page_title: California Southern Railroad
section_title: Consolidation
hierarchical_section_title: California Southern Railroad / History / Consolidation
caption_attribution_description: English: Santa Fe's California Limited at the summit of Cajon Pass.
context_page_description: The California Southern Railroad was a subsidiary railroad of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in Southern California. It was organized July 10, 1880, and chartered on October 23, 1880, to build a rail connection between what has become the city of Barstow and San Diego, California.
  Construction began in National City, just south of San Diego, in 1881, and proceeded northward to the present day city of Oceanside. From there, the line turned to the northeast through Temecula Canyon, then on to the present cities of Lake Elsinore, Perris and Riverside before a connection to the Southern Pacific Railroad in Colton. Following a frog war where the SP refused to let the California Southern cross its tracks, a dispute that was resolved by court order in favor of the California Southern, construction continued northward through Cajon Pass to the present day cities of Victorville and Barstow. The line, completed on November 9, 1885, formed the western end of Santa Fe's transcontinental railroad connection to Chicago. Portions of the original line are still in use today as some of the busiest rail freight and passenger routes in the United States.
context_section_description: To reach Los Angeles, the Santa Fe leased trackage rights over the Southern Pacific from San Bernardino on November 29, 1885, at $1,200 per mile per year.  Naturally, the Santa Fe sought ways to reduce the fees. On November 20, 1886, the Santa Fe incorporated the San Bernardino and Los Angeles Railway to build a rail connection between its namesake cities.  California Southern track crews performed the construction work, and the first train on the new line arrived in Los Angeles on May 31, 1887. 
  During construction, Santa Fe officials worked to consolidate the many subsidiary railroads in Southern California to reduce costs. At a stockholder meeting on April 23, the eight railroads and their prominent stockholders, minus the California Southern, voted in favor of consolidation, and the California Central Railway was formed as a result on May 20, 1887.  After the consolidation, although the California Southern remained a separate subsidiary, the National City shops were downgraded and the services provided there were moved to the newly constructed shops in San Bernardino.  One of the first official lists of stations on the California Southern and California Central railroads published on July 13, 1887, shows the California Southern divided operationally into two divisions: the San Diego division covered the territory between National City and Colton; from there, the San Bernardino Division covered the route through Cajon Pass to Barstow.
  The Santa Fe underwent a massive financial overhaul in 1889.  The major investors in Boston, Massachusetts, were mostly replaced by investors from New York and London at the annual meeting on May 9.  The investors replaced the company's board of directors with a new board that included George C. Magoun (who would later be linked with the company's 1893 receivership).  The new investors disliked the number of subsidiary companies and sought to further consolidate them.  The California Southern, California Central and Redondo Beach Railway companies were consolidated into the Southern California Railway on November 7, 1889. The California Central had consolidated with the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad in 1887, giving it ROW through the San Gabriel Valley.  The Santa Fe finally purchased outright the holdings of the Southern California railroad on January 17, 1906, ending the railway's subsidiary status and making it fully a part of the Santa Fe railroad.
caption: Santa Fe's California Limited pauses at the summit of Cajon Pass in 1908.
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