page_title: St. Louis Southwestern Railway
section_title: Passenger service
hierarchical_section_title: St. Louis Southwestern Railway / Passenger service
caption_attribution_description: English: A short train through Colton Junction, Colton CA. January 1989. Scan from 35mm slide.
context_page_description: The St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company, known by its nickname of "The Cotton Belt Route" or simply "Cotton Belt", is a former US Class I railroad which operated between St. Louis, Missouri, and various points in the states of Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Texas from 1891 to 1980. In 1980 the Cotton Belt began operating the Rock Island's Golden State Route which added the states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico to the operation. It operated as a Southern Pacific subsidiary from 1932 until the operation of the Cotton Belt was assumed by Southern Pacific Transportation Company in 1992.
context_section_description: The Cotton Belt ran passenger trains from St. Louis to Texas and from Memphis to Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana. Cotton Belt's Lone Star operated from Memphis Union Station to Dallas Union Terminal with a connecting section from Lewisville, Arkansas, to Shreveport. The Morning Star was the second named train over much of this route, operating out of St. Louis Union Station to Dallas, with a separate Memphis section inaugurated in 1941 to provide a convenient connection with the Southern Railway's Tennessean to and from Washington, D.C., and New York City. The Cotton Belt also operated passenger trains between Mt. Pleasant, Tyler and Waco, and a doodlebug between Tyler and Lufkin.
  
  The Cotton Belt began a series of passenger train cutbacks in the early 1950s. The railroad had 25 steam engines and four gas-electric motor cars available for passenger service in 1949. By late 1952 nine diesels had replaced the steam locomotives and motorcars and passenger train mileage had been trimmed considerably. The Cotton Belt was one of the first Class 1 lines in the southwest to discontinue passenger service. The last Cotton Belt passenger train, #8, operated on November 30, 1959, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to East St. Louis, Illinois.
caption: SSW GE B40-8 8067 in Colton, California
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