A friend asked me about railroads serving Memphis in 1894 and what railroad a person would have used to go between Holly Springs, MS and Memphis, TN. Since I have the facsimile edition of the Official Guide..., it was easy to find some information. As always, it generated more questions. The attached image is an enlargement of a segment of an index page. It lists Kansas City, Fort Scott and Memphis as one of the railroads into Memphis and right below it lists Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham. The KCM&B would likely have been chosen to go from Holly Springs to Memphis. I gather from information in Guide timetables that the KCM&B was a subsidiary of the KCFS&M. Despite that, they did not use the same station. Why did they instead use adjacent stations in Memphis at that time?
The two railroads most likely started out as two independent road, but the KCFS&M probably bought up or merged with the KCM&B thus they would have had different stations in Memphis.
I'll echo Keith and add on a bit. The wiki article does a good job of breaking down how the pieces of the KCFS&M came together. Everything is cited, and in line with what I've read in the past, so I trust it is accurate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_City,_Fort_Scott_and_Memphis_Railroad The quick version for this thread is the KC S & M built the segment in from the north, and they had their own facilities in Memphis. A few years later, they created a subsidiary, the KC M & B, to complete the in progress route to Birmingham. Since it was treated as a separate railroad, it had its own facilities as well. The whole of the "Memphis Route" was later combined into one operating company in 1888. As for the separate stations still existing 6 years later, I can only wager a guess. Maybe getting everything on the ground combined was still a work in progress, or maybe they wanted to leave the extra station open to keep extra reach for customers.
Circa 1892-1894, only one depot served the KCM&B and the KCFtS&M; that being the Memphis and Birmingham depot, which was located at Main St and Railroad (Broadway). It may have been a former NC&StL structure. The Memphis Road Lineage was taken from notes and it lacks consistency in the nomenclature. Source mat'ls: NMRA Bulletin April 1980, Passenger Train Journal Fourth Qtr 2007, and my stack of stuff
The Table in the 1893 Guide shows two stations, but its footnote says "...adjacent..." so, for practical purposes, it was the same station, I would guess. Thanks for the other information!
I note from "Memphis Road Lineage" that the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham was sold by 1888, so the "Sanborn Map" date is before 1888. Now, I wonder why the 1893 Official Guide mentions "adjacent" stations rather than a single building.
