Pacific consolidated the Cotton Belt's operations into the parent company. Southern Pacific merged with Union Pacific Railroad in 1996. Passenger service 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 final operations in Texas involved overnight service between St. Louis and Dallas, with major intermediate stops in Jonesboro, Pine Bluff, Texarkana and Tyler. 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. Notable employees Louisiana politician Andrew R. Johnson (1856–1933) was once a depot agent for the Cotton Belt railroad. Railroad official Robert Krebs worked for Cotton Belt in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a trainmaster and terminal superintendent. Krebs became superintendent of the Cotton Belt at age 29. See also Cotton Belt Depot Train Museum St. Louis Southwestern Railway of Texas References External links Cotton Belt Depot Museum (Tyler, Texas) Facts on the Cotton Belt 4-8-4's, Including the 819 Cotton Belt website Cotton Belt Rail Historical Society Cotton Belt Railroad Symposium, annual event hosted by Texas A&M University-Commerce Bibliography Moody's Steam Railroads, 1949. Moody's Transportation Manual, 1968. Goen, Steve Allen. Cotton Belt Color Pictorial, Four Ways West Publications, 1999, . Eighty Years of Transportation Progress: A History of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (Cotton Belt Public Relations Department, 1957) as published in the October 1957 issue of The Cotton Belt News. Predecessors of the