About the Mountain Pacific Lines

Despite being 22 years old, I have been a devout model railroader for fifteen years now. I was born and raised in Utah before leaving to Flagstaff, Arizona to study civil engineering and just graduated in May of 2025. After jumping around modeling UP, to 90s SP, to BNSF, to SP again, I finally settled on my freelance railroad in 2022. This is when the Mountain Pacific was born, though I had dabbled in freelance before. The railroad serves to connect Arizona and Mexico, as well as Texas and New Mexico via haulage agreements, to the transcontinental railroad at Ogden as well as markets in the northwest much more directly. The railroad has its roots in the Arizona Mineral Belt, which sought to build from the Atlantic & Pacific (later ATSF) connection at Flagstaff to the then bustling mining town of Globe, Arizona. Though the real-life counterpart failed after only 35 miles of track laying, it served as the base for what would become the MPL and predecessor railroads. This railroad would connect with several other small railroads over time to gradually form what is now the Mountain Pacific.

The railroad's primary partner is Ferromex, holding a 20% share along with the UP, and the primary commodities it hauls in my era are goods originating or terminating at Mexican markets, especially automobiles. Other notable commodities include coal from the Powder River Basin, Utah and Montana, iron ore from southern Utah and central Arizona, copper and related byproducts from the mines and smelters at Freeport-McMoran (Globe, AZ) and Kennecott (Magna, UT), and food/grain products originating in the northwest bound for southern Markets in the southwest and in Mexico. There is also a fair amount of cement traffic on the railroad's southern division. The railroad also connects with Canadian Pacific at Northport, Washington and CN at Vancouver, Washington. This makes up the final and most significant cash crop for the MPL, overhead traffic. CN, CP, UP, and BNSF all run traffic originating on the respective railroads destined for markets on the MPL, making most of the line a railfan paradise. Think of it like the amount of overhead coal traffic you can find on the former KCS mainline in Oklahoma and Arkansas.