The Southern Transcon is a railroad corridor between Southern California and Chicago, Illinois, and serves as a BNSF Railwaymain line made up of 11 rail lines between Southern California and Chicago. Completed in its current alignment in 1908 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, when it opened the Belen Cutoff in New Mexico and bypassed the steep grades of Raton Pass, it now serves as a mostly double-tracked intermodal corridor. The Transcon is one of the most heavily trafficked rail corridors in the western United States. An average of almost 90 trains daily passed over the section between Belen and Clovis, New Mexico, in 2006, each train typically 6000 to 8000 feet in length.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a railroad between Chicago and Southern California in the 1880s. The route, built in stages, was less than ideal, especially where it crossed Raton Pass and Glorieta Pass. The steep grades posed operational problems, including congestion, slow speeds, and the need for helper engines. As an interim solution, a second track, with a longer tunnel, was opened at Raton in 1908, but this simply added capacity, and the grades remained. In 1902 the Santa Fe began surveying a new cutoff that would bypass this segment entirely. Much of the route had already been constructed by subsidiaries, such as the Southern Kansas Railway, which built a branch to Amarillo, Texas, in the 1880s, and the Pecos Valley and Northeastern Railway, an 1899 extension from Amarillo to Pecos via Texico, New Mexico. To complete the line between Texico and a point northwest of Belen, New Mexico, the Santa Fe incorporated the Eastern Railway of New Mexico in October 1902, and began construction of the Belen Cutoff the next January. The entire line was completed on July 1, 1908, allowing through freight trains to bypass the 3-3.5% grades of the old line for the maximum grade of 1.25% on the new line. The Pecos Valley and Northeastern was consolidated into the Eastern in March 1907, and in January 1912, the property of the Eastern was conveyed to the Santa Fe. To connect central Texas to this line, the Pecos and Northern Texas Railway completed the Coleman Cutoff, running southeast from Texico to the Santa Fe subsidiary Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway at Coleman, in 1914. A third line was almost completed in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Santa Fe built the majority of the planned Dodge City-Colmer, which would provide a second bypass of Raton, but construction stopped at Farley, and the line was torn up west of Boise City in 1942. The completion of the Belen Cutoff did not end improvements to the transcontinental route. The Ellinor Cutoff opened in 1924, cutting through the Flint Hills from the original main line at Ellinor, Kansas, southwest to El Dorado on the main line to Texas. This allowed trains bound for the Belen Cutoff to cut directly to Mulvane, bypassing Wichita to the southeast. To the west, in Arizona, the Santa Fe constructed a new line between Williams and Crookton, bypassing the sharp curves and steep grades of the line via Ash Fork built by the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in the 1880s. The $19.3 million realignment opened on December 19, 1960, and the old line was abandoned west of the Phoenix connection at Ash Fork. Smaller improvements included installation of centralized traffic control on the Belen Cutoff in the 1940s and double track on large portions of the main line.
