SK&O

[W. Gray]

The South Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad runs east-west on the old Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe track through southern Elk County via Grenola, Moline, Elk Falls, Longton, and Upola on its way to the company headquarters in Cherryvale.

One track-mile east of K-99 at Moline there is a spur to a quarry with the main line featuring a long siding. Twenty-six gondola cars were parked at the quarry with another 40 to 50 parked next to the siding in a recent Google view.

Moline once had seven or eight parallel tracks in town around the depot area.

The 444 mile long SK&O line begins in the west at Oxford and runs east through Winfield and Elk County to Cherryvale; from Humboldt south to Cherryvale; from Liberal, Missouri, west to Cherryvale; and from Cherryvale south to Coffeyville; from Cherryvale south to Tulsa with branch service to the Tulsa Port Authority.

The road has track rights from Winfield north to Wichita via the Burlington Northern.

The SK&O carries 50,000 carloads of all materials each year using 30 locomotives.

There is another line called the Kansas and Oklahoma RR, an 800-mile road that runs north from Wichita and then west into Colorado but does not have direct track into Oklahoma—except via the SK&O line through Elk County.

These two RR companies are part of the Watco RR group headquartered in Pittsburg, Kansas.

That company operates 32 short-line RRs (including one called the Grand Elk RR) in twenty-three states and Australia, where the locomotives pull wagons rather than rail cars and locomotive engineers are called train drivers.

All the RRs in the group operate on almost 5,000 miles of track.

[jarhead]

Interesting---thanks Waldo