American history

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad NYSE: UNP is the largest railroad in the United States. Its primary AAR reporting mark is UP. Richard K. Davidson, who began his career as a Missouri Pacific brakeman in 1960, has headed Union Pacific Railroad since 1991 and parent Union Pacific Corporation since 1997. James R. Young is president and chief operating officer and Richard "Dick" K. Davidson is the CEO of the Railroad.

The Union Pacific's route map covers most of the central and western United States, westward of Chicago and New Orleans. It has achieved this size thanks to purchasing a large number of other railroads; notable purchases include the Missouri Pacific, Chicago and North Western, Western Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, and Southern Pacific (which itself was purchased by the Rio Grande before UP purchased it).

Union Pacific's chief competitor is the BNSF Railway, which covers much of the same territory.

1. Union pacific railroad - History

The Union Pacific Railroad was incorporated on July 1, 1862 in the wake of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. The first rails were laid in Omaha, Nebraska. They were part of the railroads which came together at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869 as the first transcontinental railroad in North America.

Subsequently the Union Pacific took over the Utah Central extending south through Salt Lake City, and the Utah & Northern, extending from Ogden through Idaho into Montana, and it built or absorbed local lines, which gave it access to Denver and to Portland, Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest.

It acquired the Kansas Pacific (originally called the Union Pacific, Eastern Division, though in essence a separate railroad). It also owned narrow gauge trackage into the heart of the Colorado Rockies and a standard gauge line south from Denver across New Mexico into Texas.

Union Pacific was entangled in the Credit Mobilier scandal of 1872. The railroad's early troubles led to bankruptcy during the 1870s, the result of which was reorganization of the Union Pacific Railroad as the Union Pacific Railway on January 24, 1880.

The new company also declared bankruptcy, in 1893, but emerged on July 1, 1897, reverting again to the original name, Union Pacific Railroad. Such minor changes in corporate titles were a common result of reorganization after bankruptcy among American railroads.

The recovered railroad was strong enough to take control of Southern Pacific Railroad in 1901 and then was ordered in 1913 by the U.S. Supreme Court to surrender control of the same. The Union Pacific Railroad also founded the Sun Valley resort in Idaho. In 1996, the UP finally acquired the Southern Pacific Railroad in a transaction that was envisioned nearly a century earlier.

From 1948 to the early 1970s the UP operated a series of gas turbine-electric locomotives. No other railroad in the world operated turbines on such a scale. At one point, UP claimed that the turbines hauled ten percent of the railroad's freight. They were retired due to rising fuel costs. Two of them can now be seen in museums.

UP has the headquarters of the railroad located in Omaha, Nebraska since its inception and moved in 2003 into the recently completed Union Pacific Center, also in Omaha.

2. Union Pacific Corporation

In 1986 Union Pacific purchased Overnite Transportation, a fairly major less-than-truckload shipping carrier. Union Pacific divested itself of Overnite Trucking through an IPO in late 2003 but still owned a sizable stake until UPS agreed to purchase Overnite in May 2005 for $1.25 billion.

That same year, the Union Pacific Corporation was created as a holding company for Union Pacific and its related properties, initially including the railroad and Overnite.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Union Pacific Corporation purchased several non-railroad companies, such as Skyway Freight Systems of Watsonville, California and United States Pollution Control, Inc., but by 2000, following the accession of Richard K. Davidson as CEO of the Corporation, it had divested itself of all non-railroad properties except for Overnite Trucking, and its holding company for logistical technology, Fenix Enterprises.

The Corporation was located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania until 1997, when Richard K. Davidson announced that the headquarters of the Corporation was moving to Dallas in September of that year. Upon the sale of Skyway and the impending divestiture of Overnite, however, the corporate headquarters were moved to Omaha to join the headquarters of the railroad only two years later, in 1999.

3. Union Pacific Police Department

Union Pacific, like most other major railroads, maintains a functioning police department staffed with Special Agents with jurisdiction over crimes against the railroad.

Special Agents have federal and state arrest powers and can enforce laws even off railroad property.

Special Agents typically investigate major incidents such as derailments, sabotage, grade crossing accidents and hazardous material accidents and minor issues such as trespassing on the railroad right of way, vandalism/graffiti, and theft of company property or customer product.

Special Agents often coordinate and liaise with local, state, and federal law enforcement on issues concerning the railroad and are dispatched nationally through UP Headquarters in Omaha.

The Union Pacific Police Department and the term "Special Agent" were models for the FBI when it was created in 1907.