St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway

The St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway was a 200-mile (321 km) railroad that operated from Brownsville, Texas to Gulf Coast Junction in Houston. It passed through small southeast Texas communities such as Robstown, Corpus Christi, Bay City, and Harlingen as well as the Rio Grande Valley.

History

Uriah Lott envisioned a plan of utilizing land transportation along the interior of Texas. Reviewing on his successes with the Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Narrow Gauge Railroad from March 1875, Uriah sought his business partner Benjamin Franklin Yoakum to create a rail system that reached Chicago, Illinois in the North and Mexico City, Mexico in the south. With Yoakum in control of two railroads that he was president, (the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific and the St. Louis - San Francisco -- commonly known as 'the Frisco') he used them to create several railroads within Texas and Louisiana as a system (the Gulf Coast Lines) reaching Chicago in the north and Mexico City in the south. The first stage of this project, the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway, was chartered on 6 June 1903. Its first segment of track was completed on 4 July 1904, running from Brownsville, Texas, to Robstown, Texas. A second major segment, running from Robstown to Sinton to Houston segment was completed on 31 December 1907. Yoakum's second project began in October 1903 when the Beaumont, Sour Lake, & Western was chartered to serve the Beaumont area after discoveries of oil prompted revenue. Yoakum's third and final project was the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway. The NOT&M created a line from Anchorage, Louisiana to DeQuincy, Louisiana on 1 September 1909. To connect with the Beaumont, Sour Lake, & Western trackage rights were issued from the Kansas City Southern between DeQuincy and Beaumont.

Before the Gulf Coast Lines were purchased from the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1925, the company managed to purchase eight other smaller railroads to further enlarge the rail system. Three of these lines were the San Benito & Rio Grande Valley Railway, San Antonio, Chapin & Rio Grande Railway and the Rio Grande Valley Railway (Later the Port Isabel & Rio Grande Valley Railway) which created the Rio Grande Valley Spider Web Rail Network; the first of its kind anywhere which linked almost all small to large cities together in the Valley.

Yoakum's dream came to an end when the Frisco and the Rock Island entered receivership in 1913. Upon hearings of the ICC, the court ordered the receivers to sell off Yoakum's projects to recuperate the lost profits or face abandonment. Once the receivership ended in 1916, the NOT&M assumed control of the Gulf Coast Lines in 1913 and established itself as the independent-parent company of the GCL until 1925.

In April 1923, Lewis W. Baldwin became president of the Missouri Pacific and in December 1924, he expressed an interest of the Gulf Coast Lines and acquired it (which also included the recently-purchased International - Great Northern from six months earlier). Thus the Gulf Coast Lines now became a part of the Missouri Pacific banner as well as one of the earliest accomplishments by Baldwin himself, now making the Gulf Coast Lines as the Gulf Coast Lines Division. With this occurring, most of the Gulf Coast Lines locomotive equipment was simply painted black with Aluminum "MISSOURI PACIFIC LINES" lettering and submarks below the cab numbers gave the GCL it's identity.

The Missouri Pacific declared bankruptcy in 1933, during the Great Depression, and entered into trusteeship; the longest of its kind in North American history. The company was reorganized with the termination of the trusteeship by the United States District Court of St. Lous and on 1 March 1956, the subsidiaries of Missouri Pacific (including the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico as well as the Gulf Coast Lines) were merged away under the presidency of Paul J. Neff. Only the Missouri-Illinois and the Texas & Pacific Railway continued to exist as separate subsidiaries.

References

• The Empire That Missouri Pacific Serves
• [1]
• Robert Wooster: Beaumont, Sour Lake And Western Railway from the Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved December 23, 2008.