted July 17, 1902
Route miles (owned)	About 160 Laredo–Corpus Christi, plus short branches. Trackage rights Robstown–Beaumont after 1996
Gauge	3 feet, 1875–1902. Then 4 feet 8½ inches
Mexican control	1900–1982
Dieselization	Seven Whitcomb boxcabs, 1939. First railroad of its size in the United States to go all-diesel
KCS	49 percent, 1995. Sold to TFM 2002. Control approved; effective about January 1, 2005
CPKC	Kansas City Southern into CPKC April 14, 2023. Tex-Mex remains a paper subsidiary

Charter, Laredo, gauge, and dieselization follow George C. Werner in the Handbook of Texas. KCS dates from the company history and the STB control case. Map and timetable on this page are March 1940 Official Guide. Information compiled September 16, 2026.

Three-foot to Laredo

Uriah Lott promoted the Corpus Christi, San Diego & Rio Grande Narrow Gauge in March 1875. Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy put ranch money behind it. The object was sheep, not Mexico: a three-foot railroad from the Gulf west onto the pastures. Twenty-five miles reached Rancho Banquete by 1877. San Diego opened in 1879, fifty-two miles from Corpus Christi.

In 1881 Lott and Kenedy sold the property in New York to a syndicate headed by William J. Palmer and James Sullivan. Palmer already had the Denver & Rio Grande and was building the Mexican National Railway, another three-foot line, from Mexico City toward the Rio Grande. The new owners rechartered the Texas company in June 1881 as the Texas Mexican Railway. The amended charter promised 1,400 miles—San Diego to Burr’s Ferry on the Sabine, branches to Tyler, Galveston, San Antonio, Sabine Pass. Almost none of that was built. What was built was the remaining 110 miles to Laredo, finished in September 1881. That is the Tex-Mex main as it still sits: about 160 miles, Corpus Christi to the border.

They did buy the little Galveston, Brazos & Colorado in 1881 for a Gulf connection that was never laid. In 1885 the San Antonio & Aransas Pass reached Alice and gave Tex-Mex a standard-gauge interchange; that road later went into the Southern Pacific.

Texas Mexican Railway GP7 852 tied down in Laredo Texas February 1986

Tex-Mex GP7 #852 is tied down in Laredo during February 1986. Gary Morris photo.

The 1883 bridge

Laredo on the Texas bank was not yet a crossing. In 1883 Tex-Mex put a bridge over the Rio Grande to Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. That was the first railroad connection between the United States and Mexico. Palmer’s Mexican National, still under construction, would meet the south end. The Mexican National main, Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo, opened in September 1888. After that a car could, in theory, move Corpus Christi–Mexico City on allied three-foot iron, and by 1889 the last gaps on connecting roads allowed a routing from Mexico City toward Canada. Laredo’s population tripled in the 1880s. The U.S. half of the International Rail Bridge is still a Tex-Mex / Mexrail asset: the structure, not the track on it, on the Texas side.

Standard gauge, the government, and the last branches

Three-foot made sense while Palmer’s Mexican National was three-foot. North American interchange did not. On July 17, 1902, Tex-Mex converted the entire main to standard gauge in one move. In 1906 it absorbed the Texas Mexican Northern, a stalled 1882 project up the river toward Eagle Pass that had laid about five miles out of Laredo. Under Tex-Mex a little more than a mile survived as a stock-pen spur.

The Mexican government took control in 1900 and held it for eighty-two years. The railroad stayed a Texas corporation running almost entirely in Texas, owned from Mexico City. In 1930 it took the San Diego & Gulf, 2.85 miles from Byram on the Tex-Mex to the Duval Texas Sulphur Company mines at Palangana, built in 1929. In 1940 it began operating a 19-mile government railroad from Corpus Christi south to the naval air station at Flour Bluff. That is the plant the March 1940 Official Guide still describes as a 3-foot-gauge-no-longer South Texas bridge road with a new Navy branch and a brand-new diesel roster.

March 1940 Official Guide

Texas Mexican Railway public timetable from the March 1940 Official Guide of the Railways.

Texas Mexican Railway system map from the March 1940 Official Guide of the Railways.

The Guide plate is the railroad after dieselization and just as Flour Bluff comes on: Laredo, Hebbronville, Alice, San Diego, Banquete, Robstown, Corpus Christi, the International Bridge. Passenger was never a fleet. Freight was wool, livestock, sulfur, later oil-field material, and overhead to Mexico. Alice remained the old SA&AP / SP cross. Robstown became the door north when the 1996 trackage rights were written.

Whitcombs to GP60s

Seven Whitcomb boxcabs, 501–507, arrived in 1939 and retired steam on a railroad this size—the first such complete dieselization in the country, as Werner records it. Baldwin added DS-4-4-750s 509–510 in 1949 and a VO-1000, 511, built 1942. Electro-Motive then wrote the rest of the roster: F7As 800A–800B in 1949 (the Corpus Christi 800 in Rick Burn’s photograph), GP7s 850–852 in 1950–51, GP9 853 in 1958, GP18s 854–855, GP28 856, GP38s 857–860, GP38-2s 861–867, a pair of secondhand GP35s, GP60s 869 (2nd)–870 in 1990–91, and a block of GP40M-3 rebuilds, 1161–1179, from Seaboard, B&O, L&N, C&O, and SCL carbodies as the KCS era began.

Builder	Model	Road numbers	Dates	Qty
Whitcomb	Boxcab	501–507	1939	7
Baldwin	DS-4-4-750	509–510	1949	2
Baldwin	VO-1000	511	1942	1
EMD	F7A	800A–800B	1949	2
EMD	GP7	850–852	1950–1951	3
EMD	GP9	853	1958	1
EMD	GP18	854–855	1963	2
EMD	GP28	856	1965	1
EMD	GP38	857–860	1966–1971	4
EMD	GP38-2	861–867	1974–1985	7
EMD	GP35	868	Ex-Frisco	1
EMD	GP35M	869 (1st)	Ex-Missouri Pacific	1
EMD	GP60	869 (2nd)–870	1990–1991	2
EMD	GP40M-3	1161–1179	Ex-SAL, B&O, L&N, C&O, SCL	19

All-time diesel blocks as the railroad numbered them. 869 was used twice.

Tex Mex Express

Tex-Mex GP38-2 #867 has the Tex Mex Express near Alice, Texas, during February 1986. The train ran the length of the railroad, Corpus Christi–Laredo. Gary Morris photo.

Regular passenger service had already thinned when the railroad put a weekend train back on the main in the 1980s and called it the Tex Mex Express: Corpus Christi to Laredo, spring and summer, Fridays through Sundays. Gary Morris caught 867 on it at Alice in February 1986. It was a short revival on a freight bridge, not a second named-train encyclopedia.

TMM, Kansas City Southern, CPKC

Mexico sold the railroad in 1982 to Grupo TMM (Transportación Marítima Mexicana). Kansas City Southern bought 49 percent in 1995 as it and TMM prepared a bid for Mexico’s northeastern concession, later Transportación Ferroviaria Mexicana. Tex-Mex did not yet touch KCS rails. The Surface Transportation Board solved that when it approved the Union Pacific–Southern Pacific merger in August 1996: Tex-Mex received overhead trackage rights from Robstown through Houston to a KCS connection at Beaumont, traffic required to have a prior or subsequent movement on the Laredo–Corpus Christi line. That condition made a Laredo–Kansas City corridor. In 1996 Tex-Mex also bought about 90 miles of unused Southern Pacific between Rosenberg and Victoria; the railroad left it dormant until a 2006 rebuild to get off the roundabout UP routing through Flatonia.

KCS and TMM sold their Tex-Mex shares to TFM in 2002. In August 2004 KCS bought control again and parked the stock in a voting trust. The Board approved the KCS/TM transaction subject to a safety integration plan and New York Dock labor conditions; control became effective about January 1, 2005. Mexrail, which owned Tex-Mex and the U.S. half of the Laredo bridge, came with it. The Mexican franchise on the other side of the river became Kansas City Southern de México. That company story is Kansas City Southern. Canadian Pacific closed the KCS combination as CPKC on April 14, 2023. That date is the 2020s page.

What remains

The Texas Mexican Railway Company still exists on paper as a CPKC subsidiary. The original main, Laredo to Corpus Christi, still carries the Laredo gateway: automotive, intermodal, grain, chemicals, energy, everything a Class I sends across the only rail bridge that opened the border in 1883. Trackage rights still reach Beaumont. The Rosenberg–Victoria piece is back in service. Flour Bluff is a Navy memory. The Whitcombs are gone. F7A 800 is a 1965 photograph. The March 1940 Guide still shows a 160-mile railroad that had already done the thing the later mergers were built around—put Texas on Mexico’s main line.

Sources

Werner, George C. “Texas Mexican Railway.” Handbook of Texas. Texas State Historical Association. Charter March 1875; Uriah Lott, King, and Kenedy; sale to Palmer and Sullivan; name June 1881; Laredo September 1881; Alice/SA&AP 1885; standard gauge July 17, 1902; Texas Mexican Northern 1906; San Diego & Gulf 1930; Whitcomb dieselization 1939; Flour Bluff 1940
Kansas City Southern, “The Texas Mexican Railway Company History” (kcsi.com corporate page, archived 2006). 162-mile Corpus Christi–Laredo; International Bridge 1883; Mexican government to 1982; TMM; KCS 49 percent 1995; sale to TFM 2002; KCS repurchase August 2004, STB effective end of 2004
Official Guide of the Railways, March 1940. Public timetable and system map reproduced on this page
STB Finance Docket No. 32760 (UP/SP), Decision No. 44 (August 12, 1996) and Decision No. 47 (September 9, 1996). Tex-Mex overhead trackage rights Robstown–Beaumont; prior/subsequent movement on Laredo–Corpus Christi
STB, Kansas City Southern–Control–Texas Mexican Railway (application May 14, 2003; decision 2004). Mexrail ownership of Tex-Mex and U.S. half of Laredo Bridge; Class II, 157 miles plus UP rights; control effective about January 1, 2005
Railway Gazette International, “Building the NAFTA Railway,” May 1, 1998. KCS 49 percent of Tex-Mex 1995; TFM Noreste bid November 29, 1996
Live American-Rails Kansas City Southern, CPKC, Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Denver & Rio Grande Western, and 1990s/2020s decade pages as linked above

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