Family Tree of US Railroads.

Anonymous · June 30, 2005, 2:46pm

Hi There,

Does any one know if there is a diagram in the form of a family tree of US Railroads, - i.e who the original railroads were, who took over who, and of course ending up with AMTRACK, CSX etc etc etc.

Would be a usfeul tool, especially when you do not have time to read all about the various mergers and take-overs!

Regards,

Stephen.

Jetrock · June 30, 2005, 3:00pm

The history of American railroading is more like an upside-down tree–it started out with lots and lots of little railroads and ended up with one big one!

Such a tree would be weirdly withered, convoluted and gnarled–a lot of railroads split, combined, recombined, split again, were secretly owned, owned by conglomerates, owned by holding companies and front companies, etcetera. Some railroad companies owned no rolling stock, while some railroad companies owned no rail (Amtrak, for example.)

And since there have been many THOUSANDS of railroads in the US, such a “family tree” would be a monstrously huge project in order to be even remotely complete!

IRONROOSTER · June 30, 2005, 3:12pm

Here’s one http://www.spikesys.com/Trains/fmly_tre.html don’t know how complete it is.
Enjoy
Paul

Anonymous · June 30, 2005, 3:16pm

Paul,

Thanks for that - certainly answers a few questions I had!

Regards,

Stephen

Anonymous · June 30, 2005, 3:25pm

That’s would be a complicated family tree. Here are some helpful links for the Class I railroads in North America.