Missouri-Kansas-Texas locomotives remembered

Missouri-Kansas-Texas found the 2-6-0 ideal for light freight service on light rail. Number 555, photographed at Altus, Okla., in April 1946, is not only a modern-looking Mogul (especially for one built in 1904) but also a well-maintained one. Preston George photo

Katy’s line through western Oklahoma was also the place to find the last of its 4-4-0s. Engine 312, built by Baldwin in 1890 and rebuilt in the 1920s, provides ample power for train 54 near Altus, Okla., in May 1946. Glossy black paint and white trim were as much Katy trademarks as the red-and-white herald on the tender. Preston George photo

Clean Katy Pacific 400 leaves Denison, Texas, with an extra in late 1948. Above the engine, awnings shade the windows of the dispatcher’s office, where the photographer worked then. Harold K. Vollrath photo

Missouri-Kansas-Texas F3 204 and FA1 327, at Denison, Texas, in 1949, show the contrast in nose design between EMD’s rounded “bulldog” and Alco-GE’s flatter style. Both sets are in Katy’s original red and cream livery. MKT owned 19 FAs and 90 total Fs; 13 FAs were re-engined by EMD in 1956-1959. R. S. Plummer photo

Katy 1734 is an early production Fairbanks-Morse H16-44. Donald Sims photo

A Katy passenger train, at Muskogee, Okla., wasn’t much to look at — dirty E8 52C and F7 72C with four cars, a lone coach at the rear. J. David Ingles photo

Katy PA 152A, of a class I didn’t see operate, looks fairly complete, but she’s in the dead line at the Parsons, Kans., shop on Jan. 3, 1963, never to run again. J. David Ingles photo

Katy 89-A, two Alco-built siblings, and an F are on the Parsons, Kans., service tracks Jan. 3, 1963 (above). Katy FA’s have EMD’s cooling system, evidenced by the fan housing bulge on the roof. J. David Ingles photo

A Katy EMD F7A, a re-engined Alco FA, and two GP40s waited for a call at Katy’s old stone Kansas City roundhouse in January 1958. J. David Ingles photo

By the time Missouri-Kansas-Texas MP15AC No. 58 was built in 1980, few diesel switchers were being produced. This unit wears the road’s later green-and-yellow scheme. Lee Langum photo

Missouri-Kansas-Texas, “the Katy,” acquired by Union Pacific in 1988, was the third of six predecessors honored in UP’s “Heritage” series of new SD70ACes. UP 1988, fresh out of Wisconsin & Southern’s Horicon (Wis.) shop on Aug. 17, 2006, soon headed to Katy territory. Robert S. McGonigal photo

Missouri-Kansas-Texas locomotives were modernized under the watch of President Matthew Sloan in the 1930s. They were mostly built before World War I, with higher boiler pressures and superheaters. As a light-rail granger road set in mostly prairie country, Katy needed only modernized engines. Premier mainline power was 154 Mikados and 62 Pacifies, with yard work entrusted to 66 switchers and branches to 120 Moguls, 40 Consolidations, and 10 Americans (among the last in the nation). Under Sloan’s program, engines were decked out with white striping, and tenders for the first time wore large, embossed red emblems of a unique shape.

Sloan died suddenly in 1945, and the next year the new management began to dieselize and to reduce Katy’s funded debt. The dieselization strategy, however, was naive, as the traffic department, not the mechanical department, was empowered to order new locomotives. By the end of 1951, Missouri-Kansas-Texas locomotives included 167 units of 16 different models from five builders: Alco, Baldwin, EMD, FM, and GE. Almost half were EMDs, but they ranged from 70-ton GE branchline units to graceful Alco PAs.

By 1956 Katy had acquired 41 more units of seven models, but because of the massive maintenance demands on this eclectic fleet, many units were worn out and wound up being either re-powered (mostly with EMD engines) or scrapped. By 1963 Missouri-Kansas-Texas locomotives were virtually all EMD-powered, including several “half-breed” Alco and Baldwin rebuilds.

In its last years, Katy scoured the secondhand market for power while maintaining a small fleet of SD40-2s for coal trains. Its final new purchases were 20 GP39-2s in 1984.