Texas & Pacific Railway Super Power to Streamliners 1925-1975 by Joe G Collias

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Hard Cover w/ dust jacket

159 pages

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 6

Foreword 8

1. Early Power ...A Ten-Wheeler Monopoly 13

2. Freight Power ...Impressive 35

3. Passenger Power ...Elegant 65

4. Yard Power ...Elementary 91

5. Diesel Electrics ...EMD Minus One 99

6. Texarkana ...T&P Gateway 123

7. T&P Miscellany 133

Index 158

Index of Locomotive Photographs by Type, Number and Page 159

DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION

Plagued by Civil War raiders, empire builders from the west, and the arid desolation of west Texas, the fledgling Texas and Pacific struggled futilely to become the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. Its dreams shattered by the driving of the gold spike at Prcmontory, Utah, in 1869, joining the rails of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, it turned to becoming a major artery over which the goods and produce of Texas flowed to eastern markets.

Through it all the carrier moved its traffic with a procession of often antiquated hand-me-down locomotives provided by the less than benevolent hand of Jay Gould through his controlling Missouri Pacific Lines. Demands following World War I resulted in the road's traffic being moved behind two extremes in motive power - light stepping Ten-Wheelers and ponderous, slow-moving 2-10-2s, neither of which garnered much attention or envy from neighboring carriers.

In a surprising turnabout that startled the railroad world in 1925, Texas and Pacific became the first major carrier to embrace the high horsepower concept of the steam locomotive advocated by the Lima Locomotive Company through its demonstrator 2-8-4, the A-1. T&P enlarged on the concept by adding another pair of drive wheels to the A-1 and thus created the first - aside from a short-lived experimental engine on the Santa Fe - 2-10-4 wheel arrangement, that, in honor of its creator, was named the Texas type. The ensuing seventy near identical locomotives became the trademark of the T&P for over twenty-five years.

T&P embraced another form of Super-Power, in 1953, completely dieselizing its system with an almost 100 percent roster of EMD-built diesel electric locomotives. Its one exception to this standardized roster was one Alcobuilt RS-2 road-switcher which immediately became a oneof-a-kind elusive loner.

This is the story of the T&P's coming of age in the Super-Power era of steam and its transition into the streamliner age of diesel power. Its early dependence on high-stepping Ten-Wheelers, its disappointment with the popular 4-4-2 Atlantic types, a reversion to the drag-power concept, and an early aversion to USRA power is all told in this volume. The romance and thrill of the Texas types and their accompanying 4-8-2 Mountain types is described in text and pictures. The transition to an all-diesel powered railway and its profusion of coloration is carried through until the merger of the road with its parent Missouri Pacific Lines in 1976.

This is the story of a Texas' recluse, a railroad dear to the hearts of Texans, but a railroad whose motive power, operations, and infatuation with colors other than black for its motive power will endear it to all rail buffs, historians, and admirers of the flanged wheel on steel rails.

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