Southern Pacific’s railroad in Mexico

Recently I received an email question that I thought was interesting enough to merit discussion here. The question was, what were the freight cars of the SP railroad in Mexico, did cars go back and forth over the border with the U.S., and when did that all stop?

The background is covered in a number of books, perhaps best in the one authored by John Signor and John Kirchner, The Southern Pacific of Mexico (Golden West Books, San Marino, CA, 1987). The story began in 1882 with the completion of the Ferrocarril de Sonora  in the Mexican state of Sonora, from the U.S. border at Nogales, Arizona to the port of Guaymas on the Gulf of California. This was built under the auspices of the Santa Fe, which operated it until 1898.

In 1898, the SP’s little-used line from Mojave to Needles, California was traded to the Santa Fe (to forestall further Santa Fe construction westward) in return for the Sonora Railway. SP soon acquired also the railroad properties of the Cananea, Rio Yaqui and Pacific, and in 1905 began to build southward past Mazatlan, eventually to reach Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco. The name given to the combined railroads (FdeS, CRYyP, and the new construction) was the Sud Pacifico de Mexico or SPdeM. 

Much of the new railroad’s rolling stock was handed down from the SP in U.S. or leased. In the 1930s, to cite an example, SPdeM owned only 29 of its 112 locomotives and 657 of its 1251 freight cars. The SPdeM, as emphasized in the Signor and Kirchner book, was remarkably like the parent SP, not only with its hand-me-down rolling stock and locomotives, but in use of the SP rule book, timetable and train order operation (with telegraph communication only),  and many familiar features of SP practice. 

Photographs of yards and trains in the 1940s and up to the sale of SPdeM to the Mexican government in 1951 show that most freight cars, certainly all the modern ones, had SP initials, interchanged into Mexico. In principle, SP cars made empty in Mexico were not permitted to be reloaded to further destinations in Mexico, only back to the U.S., but this regulation was not stringently enforced. The same applied to PFE cars. Moreover, significant numbers of empty SP and PFE cars were interchanged into Mexico for SPdeM use.

One consequence of these cross-border movements of cars has to do with waybills and how they were handled. I have described earlier the basics of the situation (see this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/10/waybills-part-75-non-us-freight-cars.html ), and followed that discussion with several further examples of both Canadian- and Mexican-origin shipments (in this post: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/10/waybills-part-76-more-on-cross-border.html ).  

Let’s look at some rolling stock. Below is a photo (Library of Congress) taken during the Mexican Revolution of 1911, showing insurrectionists atop a train. The caboose is an SP design, Class CA, and the box car (number not readable) is one of the early Harriman-standard double-sheathed box cars, likely Class B-50-5 or -6.

 To show one of the few cars built new for the SPdeM, below is a builder photo (AC&F, Al Westerfield collection) of a member of Class B-50-6. 

Another example of these cars in service is this view (Southern Pacific) of the Redo Sugar Co. mill at El Dorado, Sinaloa, with several box cars in sight. These too appear to be Harriman Class B-50-6 cars. 

After the sale of the SPdeM to the Mexican government in 1951, the railroad was renamed Ferrocarril del Pacifico (Pacific Railroad), initially with reporting marks FdelP, but soon changed to FCP. I have described the changes of the former SP rolling stock to the FCP ownership in an earlier post (see it at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/08/ferrocarril-del-pacifico.html ). Since I model 1953, I need to focus on the FdelP, not the SPdeM.

On the modeling front, I have shown my creation of one of the re-lettered former SP cars in a post a few years ago (here’s a link: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2020/09/resin-box-car-build-part-3.html ). A photo of my completed model, a former SP Class B-50-14 from a Sunshine kit, is below, including the “patched” change of reporting marks. 

So that’s an overview of “SP’s railroad in Mexico,” and a few of the aspects that can be part of model railroading.

Tony Thompson