The Rebirth of the Missouri Pacific, 1956-1983

In 1956, the era of tail-finned cars and nineteen-cents-a-gallon gasoline, the Missouri Pacific Railroad emerged on the corporate scene as a private company after twenty-three years in a receivership. In its past lay a collapsed rail empire, a sensational bankruptcy struggle that shattered dreams and betrayed trusts, an emotional battle over stockholders' interests, and the flamboyant maneuvers of the railroad's overseers. In its future lay two computerized, merger-dominated decades in which the railroad business would serve as a classic example of a tradition-bound industry forced to adapt to "future shock." The transition from crippled line to prime property would become, as one politician later put it, "a lawyers' paradise, and a security-holders' nightmare."