Hey, everyone, I've just embarked upon "The St. Louis-San Francisco Transcontinental Railroad: The Thirty-Fifth Parallel Project, 1853-1890" published in 1972 by by H. Craig Miner (1944-2010). Does anyone know of another book that will carry me through the 1950s?
FYI, it's not in great detail, but the first dozen or so pages of the late Joe Collias' book Frisco Power (1984, ISBN 0-9612366-0-4) provides a history of the SLSF up to the mid-1950's and makes note of the November, 1980 merger with the BN. Ken
Many years ago Ron Williams in the NMRA periodical (I forget its title) had a great article about the Frisco's corporate history, including maps and charts. It's an all around great reference, but I have no idea where on earth anyone could find a copy and I can't locate my own copy at the moment. If anyone finds a copy, perhaps it could it could (with permission) be posted here to the Frisco-Dot-Org website. Just a thought... Tom G.
Miner had a great advantage as he had access to Frisco corporate records kept by the Trust Department of a St. Louis bank. The Western heritage group at MIST in Rolla has a lot of Frisco corporate records. My problem was that while they had various corporate decisions there were no memoranda setting forth the reasons for a corporate decision. The Frisco Museum in Springfield produced a Frisco corporate history that appeared to be a very poor cut and paste job using material from annual reports and the SEC 10K. Miner's history while good ends with the Santa FE takeover of the FRisco and the subsequent receivership in 1896. It will take something close to a miracle to produce a corporate history covering 1896 to 1980.
