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NOTE: On this page you will find several maps of Katy's Missouri operations. All maps are by the webmaster, Mike Landis, and may not be reproduced in any form without prior consent from their creator.
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| Seen above is what the MKT system in Missouri would have looked like in 1950. Map by Mike Landis |
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1950 The early 1950's were the peak years of MKT route mileage in Missouri. All Katy routes that were ever in operation were being operated, though the Bryson Cutoff from Windsor to Paola only had seven years of life left. The only exception was the Moberly to Hannibal line, which was sold to the Wabash twenty years earlier. |
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1975 By 1975, many lines had been abandoned and many others were on their last legs. The Windsor to Paola line was taken out in 1954, and the branches to Moberly, Columbia and El Dorado Springs would be gone by the end of the decade. Other lines that crossed the MKT, including the Frisco's "Highline" through Clinton, and Rock Island's St. Louis line through Windsor would also be abandoned by the end of the decade. |
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1988 By 1988 the mainline had already been pruned back to Sedalia and all Katy trains were reaching St. Louis via trackage rights over Union Pacific east of Sedalia. MKT sold the abandoned route to the State of Misouri for conversion into the Katy Trail, the nation's longest rails-to-trails project. After evaluating the line's usefulness and determining that the line would not play a role in UP's future as a through route, it would reroute all through trains off the line in 1989, and the Sedalia-Clinton and Ft. Scott-Parsons segments would be abandoned and taken out. In 1989, UP donated the 38 mile segment from Sedalia to Clinton to the State of Missouri as an addition to the Katy Trail State Park. |
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2001 In 2001, only the Ft. Scott to Clinton portion of the mainline remains, and only the Nevada to Clinton secion sees service. Since MNA received approval to operate the Montrose coal train sover it's own lines in 1994, the BN interchange at Ft. Scott (where MKT and UP had previously received the trains) was deemed useless. In 1997, BNSF removed the former MKT interchange tracks, and MNA uses the line from Nevada to Ft. Scott for surplus railroad car storage. Coal trains operate several times per month to LaDue, and local trains operate all the way to Clinton. |
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