Mobile and Ohio Railroad
defunct railroad in the Southern U.S.
The Mobile and Ohio Railroad (M&O) was a railroad in the Southern U.S. The M&O was chartered in January and February 1848 by the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It was planned to span the distance between the seaport of Mobile, Alabama and the Ohio River near Cairo, Illinois. On September 13, 1940, it was merged with the Gulf, Mobile and Northern Railroad to form the Gulf, Mobile and Ohio Railroad.
At the end of 1925 M&O operated 1,161 miles (1,868 km) of road and 1,536 miles (2,472 km) of track; that year it reported 1,785 million ton-miles of revenue freight and 49 million passenger-miles.
History
The Mobile and Ohio Railroad was conceived after hard times in Mobile following the Panic of 1837. The port was not generating the business that it had before the panic and businessmen and citizens in the city were inspired with a plan for a railroad to restore commerce to the city. The first section of track opened for service in 1852 between Mobile and Citronelle, Alabama and was constructed in 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge. The line made it to Columbus, Kentucky on April 22, 1861, steamboats were then used to connect with the Illinois Central Railroad at Cairo.
The start of the Civil War shortly after the completion of the line saw it converted to military use and it quickly became a military target for both sides during the war. Following the conflict the M&O had to be almost entirely rebuilt and was facing near total financial ruin due in part to an unpaid debt of $5,228,562 owed by the Confederate government.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mobile and Ohio Railroad” as defunct railroad in the Southern U.S. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as defunct railroad in the Southern U.S. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1523823. VIAF identifies the subject as 316739827. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1848, 1940, 1925 and 1837.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mobile and Ohio Railroad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.