Wisconsin and Southern Railroad

The Wisconsin and Southern Railroad (reporting mark WSOR) is a Class II regional railroad in the southern portion of Wisconsin and the northeast corner of Illinois. It operates former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road) and Chicago and North Western Transportation Company (C&NW) trackage, mostly acquired by the state of Wisconsin in the 1980s.

Within Wisconsin, WSOR connects with four western Class I railroads: BNSF Railway, Canadian National Railway, Canadian Pacific Railway and Union Pacific Railroad. Through trackage rights over Metra, WSOR accesses Chicago to connect with the two eastern Class I railroads, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway. WSOR also has access to harbor facilities in Prairie du Chien, and transload facilities are located in Milwaukee, Janesville, Madison, and Oshkosh. 22 grain elevators have located rail load-out facilities on the WSOR system.

For train operation purposes, the WSOR system is divided into two divisions, the Northern Division and the Southern Division. The Northern Division is essentially the original WSOR trackage from 1980, with a few new lines that have been added around the Milwaukee area since the 1990s. It includes the line northwest from Milwaukee to Horicon, where it splits into branches to Cambria and Oshkosh, as well as a line from Milwaukee north to Kiel. The Southern Division includes the lines acquired from the Wisconsin and Calumet Railroad in 1992, centered around Madison and Janesville, as well as several lines acquired in the 1990s in the Madison area. The two divisions are not physically connected with WSOR owned trackage, but trackage rights over a short section of Wisconsin Central Ltd. from Waukesha to Slinger provide a link between the two divisions.

WSOR is headquartered in Milwaukee, where all dispatching duties are carried out. Locomotive maintenance is centered in Janesville; WSOR's Horicon paint shops often do contract work on both rolling stock, for railroads such as Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern Railroad, and locomotives, including Union Pacific Railroad. and a major freight terminal is operated in Madison, WI