The Texas Mexican Railway was a railroad that operated as a subsidiary of the Kansas City Southern Railway in Texas. It is often referred to as the Tex-Mex, or TexMex Railway. On January 1, 2005, Kansas City Southern took control of the Texas Mexican Railway and the U.S. portion of the Texas Mexican Railway International Bridge in Laredo, Texas. The railroad is a vital link in KCS's rail network, connecting KCS and TFM (aka KCS de Mexico). While Tex-Mex remains a separate legal entity, KCS and Tex-Mex are operated as one railroad. History 19th century Chartered in March 1875, the Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Gauge Railroad built a narrow-gauge line from Corpus Christi, Texas to Rancho Banquete, Texas between 1875 and 1877, and then on to San Diego, Texas by 1879. This line's main purpose was to take domestic sheep from Texas ranches to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and received some funding from Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy. In 1881, the line was sold to a syndicate that included William J. Palmer and it was given a new charter as the Texas Mexican Railway. Under this document, the line was built an additional to Laredo, Texas. While the charter also allowed for other lines which would have made a network, including one line from San Diego to the Sabine River with branch lines to Tyler, Galveston, San Antonio, Texas, and Sabine Pass, these expansions were never constructed. The small Galveston, Brazos and Colorado Railroad was purchased in 1881 for a connection to Galveston, but a line was never built between the two railroads. In 1883 a bridge was built across the Rio Grande to Nuevo Laredo, making the Tex-Mex the first Mexico–United States rail connection. This granted rail access for all of Northern Mexico to the Port of Corpus Christi, devastating international commerce in Brownsville in the lower Rio Grande Valley, and its deep water port, Los Brazos de Santiago. This rail connection also devastated the commercial navigation of the Rio Grande, between Rio Grande City, Camargo (Mexico), Brownsville, and Los Brazos de Santiago, located adjacent to the mouth of the Rio Grande. It was not until 1889 that the North American rail system connected Mexico with Canada. In 1910 an international rail bridge was completed in Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, which is currently owned and operated by the Brownsville and Matamoros Bridge