Talk:Southern Pacific Transportation Company

anarchists and the passive voice
Under 'Famous Accidents,' the first sentence was. "Anarchists were blamed for..." I've changed it to "Someone blamed anarchists for..." and suggested that a citation is needed. The claim is not elaborated upon, there is no explanation of which anarchists might have done it, or why. A horrific act of terrorism IS elaborated on. I feel it is unfair to to hold anarchists responsible for an incident with no proof, nor do I think it is sufficient to understand the aggressors as "anarchists." A lot of anarchists are pacifists and/or employ nonviolent action. There's not a lot of agreement in the movement over what anarchism is: is it about communism? Is it about freedom from violence? Is it about getting rid of industrial civilisation? None of these anarchisms are compatible, and most aren't compatible with this kind of terrorism.

If the "somebody" who blamed the anarchists was the original author of the line, it should obviously be removed. But maybe somebody else did blame the anarchists for the incident. If the New York Times, the FBI, or the President who blamed anarchists for the derailment, it's worth knowing that they did. But perhaps that wouldn't belong as a topic sentence. usevalue —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.240.252 (talk) 04:46, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

vandalism
Someone wiped out most of the Locomotive Paint and Appearace section as well as Passenger Service.

Insomniac186 7:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

What an odd thing to vandalize. 98.228.242.74 (talk) 04:13, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Total length of track
How can it have been 52 838 km long? That's further than the distance around the equator. Golfcam 13:12, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I only show it ranging between 13,848 miles (20,000 km?) at abt the time of its height in 1929 and at 8,991 miles (14,000 km?) at time of merger with UP. Rhallanger 13:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Preservation section thoughts
The Diebert/Strapac book that I've been using to update various SP steam locomotive articles (such as Southern Pacific 2472) lists about three times as many steam locomotives in preservation than are listed here. The book also lists several T&NO locomotives in preservation. As it would then be quite long after adding the information from the book, we should seriously consider splitting the section into its own article (perhaps at List of preserved Southern Pacific Railroad rolling stock so we can also include unpowered passenger and freight cars too).

Also, do we know which of the preserved equipment is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (I know 1673 is, but what about the others)?

Slambo (Speak) 16:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea regarding a separate article. Here's a link to the NATIONAL REGISTER INFORMATION SYSTEM that seems to produce the best search results; I ran through a dozen or so typing in the state two-letter abbreviation and the word "locomotive" in the name category and only came across SP 1673 in Arizona (but did come up with a few for other railroads elsewhere). FYI.--Lordkinbote 02:54, 24 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Hearing no objections, I did the split last night and expanded with more info from Diebert/Strapac. There are still a bunch of T&NO locomotives to add to the list along with the unpowered and maintenance of way rolling stock preserved across the continent.  Searching around the NRHP list, I spotted several SP depots, but very few items of SP rolling stock.  Slambo (Speak)  17:16, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Freight Operatations thoughts?
I think that, similar to the passenger trains section, there should be some mention of the uniqueness of the Espee's freight operations. Amongst the things we shoud mention: 1). The Pacific Fruit Express operation 2). SP's Overnite LCL freight service 3). The sugar beet trains in California 4). SP's pioneering Container train intermodal service and the agreement with Sea-Land corporation 5). SP's extensive use of bay window cabooses

Any other thoughts on this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PlanesTranesNCars (talk • contribs) 06:56, 5 February 2007 (UTC).

Inconsistencies
This page says this for the Presidents:
 * 1) Timothy Guy Phelps (1865-1868)
 * 2) Leland Stanford (1868-1890)
 * 3) Collis P. Huntington (1890-1900)

However, the Leland Stanford page says he was president from 1885-1890, and it has a cite. 64.95.27.5 14:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)ThatGuamGuy


 * I'll have to recheck my paper references; but I thought Phelps' term was listed on the San Mateo website linked from his bio page. Southern Pacific existed before the Big Four purchased it, Phelps organized the railroad and was one of the first to donate land to the railroad.  Slambo (Speak)  15:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)


 * According to Leon Metz's non-fiction book about Dallas Stoudenmire, Charles Crocker was president in 1881; Crocker's page confirms that he was president at some time, so I used to him till in the gap between the end of Phelps's term and where every other wikipage says that Stanford's term began (1885). 64.95.27.5 19:03, 26 October 2007 (UTC)sean

Original Western Pacific
Listed amongst the California Predecessor railroads is the Western Pacific. This company existed from 1862 to 1868 and had no relationship to the later company of the same name. What is the convention for identifying such a company? I had listed it as "Western Pacific Railroad (first)," but that did not last more than a day before it was edited to improperly link to the later WPRR of the 20th Century. --Rrrarch 01:48, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

SPRINT
I am shocked there is no mention of SPRINT! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.140.162.30 (talk) 01:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:OP-15947.jpg
The image Image:OP-15947.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
 * That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --08:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ Iain Bell (talk) 15:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Paint schemes
Mention is made of the "Bloody Nose" scheme being black; surely it's grey? I would have expected this to have been picked up long before now.Ragnartheviking (talk) 15:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

a video clip from 1946
maybe of interest, but i don't know which railroad in the vicinity of LA this is/was: archive.org Maximilian (talk) 13:13, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Advertisement
Uploaded an old advertisement that mentions this railroad. Thought it might be useful to the article. – JBarta (talk) 19:29, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding Former Services to Station Pages
Hi, I'm trying to add Southern Pacific's former services to pages like Union Station (Los Angeles) but I can't figure out how to create and add the templates. Can anyone help me with this? ThanksMonopoly31121993 (talk) 10:17, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

California History section needed
I am not the one to write it as I am stumbling around trying to research some thing related. BUT here is a citation that suggests that there is in fact some history missing from the article:

"The year was 1910, and the Southern Pacific Railroad had a lock on California's political institutions. Disgusted with graft and corruption, a little-known San Francisco prosecutor rode a wave of public discontent into the governor's office, promising to release the state from the hold of powerful companies and their political allies."

Recall Idea Got Its Start in L.A. in 1898 July 13, 2003|Matea Gold | Times Staff Writer http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jul/13/local/me-history13

And yes yes I realize that I could also add this. Don't know enough, don't have time to learn more right now. But. Just saying. Elinruby (talk) 05:41, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

WikiProjects
Railroad articles such as Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway are part of WikiProjects that center on states (the ones the railroad served), but the SP article isn't part of the ones outside of California. TheGGoose (talk) 15:56, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Disestablishment year
I wonder why the railroad is said to end in 1998 by category where most often elsewhere it says 1996. TheGGoose (talk) 17:17, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Article ignores maritime role and history.
A hint at how much is in "Ocean Unit of Lines that Span Continent" in Southern Pacific Bulletin, Volume 7. The line owned a number of ships, some covered in articles here. Palmeira (talk) 00:52, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Mexiko?
What's with that map? Strange spelling "MEXIKO" with a backwards "K". Casey (talk) 18:12, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Additions made since August
There were significant changes made to the lead and infobox starting in August 2017. Here is the last revision before these changes:. I would like to, at least partially, undo these changes and revert back. The changes are correct, and I have no doubt well intentioned, but they are quite technical. I suspect what happened is someone who is quite knowledgeable about the history of the SP read this article and said, "but there's more to the story" and tried to cram more details in. As just an example, the lead could be interpreted that there were 3 separate railroad companies, possibly unrelated to each other, that used the name Southern Pacific. I don't think this helps. Wikipedia's Manual of style (WP:MOS)) advises that the lead paragraph should contain a summary of the most important facts in a simple way. If those facts have caveats, they can be (and are in this case) explained in the body. Most 100 year old companies have gone through several reorganizations and for the purposes of the lead that's enough. As one last example the infobox has a couple of parentheticals, while it's true that not all of the former SP's assets ended up in the hands of the UP, enough did to simply state in the infobox that the UP is the successor to the SP, and the exceptions and details can be explained in the body of the article. Any objections to me undoing these additions? I'll try to put the added content in place in the body of the article, as I have no doubt it is correct, just misplaced. Dave (talk) 07:25, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * As nobody has opposed, I shall start on it. Dave (talk) 18:07, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * There were 3 and maybe 4 companies that used the name Southern Pacific. The current Union Pacific Railroad is the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, the last incarnation of the Southern Pacific which was established in 1969. My edits are appropriate because that is the real history of the Southern Pacific. Your reverts don't explain the official Southern Pacific history.Granthew (talk) 22:20, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I put time and effort into adding that information, now me adding that info is now a waste of my time. I could’ve spent that time going for a walk in the park.Granthew (talk) 22:27, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * , don't despair. What you and I are doing right now is a common tactic to discuss and improve Wikipedia articles when bold changes are desired or required. In wikipedia speak it is called Be Bold, Revert, Discuss. You and I were both bold, it's been reverted, and now the discussion begins. What I would say is yes, there have been multiple legal entities with the name "Southern Pacific" through the years. However, they were all related, used the same facilities, same staff, same railroad routes, and with a few footnotes were all successors and predecessors to each other. This is no different than any other company that has been around that long. Every company old and large company: from Sears, to Coca Cola to General Electric to the Union Pacific Railroad to Kentucky Fried Chicken has had numerous re-organizations and legal entities over the years. In my opinion it's undue weight to spend that much time in an article discussing that aspect, especially in the lead. The lead should be "if martians crash landed into the earth, what is the most important info they should know about a topic?" Let's take Coca Cola. Is it more important to state that Coca Cola is a carbonated soft drink originally formulated in Atlanta Georgia and now sold worldwide? Or is it more important to say that numerous corporate entities have used the name Coca-Cola, and technically the 3rd one incorporated the 2nd one, and the 4th one did a corporate inversion and acquired the 2nd one? By and large most Wikipedia articles are written to emphasize what the company did, not the numerous legal incarnations it had.
 * FYI, this is nothing personal, I appreciate the additions you made to the article. If you notice I kept your mentions about corporate reorganizations, just moved them to the timeline section and out of the lead. Hopefully more people will chime in and contribute to this discussion. Hopefully with more feedback we can together get the article in good shape again. With that said, there are some Wikipedia Manual of Style violations with these edits that need to be addressed, but they are easy fixed. For one, the headings should be kept short in length and avoid parentheticals. Beyond just atheistic, this causes problems for people who have to use large print, text readers, etc. to access Wikipedia.  Also, the information in the infobox needs to be kept brief. Large infoboxes make the article unreadable for those that read Wikipedia on small or low resolution screens, such as mobile readers and people in 3rd world countries who rely on older or 2nd hand computer equipment. It's also confusing. For example "Successor: Union Pacific Railroad (in name only)" what does that mean?  I would argue the phrase "in name only" is redundant, and adds no value in the infobox, again where again space is precious and brevity is important. But again, I didn't do this to pick a fight with you. Let's work together to improve the article. Cheers, Dave (talk) 22:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Union Pacific Railroad in name only means the name Union Pacific Railroad is the surviving name but not the actual railroad, the Union Pacific Corporation merged the third Union Pacific Railroad into the Southern Pacific Transportation Company and at the same time renamed the Southern Pacific Transportation Company to the fourth Union Pacific Railroad. So the Southern Pacific Transportation Company is still in existence as the current Union Pacific Railroad. There are four incarnations of the Union Pacific Railroad, the first was Union Pacific Rail Road, the second was Union Pacific Railway and the third and fourth is labeled Union Pacific Railroad. The fourth/current Union Pacific Railroad which is the Southern Pacific Transportation Company was established in 1969 and absorbed the then Southern Pacific Company. The Southern Pacific Company name became available and a new Southern Pacific Company was formed thereafter and became the parent company of the Southern Pacific Transportation Company. There have been many incarnations of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. There has never been one incarnation of the Union Pacific or Southern Pacific.Granthew (talk) 07:50, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
 * A new history page will be created for the Southern Pacific history- it will be titled History of the Southern Pacific.Granthew (talk) 09:08, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

I support your idea of breaking out the history into a separate article. The rules of thumb in Wikipedia's Style Guide (often called the MOS for short) dealing with Article size state once an article reaches 50k in length it may be appropriate to split into sub-articles. The article is currently just over 72k. What usually happens in this case is a section is moved to a separate sub-article, and a one paragraph summary of the new sub-article appears in the main article.

Regarding the mergers/re-orgs and the parentheticals in the infobox, I understand your point. My point is this no different from any of the millions of other corporate mergers and corporate restructurings that have happened in the USA. Two entities enter the room; one leaves the room. The surviving entity could be named the same as one of the two original companies, a hybrid, or something completely different. But in the end, rarely is it the details of the merger that are what is important. What makes the SP notable is it was the largest railroad company in the western United States for many years, not its complicated corporate history. Therefore, that's where the focus of the lead should be. The mergers and acquisitions deserve coverage, but should not dominate the article, especially the lead, IMHO. With that said, it appears we are both pretty firm in our respective positions. So, again, it may be wise to solicit additional opinions, to ensure neither of us are taking this too seriously. If you don't mind I'll post a note at the Trains Wikiproject (WP:Trains) asking for additional opinions. Best of luck, and appreciate your efforts to improve Wikipedia. Again I agree with breaking out the history section into a separate article.Dave (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

I think the lede is far too detailed as currently written; if an article is supposed to be written in WP:SUMMARY style, then the lede should summarize that. A reader should be told that Rio Grande Industries bought Southern Pacific in 1988 but kept the name, and that Union Pacific bought it in 1996. From a bird's-eye view, that's what happened. Mackensen (talk) 14:12, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Well the problem is, nobody thinks of creating a new article for better organizational purposes, they just add info and thats it. I would like to have the new article titled Southern Pacific, but that will cause problems. The History section, Morgan Line and the Sunset–Gulf Route section and Ferry service section will be transfered to the new article. The Predecessor and subsidiary railroads section and Successor railroads section can be transferred to the new article.Granthew (talk) 04:24, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Created the new History of the Southern Pacific page. Granthew (talk) 05:20, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, this has sat for a couple of weeks now. I do like the breaking out of the history section, that needed to be done, thanks. My two biggest complaints about the article remain, (the overly complicated lead and the footnotes (parentheticals) in the infobox. Any objections to me at least working on at least that? I'm by no stretch an expert writer, but I've been through the Good and Featured article review process to know those would raise huge red flags if we ever did want to get this article improved enough to be featured on the main page. Dave (talk) 15:26, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Missing preserved locomotives
My museum is preserving and working on Restorations on several Southern Pacific locomotives because the line we are in preservation of used to be the San Diego and Arizona Railway and later the Southern Pacific. We currently are working on restoration of Southern Pacific 3709 a low nose gp9. Southern Pacific 4004 is being preserved and awaiting restoration. It is a RS 32 one of the few remaining. Steam locomotive 2353 have been restored and was operating up to 2005 and is now preserved in the show building. I forgot the wheel arrangement but this locomotive was also used in the filming of Pearl Harbor. Southern Pacific 5119, a 70-ton switcher is restored and operating although it is not restored to its Southern Pacific colors yet. 172.58.19.50 (talk) 20:03, 5 March 2023 (UTC)