The Queen and Crescent Route was a cooperative railroad route in the Southeastern U.S., connecting Cincinnati (the "Queen City") with New Orleans (the "Crescent City") and Shreveport. Inaugurated in the 1880s, the name was retained by Southern Railway when they consolidated ownership of the entire route in 1926, and given to their named passenger train for the route through 1949.
As of 1909, [1] the line consisted of five segments:
Investor Emile Erlanger & Co. gained control of the newly-constructed New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad in 1881. Vintage marketing advertises the Queen & Crescent Route as "Established Nov. 18, 1883", [2] which refers to the date of first scheduled passenger service on the NO&NE. [3] Erlanger then expanded the lines under his control to encompass the entire route, held through a complex corporate structure of two English corporations.
In 1895 the Q&C route, along with the entire Erlanger consortium, was acquired by Southern Railway, one relatively small merger in the vast consolidation engineered by Samuel Spencer.
Eventually the main line to New Orleans was retained by the Southern Railway, and is still part of the Norfolk Southern Railway system, while the Illinois Central Railroad acquired the two segments west of Meridian to Shreveport through its subsidiary Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad. This line was later sold to MidSouth Rail Corporation, which was acquired Kansas City Southern in 1993. In 2005, KCS formed a joint venture with Norfolk Southern to create the Meridian Speedway, an upgraded freight route between Meridian and Shreveport.
Southern Railway inaugurated a named passenger train for the route, the Queen and Crescent Limited, in 1926. Never a financial success, the train carried both coaches and Pullman sleepers and a dining car. The train was discontinued in 1949.
The Kansas City Southern Railway Company is an American Class I railroad. Founded in 1887, it operates in 10 midwestern and southeastern U.S. states: Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. KCS hauls freight for seven major government and business sectors: agriculture and minerals, military, automotive, chemical and petroleum, energy, industrial and consumer products and intermodal.
The Crescent is a daily long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak in the eastern United States. It operates 1,377 miles (2,216 km) daily between Pennsylvania Station in New York City and Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans as train numbers 19 and 20. Major service stops outside the Northeast Corridor include Birmingham, Ala.; Atlanta, Ga.; and Charlotte, N.C.
The Southern Railway was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk & Western to form Norfolk Southern. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.
The Louisiana and Arkansas Railway was a railroad that operated in the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. The railroad's main line extended 332 miles, from Hope, Arkansas to Shreveport and New Orleans. Branch lines served Vidalia, Louisiana, and Dallas, Texas.
The Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway is a railroad that runs from Cincinnati, Ohio, south to Chattanooga, Tennessee, forming part of the Norfolk Southern Railway system.
The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833. As a way to better attract investment capital, the railroad changed its name to Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. This railroad was constructed to join the Macon and Western Railroad at Macon, Georgia, in the United States, and run to Savannah. This created a rail link from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, to seaports on the Atlantic Ocean. It took from 1837 to 1843 to build the railroad from Savannah to the eastern bank of the Ocmulgee River at Macon; a bridge into the city was not built until 1851.
The MidSouth Rail Corporation is a railroad line operated by Kansas City Southern Railway (KCS) as a result of the January 1, 1994, acquisition; KCS began operating over MidSouth's line on January 11, 1994. The line ran from Shreveport, Louisiana, going east across Louisiana, and across the state of Mississippi, running through the cities of Vicksburg, Jackson, Meridian, and Artesia, Mississippi, then across the Alabama state line to Tuscaloosa, and finally into Birmingham. Midsouth had two other branches, with one to Counce, Tennessee, and a disconnected line from Gulfport to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Total mileage was 1,212 miles (1,951 km) worth of mostly former Illinois Central Gulf's east-west Shreveport - Meridian main line.
The Meridian Speedway is a 320-mile (510 km) span of railroad track between Meridian, Mississippi, and Shreveport, Louisiana. An important rail link between the Southeast and Southwest U.S., it is owned by the Meridian Speedway LLC (MSLLC), a joint venture of Kansas City Southern (KCS), the majority partner; and Alabama Great Southern Railroad, a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Railway (NS).
The Alabama Great Southern Railroad is a railroad in the U.S. states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It is an operating subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation (NS), running southwest from Chattanooga to New Orleans through Birmingham and Meridian. The AGS also owns about a 30% interest in the Kansas City Southern-controlled Meridian-Shreveport Meridian Speedway.
The Southeastern Greyhound Lines, a highway-coach carrier, was a Greyhound regional operating company, based in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, from 1931 until 1960, when it became merged with the Atlantic Greyhound Lines, a neighboring operating company, thereby forming the Southern Division of The Greyhound Corporation, called also the Southern Greyhound Lines.
The following is a brief history of the North American rail system, mainly through major changes to Class I railroads, the largest class by operating revenue.
The following is a brief history of the North American rail system, mainly through major changes to Class I railroads, the largest class by operating revenue.
The following is a brief history of the North American rail system, mainly through major changes to Class I railroads, the largest class by operating revenue.
The New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad was a Class I railroad in Louisiana and Mississippi in the United States. The railroad operated 196 miles (315 km) of road from its completion in 1883 until it was absorbed by the Alabama Great Southern Railroad subsidiary of the Southern Railway in 1969.
The Pelican was a named train of the Southern Railway which ran from New York City to New Orleans and back until 1970.
The Queen and Crescent Limited was a named passenger train operated by the Southern Railway in the United States of America. It was operated over a historic route that had been established in the late 1800s called the Queen and Crescent Route, which referred to Cincinnati as the "Queen City" and New Orleans as the "Crescent City".
The Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railway was chartered as the Vicksburg, Shreveport, & Texas Railroad Company with an east and west division on April 28, 1853, to be a link, via a transfer boat, between Vicksburg, Mississippi, Shreveport, Louisiana, and points west.
The Southwestern Limited was a night train, as #205 of the Illinois Central Railroad in the Southeastern United States. Running on the IC subsidiary Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad Vicksburg Division, from Meridian, Mississippi's Union Station to Shreveport, Louisiana, it was one of the few trains spanning the Mississippi River south of St. Louis, Missouri and north of New Orleans, Louisiana.