[#welcome]
Who out there thinks that Southern Pacific shouldn’t have been a fallen flag?
Who thinks the Southern Pacific should’ve kept going?
Who is thankful that Southern Pacific is a fallen flag?
What was great about it?
How did you like it?
This is a topic about SP ONLY!!!
So don’t go [#offtopic]
[:)][8D][:D][:(][?][:O][8)][|)][:P][;)][%-)][(-D][swg][X-)][{(-_-)}]
I am sorry I was looking for the FEC forum.[oops]
LONG LIVE SOUTHERN PACIFIC!!!
it should have never fallen!
I love the southern pacific but I was born in 1989 so by the time I was 6 the SP was already gone, come to think all of my favorite roads are fallen flags, the southern pacific,milwaukee road and northern pacific
*Note: I am not an expert SP guy… My opinoin is formed from others insight [:)]
Well, from what I have gathered, if UP didnt take them, someone else would have. Sounds like SP, for whatever reasons, couldnt get thier act together. Low profits turned into budget cuts. Which brought poor equipment and track conditons, which hurt profitiabilty. Which caused budget cuts which caused…
I gathered most of them were hopeing like mad the SF would save them, but as fate would have it, they got swallowed up by the UP. I think either way, SP was doomed by the end of the 90’s. I think between poor power and awful track conditions, they were too far behind to ever catch up.
If UP hadnt been approved, maybe BN would have stepped in gone for the merger or buy-out. I dont know what other RR would have been in the postion to take on SP and be able ot fix all their assests. Either way it would have been a huge investment. Either buying more power on your own to send down to cover the SP land, or spend more bucks and get SP’s original power up to speed.
Let alone some of the track condtions.
As it is, even with the resources UP has, it has taken them 10 years to get the Sunset line figured out. Heck, there is still 100 (not sure exact number, bu it is the west line out of Phx, The Gila Line) miles of track up here in Pheonix that has been closed cause it is such bad shape from the SP days.
As much I like the SP, I think they had put them in a postion where they didnt have a choice but take a hand from someone else.
Just my thoughts…
[:D]
I beleive it was when produce in S.Cal went from rail to road that they lost there cash cow. They never found another one.[2c] Someone will know better. Just wait you’ll see.
In today’s world of railroading, SP would have just been a large regional. Since they were in no position to be the dominant partner in a merger, they pretty much had to fall. One could echo a similar lament about a number of fallen flags.
I would have loved for SP to keep on going. Somehow I just don’t enjoy seeing tunnel motors in something other than SP or DRGW colors. I was okay with the SP/DRGW merger. DRGW was the parent company but decided to keep the SP name.
A lot of the SP employees where friendly. They would give out info such as the train symbol that the train crew was handling. In Santa Barbara the station operators would tell us railfans the line up for the day.
Along the coast and Saugas Lines, they where on DTC (Direct Traffic Control) so with a scanner we could hear the dispatcher giving a train its block authority over the radio.
A one point in the 1980’s SP was the largest land owner in the state of California. After the failed Santa Fe Southern Pacific merger that land holdings where give over to Santa Fe.
SP was also the first railroad to have stack trains.
God Bless the SP. I wish it where still here!!
The SP didn’t just let there property go. It’s a lot more complicated then that. Mark Hemphill wrote a GREAT article on the SP and why it had problems in the end. The traffic base that made the SP what it was dried up in the 70s. Forrest products from no California & Oregon, Perrishables from California, and auto-parts / finished autos all took a serious decline. Then under Biaginis (sp?) they focused less on the railroad and more on there land holdings,pipelines and communications bussinesses. Then when the ICC nixed the merger after the parent companys had already merged the railroads had to be split up and the SF was the rr they kept and SP was sold off. Along came Phillip Anshutz, owner of the DRGW, to the rescue. Only Anshutz got in over his head and things really went south. Dureing this time a lot of the SP family jewels were being sold off to support the railroad (what the SF didn’t get). Then Ed Moyers of IC fame was hired to turn things around. He is responsable for removing doubletrack from the overland route to be relaid on the Sunset where it was needed much more than on the overland.
I think if the SF-BN merger did not happen that the SP could have turned things around. They went from haveing the oldest loco fleet to the newest in a short time and things were looking up. When the merger took place I lived on the Sunset route out in Palm Springs and they were looking sharp there. New GP60s,B40-8s,C44-9s and freshly speed lettered locos led a seemingly non stop parade of doublestacks (also freshly speed lettered). But with the SF-BN merger they had no choice but to respond with a merger of there own. Some here might not remember haw that round of mergers went down, after the SF-BN merger was announced the UP launched there own bidding war for the SF. That could have been a move just to drive up the price tag for the SF, and it worked. Then UP turned around and merged with the SP/DRGW. I think it worked out better than it could have any other way. SP and the original UP were a good fit.