Southern Pacific

Southern SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF SERVI

In an office a man glances at a telescreen beside his desk, sees a picture of a pattern of railroad tracks two miles away. He presses a button; the TV receiver responds with another picture of cars moving on another maze of tracks. He lifts the radiophone at his elbow and talks with a man whose picture appears on the screen. A railroader's dream? No, it may soon be reality; the system already is being tested on Southern Pacific.

In another room a man flicks one of 200 tiny levers on the big control board surrounding him. A knob of soft light tells him that the electric circuit he put to work has realigned a track switch and changed a traffic signal 60 miles away. He pushes still another button. Two hundred miles away on a snowy mountain slope a heater begins to glow and melt a film of ice from a switch mechanism.

The time is now and his work is routine. The man at the board is running a railroad-the Southern Pacific, 1955 style. The electronic devices at his command are some of numerous improvements which have brought a quiet yet revolutionary change to the methods of modern railroading.

"Push-button railroading," SP's President D. J. Russell calls it.

"But don't forget," he hastens to add, "trained men make the decisions to push the right buttons. The human element still is paramount.

Pacific

COME TO ARIZONA AND THE WEST "However, the new techniques do increase our capacity to give better service, and within the past ten years railroads have improved their service tremendously."

To see this, look back 75 years to 1880 as the people of Tucson, Arizona, recently did. At 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning, March 20, 1880, a little diamondstacked steam locomotive pulled some small, swaying, wooden cars into sight northwest of Old Tucson. Slowly it huffed and puffed, wheezed and clanked toward the center of town, then braked to a jolting stop before a waiting throng. Above the sound of escaping steam rose the welcoming cheers of the ancient pueblo's 2000 inhabitants, the roar of a 38-gun military salute and the patriotic airs played by the Sixth Cavalry Band, while banners of all nations floated from the settlement walls.

The Southern Pacific president, Col. Charles Crocker, drove a silver spike-a chore at which frequent practice was making him proficient to signal final completion of the railroad into Tucson. The Arizona Star distributed an edition filled with poetic prose about the railroad and its eagerly awaited arrival at Arizona Territory's most populous center. Following speeches of welcome, the party of visitors was escorted to a banquet hall where the fiesta continued full blast.

On March 20 this year, under leadership of the Tucson Sunshine Climate Club, Greater Tucson with its 185,000 people joined its railroad in recalling the great day 75 years ago and in celebrating the diamond anniversary of a pioneer Arizona highway-the roadway of steel rails over which the Territory's first mechanically propelled transportation brought in a new era of mining, agriculture and commerce, which in turn produced first population growth, then Statehood.

With Mayor Fred Emery leading the speechmaking, the recent anniversary party featured a reenactment of the arrival of that first train. Today's citizens donned yesterday's fashions of costume for a trip into the city in the oldest railroad coach available, drawn by one of the last steam locomotives still rolling in Arizona.

Southern Pacific Company furnished a gift for the party. Too big for proper gift-wrapping, it is historic SP Steam Locomotive 1673, with Tender 7255, which the railroad formally presented to the people of Tucson for permanent display at a city park.

Originally a coal burner and later converted to burn oil, this 140,000-pound engine was one of the most powerful anywhere when it was built in 1900-but a single SP diesel unit today has twice the pulling power. No. 1673 travelled more than a million miles back and forth across the West before its retirement-but today's modern diesel unit in passenger service may run more than a million miles before it even needs a major overhaul.

One of 1673's last assignments was to appear as an Iron Horse of even earlier vintage in the motion picture "Oklahoma!", filmed last year at Elgin, Arizona, where the railroad station was temporarily relettered Claremore, Oklahoma, for the picture. That would have been glamour enough for most retired steam engines, but No. 1673 now has found a permanent place of honor-a place in the sun at Tucson.

To the children of the city this venerable railroad work horse is a demonstration of what the steam locomo-tive is like, for railroading in Arizona today is almost completely dieselized and few youngsters know the smell and sound of railroad steam. To older folk it is a reminder of the part which the railroad played in the development of modern Arizona, and of what it con-tinues to mean today to the State's four C's of copper, cattle, cotton and climate and to its vegetable, fruit and grain crops.

While newer forms of transportation fill sky and highway, a new and many times more capable Southern Pacific on its own private freeway remains prominently in the picture in all of these bases of Arizona economy. It helped to colonize the Territory by bringing in many of the substantial early settlers, many of whom came, at low one-way "homeseeker" rates, in emigrant trains that carried families, their furniture and belongings, even their livestock. It promoted mining and agriculture by bringing in the machinery, moving out the product to market. It hauled in feed, hauled out cattle. Before the automobile was known or had roads to run on, the railroad widely advertised Arizona as a vacation-land, sold the Easterner on coming to see for himself. Today, while continuing to serve the State in all of these facets of its progress, the railroad also is helping to build another solid base for Arizona economy by working with State and local authorities to attract clean industry.

People, with ever more efficient machinery at their command, have accomplished these things. The railroad, wherever it runs, is first of all people-people like G. A. Bays, superintendent of SP's Tucson Division; L. H. Trimble, general freight and passenger agent headquar-tered at Phoenix; and their 3400 co-workers in Arizona.

"As Arizonans and local people we take pride in serving Arizona and working for its future," says Bays, "and as we do we're always trying to be the friendliest and best type of neighbor in both a business and a

railroad investment in transportation property has exceeded $400,000,000.

Meanwhile, points out the SP's Trimble, there is room for plenty of additional growth in Arizona and the railroad expects to continue to grow with the State. It pledges all possible assistance to chambers of commerce and other groups seeking to attract new industry to Arizona; the SP system's record of average increase of one new spur track industry per day for the past 25 years qualifies it to render such assistance. An example of this type of SP effort is a recent full-page advertisement which the railroad ran in the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek to focus attention on the dynamic industrial growth of Arizona and the Southwest.

The changes which have come to Arizona are reflected in the changes in types of traffic handled by the railroad, for every freight train loaded or unloaded in Arizona is a rolling lesson in the economy and geography of the land. Mining, the industry which in the 19th century contributed more fame, fortune and romance to the Territory than anything else, greatly expanded its operations with the coming of improved transportation. Gold, silver and a few other metals including copper had been mined prior to the Civil War, but operations in famous localities such as Tombstone, Globe, Superior and Jerome were virtually unknown before the railroad came. Phelps Dodge interest in Arizona mining dates from 1880, the year SP reached Tucson. In the 1880s coke for the Bisbee mine operations came via Southern Pacific from California after a 22,000-mile around-the-Horn trip by sea from Cardiff, South Wales. Today minerals still are important traffic, but SP also is carrying huge quantities of agricultural and manufactured products of increasing variety which Arizona little dreamed of producing a generation ago: cotton and cottonseed, alfalfa meal, light and heavy metal items, varied manufactures, perishable foods in the refrigerator cars of Pacific Fruit Express, especially produce from the Yuma area and from Phoenix's Valley of the Sun. In and out of the State move day-to-day shipments of merchandise via SP's fast Arizona Overnights, which handle the newly developed trailer-flatcar "piggyback" service between Los Angeles and Phoenix and Tucson.

Any day in the year the railroad is on the move with traffic as humdrum and commonplace as fill dirt, and as gay and glamorous as Connecticut Yankees aboard the finely appointed Sunset Limited bound for an Arizona dude ranch. Over its low altitude southern route-varying from 141 feet at Yuma to 4156 at Willcox-SP trains are moving delegates to one of Phoenix's 100 big conventions a year, express to Buckeye, mail to Bowie, a circus to Douglas, a Tucson businessman to San Francisco, a major league baseball team to a spring training game at Yuma.

Southern Pacific passenger trains operating in Arizona include four daily transcontinental trains in each direction: the Sunset Limited and Argonaut between Los Angeles and New Orleans, and the Golden State and Imperial between Los Angeles and Chicago. These trains also offer through car service to such centers as Dallas, Fort Worth, St. Louis, Memphis, Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., as well as convenient connections to other points throughout the East and South and on the Pacific Coast.

During the winter resort season special Pullmans operate on the Golden State between Chicago, Tucson and Phoenix. In 1929, when Arizona resort hotel construction was beginning, the railroad helped to get Arizona's current $150,000,000-a-year tourist business rolling with full-page advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post and other national magazines. Since then SP's advertising leaflets, timetables, magazine and newspaper ads, and special promotional booklets and posters on Arizona resorts have continued to boost the State as a vacationland.

The operation of passenger trains and the numerous daily scheduled and extra freight trains in Arizona is organized into the Tucson Division, one of 10 divisions on the railroad's Pacific Lines. Tucson Division includes all SP trackage in Arizona except a portion in the extreme southeastern corner under jurisdiction of the Rio Grande Division headquartered at El Paso. It takes in 947 miles of track serving more than 175 stations, many of them towns which started as supply bases.

Tucson Division employs more than 3400 men and women whose paychecks exceed $16,500,000 annually. As one of Arizona's major private employers for 75 years, Southern Pacific makes steady work representing job opportunities for virtually every type of craft and office skill. In addition the two Southern Pacific affiliates, Pacific Fruit Express and Pacific Motor Trucking Company, provide railroad employment for still more Arizonans. With Division shops, PFE shops and PMT headquarters all at Tucson (solicitation and sales functions Tucson Division employs more than 3400 men and women whose paychecks exceed $16,500,000 annually. As one of Arizona's major private employers for 75 years, Southern Pacific makes steady work representing job opportunities for virtually every type of craft and office skill. In addition the two Southern Pacific affiliates, Pacific Fruit Express and Pacific Motor Trucking Company, provide railroad employment for still more Arizonans. With Division shops, PFE shops and PMT headquarters all at Tucson (solicitation and sales functions are headquartered in the Security Building at Phoenix), Southern Pacific has been the most important single business factor in the development of Tucson and Pima County.

The railroad accounts for extra local business by its purchases of many types of supplies from Arizona firms: in 1953, for example, more than than $610,000 went to 93 local businesses supplying items ranging from groceries to tires to blueprints to venetian blinds. In addition, major items such as gasoline were purchased from Arizona retailers.

Substantial property taxes paid by the railroad are a major factor in the Arizona economy in support of State and local government services, and especially the public school system. Of Southern Pacific's 1954 Arizona tax payment of $3,064,269.65, about 72 percent or $2,205,781 is going for education. The remainder is divided among general administration; health, welfare and correction; highways, which realize some 5 percent or $152,080; city government; and power, fire, irrigation and special districts.

The railroad operates in and pays taxes in nine of Arizona's 14 counties. With these nine counties mostly in the more populous southern portion of the State, some 60 percent of all Arizona elementary school pupils and 77 percent of all high school students attend school in districts where SP is a major taxpayer. In 26 school districts the railroad's tax contribution is more than 50 percent of the cost of education, in 12 districts it pays more than 75 percent and in several others it accounts for as high as 82 percent. Southern Pacific's ribbon of rail is one of public education's lifelines in Arizona.

Thus the railroad is no mere corridor through which trains shuttle across the State in a race to horizons beyond its borders. Southern Pacific is part-and-parcel of Arizona's colorful history. It daily touches the pulse of Arizona's dynamic present. As local employer, salesman, customer, taxpayer, citizen, friend, it is firmly linked to Arizona's promising future.