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Destination Topolobampo Kansas City Mexico & Orient Ry By Kerr & Donovan w/ DJ
Destination Topolobampo Kansas City Mexico & Orient Ry By John Leeds Kerr & Frank Donovan
Hard cover with Dust Jacket
Copyright 1968 FIRST PRINTING Stamped inside front cover, last blank page has a circulation card
270 pages indexed
Destination Topolobampo The Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway by John Leeds Kerr
Contents
1. DESTINATION TOPOLOBAMPO13
2. SHORT ROUTE TO THE PACIFIC21
3. THE FIRST AMERICAN PROMOTERS31
4. PRINCE OF PROMOTERS37
5. THE LONG ROUTE TO NOWHERE45
6. EARLY CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY57
7. EXIT STILWELL95
8. RIVAL ROUTE OVER THE SIERRA MADRE 107
9. THE FIRST RECEIVERSHIP119
10. THE SECOND RECEIVERSHIP131
11. ENTER THE SANTA FE157
12. CONQUEST OF THE CANYONS171
13. A TRIP OVER THE ORIENT193
14. THE NEW CHIHUAHUA AL PACIFICO205
15. A TRIP OVER THE SIERRA MADRE215
APPENDIX235
THEY CALL IT ...239
BIBLIOGRAPHY251
LOCOMOTIVE ROSTER257
INDEX 265
This is the story of the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient Railway, a line linking Kansas City with China and the Indies by using the shortest and most direct route to the Pacific Ocean. Here is a tale of losers and finders with one goal in mind - Destination Topolobampo.
Out of the rough-and-tumble business world of the early 20th century came Arthur Edward Stilwell, one of the greatest railroad promoters of all time. The idea of building the railroad had its inception within eight clays following the loss of his control over the Kansas City Southern in 1900. Stilwell was a brilliant, but eccentric financier, and aided by moneyed friends, and the assistance of Mexico's President Profiro Diaz, projected and built 642 miles of railroad in the United States and 237 miles in Mexico. To prospective investors he painted profit pictures more fabulous than the Arabian Nights.
The railway's geographic and topographic characteristics produced construction and fiscal difficulties of epic proportions. Even worse the railroad was surrounded by a traffic vacuum. Stockholders grew tired of Stilwell's exuberance and after the line failed, he was replaced. Receivers attempted to maintain the railroad during the Mexican Revolution and the line's reorganization.
William Kemper interests of Kansas City held the railroad together through reorganization and a second receivership. They sold the line in 1928 to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway who completed the U. S. section. The incomplete railroad in Mexico was acquired by private interests-but expropriated by the Mexican Government. The Mexican lines were finally completed in 1961 by the Ferrocarril de Chihuahua al Pacifico, and now a railroad like Arthur Edward Stilwell proposed forms a 1,659 mile transcontinental link across the United States and Mexico.
The railroad across the Sierra Madre in Mexico is a marvel of railroad engineering and the journey by passenger train is considered by travel experts to be the most spectacular rail trip in North America. Destination Topolobampo offers the complete story, to current date, of this outstanding international railway project.
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