Union
Pacific Railroad - (en)
The Union Pacific Railroad (AAR reporting marks UP) (NYSE: UNP),
headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in
the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman.
UP's route map covers most of the central and western United States
west of Chicago and New Orleans. It has achieved this size thanks to
purchasing a large number of other railroads, notably the Missouri
Pacific, Chicago and North Western, Western Pacific,
Missouri-Kansas-Texas, and the Rio Grande (including the Southern
Pacific).
UP's chief railroad competitor is the BNSF Railway, which covers much
of the same territory.
History
The Union Pacific Railroad was incorporated on July 1, 1862 in the
wake of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. Under the guidance of its
dominant stockholder Thomas C. Durant the first rails were laid in
Omaha, Nebraska. They were part of the railroads that came together at
Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869 as the first transcontinental
railroad in North America. Subsequently, UP took over the Utah Central
extending south from Ogden, Utah, through Salt Lake City, and the Utah
& Northern, extending from Ogden through Idaho into Montana, and
it built or absorbed local lines that gave it access to Denver and to
Portland, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest. It acquired the Kansas
Pacific (originally called the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, though
in essence a separate railroad). It also owned narrow gauge trackage
into the heart of the Colorado Rockies and a standard gauge line south
from Denver across New Mexico into Texas.
Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad gather on the 100th meridian,
which later became Cozad, Nebraska, approximately 250 miles (400km)
west of Omaha, Nebraska Territory, in October 1866. The train in the
background awaits the party of Eastern capitalists, newspapermen, and
other prominent figures invited by the railroad executives.UP was
entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872. Its early troubles
led to bankruptcy during the 1870s, the result of which was
reorganization of the Union Pacific Railroad as the Union Pacific
Railway on January 24, 1880, with its dominant stockholder being Jay
Gould. The new company also declared bankruptcy, in 1893, but emerged
on July 1, 1897, reverting to the original name, Union Pacific
Railroad. Such minor changes in corporate titles were a common result
of reorganization after bankruptcy among American railroads. The
recovered railroad was strong enough to take control of Southern
Pacific Railroad (SP) in 1901 and then was ordered in 1913 by the U.S.
Supreme Court to surrender control of the same. UP also founded the
Sun Valley resort in Idaho. In 1996, UP finally acquired SP in a
transaction envisioned nearly a century earlier.
From 1948 to the early 1970s UP operated a series of gas
turbine-electric locomotives. No other railroad in the world operated
turbines on such a scale. At one point, UP claimed that the turbines
hauled 10% of its freight. They were retired due to rising fuel costs.
Two of them can be seen in museums.
Union Pacific Center
The headquarters of UP has been in Omaha, Nebraska, since its
inception, currently in the Union Pacific Center, completed in 2003.
Union Pacific Corporation
In 1986 UP purchased Overnite Transportation, a fairly major
less-than-truckload shipping carrier. UP divested itself of Overnite
Trucking through an IPO in 2004.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, UP purchased several non-railroad
companies, such as Skyway Freight Systems of Watsonville, California,
and United States Pollution Control, Inc., but by 2000, following the
appointment of Richard K. Davidson as CEO, it had divested itself of
all non-railroad properties except for Overnite Trucking, and its
holding company for logistical technology, Fenix Enterprises.
The Union Pacific Corporation (not the railroad itself) was located in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, until 1997, when Richard K. Davidson
announced that it was moving to Dallas in September of that year. Two
years later, on the sale of Skyway and the impending divestiture of
Overnite the UP corporate headquarters moved to Omaha to join the
headquarters of the railroad.
Current trackage
Primarily concentrated west of the Mississippi River, UP directly owns
and operates track in 23 U.S. states: Arizona, Arkansas, California,
Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. For
administrative purposes, its network is divided into 21 “service
units”: Chicago, Council Bluffs, Commuter Operations, Denver, El
Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, Livonia, Los Angeles, North
Little Rock, North Platte, Portland, Roseville, San Antonio, Saint
Louis, Tucson, Twin Cities, Utah, and Wichita. Each “service unit”
is further divided into many different subdivisions, which represent
segments of track ranging from 300-mile mainlines to 10-mile
branch-lines.
Not including second, third, and fourth main line trackage, yard
trackage, and siding trackage, UP directly operated some 36,206 miles
(58,364 kilometers) of track, as of March 24, 2000. When the
additional tracks are counted, however, the amount of track that it
has direct control over rises to 54,116 miles (87,091 kilometers).
UP has also been able to reach agreements with competing railroads,
mostly BNSF, that allow the railroad to operate its own trains with
its own crews on hundreds of miles of competing railroads’ main
tracks.
Furthermore, due to the practice of locomotive leasing and sharing
undertaken by the Class I railroads, UP locomotives occasionally show
up on competitors' tracks throughout the United States, Canada and
most recently, Mexico.
Yards and facilities
Ogden Utah yard
One of 60 new 2,100 hp new "Gen-Set" locomotives
manufactured for Union Pacific's "Green" Fleet by the
National Railway Equipment Co., which is headquartered in Mt. Vernon,
Ill.Because of the large size of UP, hundreds of yards throughout its
rail network are needed to effectively handle the daily transport of
goods from one place to another. To reduce overall emmissions, Union
Pacific is acquiring a new generation of environmentally friendly
locomotive for use in Los Angeles basin rail yards.
Among the more prominent rail yards in UP’s system include:
Bailey Yard, the largest railroad classification yard in the world,
located in North Platte, Nebraska.
The Hinkle Locomotive Service and Repair Facility in Hinkle (Umatilla
County), Oregon.
J.R. Davis Yard, the largest rail facility on the United States’
west coast, in Roseville, California.
Jenks Shop, one of the largest locomotive overhaul and maintenance
facilities in the world, located in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Global III Intermodal Facility, a critical interchange hub and loading/unloading
terminal for intermodal shipments moving through the Chicago
metropolitan area, in Rochelle, Illinois.
Union Pacific Dallas Intermodal Terminal, a massive $80 million
expansion of the railroads transportation hub outside of Dallas,
Texas.
Union Pacific Police
Department
When Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch gang held up a Union Pacific
train, this posse was organized to give chase. L to R: Standing,
Unidentified; On horse, George Hiatt, T. Kelliher, Joe Lefors, H.
Davis, S. Funk, Thomas Jefferson Carr.[3]Like most other major
railroads, UP maintains a functioning police department staffed with
Special Agents with jurisdiction over crimes against the railroad.
Special Agents have federal and state arrest powers and can enforce
laws even off railroad property. Special Agents typically investigate
major incidents such as derailments, sabotage, grade crossing
accidents, and hazardous material accidents and minor issues such as
trespassing on the railroad right of way, vandalism/graffiti, and
theft of company property or customer product.
Special Agents often coordinate with local, state, and federal law
enforcement on issues concerning the railroad and are dispatched
nationally through UP Headquarters in Omaha. The UP Police Department
and the term "Special Agent" were models for the FBI when it
was created in 1907
|
