History of the Texas and Pacific and the Louisiana Eagle

Welcome to my video on the Texas & Pacific railroad. A subsidiary of the Missouri Pacific.
Discord: / discord

[@johnsimms6184]

My family took the FW&D from Amarillo to Fort Worth, then the T&P (MP) to New Orleans and the L&N to Florida and the ACL/SCL to Jacksonville and the FEC down to Fort Lauderdale. I remember the TP ride as a truck trailer was on its side by the tracks that had fallen off a flat. We had a six hour layover at the New Orleans Union station. Don't remember the tip back home. I was only 12. A stainless steel E8 pulled the FW&D train. My dad was a towerman in Amarillo for the AT&SF where the FWD, RI and SF crossed each other on the east side of Amarillo. 1967 was the last year that the FW&D ran a passenger train through the Texas panhandle. The Rock Island Tomahawk from Memphis to Tucumcari ended that same year. The San Francisco chief ceased service in the fall of 1971. Passenger service for the Texas panhandle was gone. I rode the last eastbound from Amarillo to Pampa, TX.

[@mdavid1955]

I'm from Louisiana. I remember relatives talking about the T&P railroad..but I only remember seeing MoPac trains on the lines.

[@emilkarpo]

Nice work, you pulled together a lot on a subject that just has never been well documented. The Louisiana Eagle and other named MP trains held up pretty well though the 1950's as long as R.L. Dearmont was President of the company. Equipment was clean and in good repair, ridership was solid and on some routes slowly increasing with trains like the Texas Eagle operating in 3 sections at peak periods and at least 2 the rest of the time. The dining cars had a good reputation and a number of the named trains had a dome coach. The Texas Eagle El Paso Section carried an Espee 10 and 6 Pullman wast bound and the Westerner had it east bound from El Paso. For several summers after my family moved to Arizona I was sent off for the summer from Tucson to Ft Worth to spend the time on my Grandparents ranch in Young , Palo Pinto and Jack Counties. There was even a B&O Slumbercoach between Washington DC and San Antonio on the Texas Eagle San Antonio section until Mr Doom arrived on the MOP, D.B. Menk aka Menk The Fink. He set about gutting passenger service while it WAS still breakeven or slightly profitable. When the passengers wouldn't desert the trains then then they were steady down graded until the passengers got the message. If you can, watch Ebay for old issues of The Official Guide Of The Railways, every schedule of every railroad in the country that was issued on a monthly basis for travel agents and RR Ticket Agencies, they are out there at decent price points and believe me they can provide endless hours of what if especially the ones from the height to the Streamliner era in the 1950's and through the slaughter of 1967-68. Even the organization of the Guide tells a lot about the past relationship of different railroads. For instance the MP, D&RGW,TP and other Gould railroads are grouped together completely out of any geographic organization of the Guide and they remained that way through out it's life.

[@sernajrlouis]

Cool video and channel just subscribed

[@trader1947]

My uncle (Herbert Lee Gore) was the senior Master Mechanic on the T&P/MP until his retirement in 1970 after helping on the rebuild of the donated steam engine to the Texas State Railroad with 55 Years of service beginning in 1915 as a water boy in the shop and roundhouse at the Jewela Street Yards at Shreveport LA. I love and miss him so much (salt of the earth man)!

[@odiecalodie]

Amtrak at one time wanted to reroute the Texas Eagle from Fort Worth to El Paso over the Former T&P.

[@buckyc.9069]

Huntington wanted California all to himself. He got the CP all the way to Ogden. Took advantage of TP's delays and went to ElPaso. With the A&P approaching, built to Needles, William B.Stong (ATSF) wasn't having that.When planned to parallel SP all the way to the bay area SP backed off, leased and then sold it to ATSF. The rest as they say is history.

[@intercityrailpal]

There has been two T&P at least. The first one is still around as a property company and rents land for water and oil

[@kurtkauffman4326]

One time sported Diamond Heralds.Later replaced by Buzzsaw Heralds.

[@jwrailve3615]

I model in Ho scale the Gulf coast lines and they owned the “brownie” line from Brownsville to New Orleans, it’s the southernmost mainline highlighted on this map T&p also used it. I model the Bloomington yard, and the Sp interchange in placedo that was the brownie line, as well as the Sp port lavaca branch, and the GCL’s poc and austwell branch lines in the 1910-1935 era. During ops I’ll run the Guadalupe river eagle as a through train on the 28.5 foot brownie stretch, and the branchlines have there own names such as the Wells Fargo express. T&p and mopac both ran virtually the exact same schemes but T&p usually had a yellow line along the blue. Awesome video got a sub from me

[@osmanjeffrey]

I had not heard of the "Louisiana Eagle" until your story, TH. Thanks for that. We should always learn something new every day, right? (Side bar: had to chuckle at the queen/king reference to freight. Tiara, crown; what's the difference?)

[@thetrainhopper8992]

If freight was king, PSR is probably queen.

[@osmanjeffrey]

@@thetrainhopper8992 Cheers to that!

[@dalejensen5828]

How would a menu from somewhere other than the south look any different?

[@kurtkauffman4326]

Now history since 10/15/1976 & merged into MP.Later Union Pacific.

[@intercityrailpal]

Dallas was a massive market, these trains ended when the mail and packages went to trucks. Don't know where to get T&P time table? Go to a railroad show or ebay. T&P is still around as a property company for Oil, water and land sales. Now even bitcoin. You are too much locked into the internet. All these Texas railroads had oil and gas revenue too.

[@emilkarpo]

Menk killed them even before the mail left. The Menk cut throat, backstabbing, race to see who gets to be the last guy to turn the lights out on the whole show style eventually poisoned the UP after the merger. Same happened at the BN when the merged with another Black Death carrying gutter rat operation, the Frisco.