Frisco freight trains: Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad all through May 2022. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Frisco freight trains selected from the archives of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library.
At its heart, the Frisco was a regional Class I railroad, an X-shaped system with lines from St. Louis through Oklahoma to Texas, including the Quanah, Acme & Pacific, the west Texas tail of the core system, and from Kansas City, Mo., to Birmingham, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla. In 1966, the Burlington Route purchased a sizable block of Frisco stock. For about a decade, there was no further substantive news of a Frisco merger, but in 1977 successor Burlington Northern and Frisco began discussions which led to merger on Nov. 21, 1980.
Frisco’s main line southwest from St. Louis started climbing right at the yard limits, crossing a watershed into the valley of the Meramec River. Down through the Ozarks it followed the top of a ridge much of the way, but it was hill-and-dale running. The Kansas City-Memphis route similarly sliced through the mountains. The outer reaches of the system across the plains of Oklahoma and Texas were easier going.
Remembering the Frisco, at Trains.com!
