Kansas City Terminal Railway

The Kansas City Terminal Railway is a Class III terminal railroad that serves as a joint operation of the trunk railroads that serve the Kansas City metropolitan area, the United States' second largest rail hub after Chicago. It is operated by the Kaw River Railroad.



The railway was created after a series of floods in 1903, 1904, and 1908 inundated the West Bottoms each time and temporarily closed the Union Depot there. The 12 original trunk railways of the city at the time joined to build the new Kansas City Union Station and to coordinate the bridges and switches that serve the city.

Under an Interstate Commerce Commission order, the railway operated and then oversaw the liquidation of the Rock Island Line from 1979 to 1980.

The railway owns and dispatches 85 miles of track (25 in Kansas and 60 in Missouri) and leases six locomotives and no freight cars. It no longer owns Union Station. It has subcontracted its maintenance operations to BNSF.

The original trunk railroads that were owners of the Kansas City Terminal were:
 * Alton Railroad
 * Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway
 * Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad
 * Chicago Great Western Railway
 * Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad
 * Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad
 * Kansas City Southern Railway
 * Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
 * Missouri Pacific Railroad
 * St. Louis-San Francisco Railway
 * Union Pacific Railroad
 * Wabash Railroad

It now serves the Class I railroads BNSF, CPKC Railway, Norfolk Southern Railway and Union Pacific as well as the Class III railroads Missouri & Northern Arkansas Railroad and Genesee & Wyoming, plus Amtrak.