The V&S Railway is a

shortline railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

that operates two disconnected lines in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to th ...

. It is affiliated with A&K Railroad Materials. The company acquired its first line, a former

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Top ...

line between Medicine Lodge and a BNSF Railway junction at

Attica Attica ( el, Αττική, Ancient Greek ''Attikḗ'' or , or ), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and its countryside. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean S ...

, from the Central Kansas Railway in 2000. In 2006 it expanded its operations by acquiring from the Hutchinson and Northern Railway a short segment of former

interurban The Interurban (or radial railway in Europe and Canada) is a type of electric railway, with streetcar-like electric self-propelled rail cars which run within and between cities or towns. They were very prevalent in North America between 1900 ...

in eastern Hutchinson, where it interchanges with the BNSF Railway,

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

, and

Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad The Kansas and Oklahoma Railroad is a shortline railroad operating in the Midwestern United States. It is primarily located in Kansas and extends into Colorado, but despite its name, not into Oklahoma. Overview The KO is a subsidiary of Watco, ...

. Other railroads under common control with the V&S are the out-of-service Kern Valley Railroad in

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

, the Gloster Southern Railroad in

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

, the Grenada Railway and Natchez Railway in Mississippi, a portion of the former Rock Island from St. Louis to Union, Missouri operated by the Missouri Central and the Southern Manitoba Railway in

Manitoba , image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg , map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada , Label_map = yes , coordinates = , capital = Winn ...

History

The

Southern Kansas Railway Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...

, a predecessor of the

, opened a branch from Attica to Medicine Lodge in August 1885, and another Santa Fe predecessor, the Denver, Kansas and Gulf Railway, completed a line from

Kiowa Kiowa () people are a Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries,Pritzker 326 and eve ...

through Medicine Lodge to Belvidere in 1907. In January 1993, the Central Kansas Railway took over operation from the Santa Fe on the remaining piece between Attica and Sun City, and in late 2000 the V&S Railway bought the line. Abandonment between Medicine Lodge and Sun City was authorized in 2003. A portion of the Hutchinson line was opened by the

Arkansas Valley Interurban Railway The Arkansas Valley Interurban Railway (AVI) was an interurban railway that operated in Kansas USA from 1910 to 1938 for passengers and to 1942 for freight, running between Wichita, Newton, and Hutchinson. It operated a small fleet of electrical ...

in December 1915 as the end of a line from Wichita, and the Hutchinson and Northern Railway built the remainder in 1923 as a connecting electric freight line.Edward A. Lewis, American Shortline Railway Guide, 5th Edition,

Kalmbach Publishing Kalmbach Media (formerly Kalmbach Publishing Co.) is an American publisher of books and magazines, many of them railroad-related, located in Waukesha, Wisconsin. History The company's first publication was ''The Model Railroader'', which be ...

, 1996, p. 153 The H&N later acquired a piece of the interurban and dieselized its lines. The V&S acquired the entire property of the H&N in 2006.V&S Railway: Hutchinson, KS
accessed February 2009

Former lines

V&S previously operated the Towner line in

Kiowa County, Colorado Kiowa County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,446, making it the fifth-least populous county in Colorado. The county seat is Eads. The county was named for the Kiowa Nation of Nat ...

, prior to a forced sale to the newly-organized Colorado Pacific Railroad in 2014.

References

External links

V&S Railway, LLC
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vs Railway Kansas railroads Railway companies established in 2000