Portal:Trains/Featured picture/Week 32, 2005

A westbound Southern Pacific Railroad freight train leaves Chicago on October 6, 1992.

The Southern Pacific Railroad was an American Class I railroad. The railroad was founded as a land holding company in 1865, forming part of the Central Pacific Railroad empire. By 1900, the Southern Pacific Company had grown into a major railroad system that incorporated a lot of smaller companies and that extended from New Orleans through Texas to El Paso, across New Mexico and through Tucson, Arizona, to Los Angeles, throughout most of California including San Francisco and Sacramento; it absorbed the Central Pacific Railroad extending eastward across Nevada to Ogden, Utah, and had lines reaching north throughout and across Oregon to Portland. On August 9, 1988, the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the purchase of the Southern Pacific by Rio Grande Industries, the company that controlled the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. The Rio Grande officially took control of the Southern Pacific on October 13, 1988. After the purchase, the combined railroad kept the Southern Pacific name due to its brand recognition in the railroad industry and with customers of both constituent railroads.

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