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Though the city of St. Louis is located on the Missouri side of the Mississippi River, for the railroads, the St. Louis Gateway extends into Illinois, north and south along both sides of the river. Two factors conspired against St. Louis's aspiration to become the preeminent rail center of the 19th-century American Midwest: there was no bridge across the Mississippi, and Missouri's loyalty to the Union during the Civil War was suspect. Chicago beat out St. Louis to attain the region's top railroad billing. Fast forward to the 1970s, when the Gateway Arch, dedicated in 1968, redefined the St. Louis riverfront and when the St. Louis Union Station closed to rail service. The 1970s was a decade of railroad debuts--"Burlington Northern, Illinois Central Gulf, Family Lines--"and a decade of railroad demises--"Rock Island and Frisco. It signaled the end of a century of rail domination of the American transportation scene.
About the author
For the photographer of rail images, the St. Louis Gateway of the 1970s provided abundant opportunities to record rolling stock of many railroads, extant and fallen flags alike. Most of the images in this book were photographed by John F. Barker, whose Representative Collection of Trains in St. Louis 1900 to 1990 is a permanent exhibit of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Barker used the images to create accurate HO-scale models of trains in St. Louis. The images, too, now belong to the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library.
