Okay, I gotta run those Green and Yellow MKT units on my layout.....Is there anything out there that has the MKT east of the Mississippi???? I'm ALL B&O, but there had to be interchange between the two??? Maybe St. Louis????? barrowed power????? Any excuse will do???
Must have been that weekly, jointly operated manifest between the Parsons, Kansas munitions plant and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What? You never heard of such a thing? Of course not! It was Top Secret! If I had told you about it forty years ago, I'd have had to shoot you... Will that excuse do? If not, what about zinc ore unit trains? Eastern Kansas produced it, and both steel companies (Pittsburgh) and rubber companies (Dayton) used it. Admittedly, it would be hard to confirm it ever happened. But it would be nearly impossible to prove it didn't.
On a less ethical level, and assuming a B&O/MKT interchange at St. Louis, you could theorize that the MKT may have pulled the same trick on the B&O that the MLW did to the EL in the Chicago area as a means to justify MKT locos running far into B&O territory. The train that the EL interchanged with the MLW in IN often ran through to Chicago with the EL power. Said train typically arrived early in the day and departed late, with the power laying over. Eventually it dawned on someone that the MLW could "borrow" those EL units that were otherwise just sitting idle during the day. The MLW would use them on daytime trains out and back to Savanna, IL (and perhaps elsewhere) with no one being the wiser - for a while. When the EL finally caught on to the MLW's shenanigans, the MLW had to send a couple of locos east for the EL to use until the accounts were even. For example, this photo taken in OH: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/milw/milw2047gdb.jpg
That does sound more likely than the B & O voluntarily assigning jointly-operated power to run over the weed-choked Katy.
I heard that upon interchange with PC, the E-L and D&H lost a lot of MU cables. In its end days, the PC was short of everything and liberated whatever it could find to keep the wheels turning.
I have mkt book "miss katy in the lone star state". it shows the texas special in sloan yard, Waco I think, with a b & o sleeper on it being washed and inspected. it says the texas special often handled through cars from eastern connections at st louis. not what your looking for, but just thought I would pass it along
SP power regularly ran to Cincinnati from St. Louis on an intermodal train the 2 roads ran. That power occasionally made it up to Toledo on manifests. Adjust you view of history accordingly...
After the War and upto the middle 50's the B&O handled a number of 'off line' sleeper connections. While I don't have the documentation to back it up, I do believe one of the connections was with the Texas Special through St.Louis to Dallas.
Yes the B&O did a few "offline" sleepers....Wish I did that timeframe as I'd put a few of those cars in my National Limited....But I'm just going to do a MKT run-through and call it a day.....
MKT and the Frisco (SLSF) jointly operated the Texas Special - who owned which cars is unknown to me but I expect each road contributed Coaches, Sleeping Cars, Diners Lounge cars and Observation cars to the 'pool' of equipment that it took to operate the train.
According to "B&O Power" by Sagle and Staufer, B&O had bought the Chicago and Alton around 1931 and that brought the B&O into Kansas City! The former Alton ran through central Missouri as far south as Mexico, MO. Up until 1934 or so Alton had a line from Mexico to Cedar City, just north of Jefferson City, the MO state capital, on the Missouri River's north bank. Thus, allowing for some fudging of history, you could say there was a Katy-B&O connection near the (I think) West Bottoms area of K.C. Of course, leased power is always an option to justify any power of any line!