The Kansas City Terminal Railway (reporting mark KCT) is a Class III railroad terminal railroad that serves as a joint operation of the trunk railroads that serve the Kansas City metropolitan area, the country's second largest rail hub. It is presently operated by the Kaw River Railroad.
The Railway was created after a series of floods in 1903, 1904, and 1908 inundated the West Bottoms each time and temporarily closed the Union Depot there. The 12 original trunk railways of the city at the time joined together to build the new Union Station and to coordinate the bridges and switches that serve the city.
Under an Interstate Commerce Commission order, the railway operated and then oversaw the liquidation of the Rock Island Line from 1979 to 1980.
The railway owns and dispatches 85 miles of track (25 in Kansas and 60 in Missouri) and leases six locomotives and no freight cars. It no longer owns Union Station. It has subcontracted its maintenance operations to BNSF.
The original trunk railroads that were owners of the Kansas City Terminal were:
- Alton Railroad
- Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
- Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad
- Chicago Great Western Railway
- Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad
- Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad
- Kansas City Southern Railway
- Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad
- Missouri Pacific Railroad
- St. Louis-San Francisco Railway
- Union Pacific Railroad
- Wabash Railroad
It now serves the Class I railroads BNSF, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern Railway and Union Pacific as well as Class II carrier Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad and Class III Missouri and Northern Arkansas Railroad plus Amtrak.
Famous quotes containing the words kansas city, kansas, city, terminal and/or railway:
“Kansas City is lost; I am here!”
—A. Edward Sullivan. Professor Quail (W.C. Fields)
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.... Now I know we’re not in Kansas.”
—Noel Langley (1898–1981)
“This city now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)