Nostalgia & History > Toss Back Tuesday: SP on the Rock!

We railfans west of the Mississippi would be hard pressed to find 2 RRs more ‘joined at the hip’ than the Rock Island and the Southern Pacific. In my childhood 1960s I can remember seeing Rock Island trains rolling through my hometown of Manhattan with seemingly abundant SP/Cotton Belt power. As my railfan education developed I would learn what power pooling was all about. And that a place called Tucumcari on a line called the GSR was the common ground that tied these 2 roads together. By almost universal opinion, it was only fitting that SP subsidiary Cotton Belt would take the reins when the ROCK finally folded. That is, until UP’s octopus merger tentacles came along...

54 years ago my future friend Gary Rich was able to record some of that SP power on Rock Island rails. I was still in high school at the time... ;^)

1. SP 9121 leads sibling 9225 and CRI&P 350 on train 17A20 at Herington, KS on May 20, 1972.

2. SP 9249 with an unknown SD45 trailing is about to depart Herington with a southbound manifest.

3. The train above is now crossing Clear Creek just south of a dent-in-the-road called Antelope, KS.
Photos 2-3 taken in December of 1972.
3 original Kodachrome slides by Gary A. Rich.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels
santafe199
Remembering the late Gary Rich, aka ‘waycar rider’



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/24 15:12 by santafe199.

---

---

---

Excellent look back.
JB

First one is the GSX

Superb views of and era too long gone.
—Mac

Excellent SP look back!!

Larry