Poor's statistics are often mutually contradictory from table to table, but they are still the best available source for these years.
Adams to S. R. Callaway, Dec. 1, 1884, UP, PO, OC, vol. 24, ser. 2, r. 21.
Adams to Hoyt, Feb. 4, 1885, UP, PO, OC, vol. 27, ser. 2, r. 23.
The seven routes in 1885 were (1) the UP and CP, (2) ATSF and SP, (3) SP and TP, (4) SP to New Orleans, (5) Burlington, D & RG, and CP, (6) NP, (7) A&P and SP. To these would quickly be added the Canadian Pacific and the Oregon Short Line. By the early 1890s there was also the Great Northern.
Adams to E. D. Sawyer, Feb. 13, 1886, UP, PO, OC, vol. 34, ser. 2, r. 29.
Adams to CPH, May 17, 1886, UP, PO, OC, vol. 35, ser. 2, r. 30.
The Mexican National was a relatively poorly built narrow-gauge line.
Trade and Commerce of Paso del Norte, Reports from the Consuls of the United States, vol. 39 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1889), 50th Cong., 2d sess., H. Misc. Doc. 141, 754.
Report of the U.S. Congress Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, 49th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1886), 10.
Poor, Manual, 1892, xxii.
The transcontinental traffic was the most expensive to secure and the least remunerative of all traffic for the Union Pacific.
Poor, Manual, 1890, xv.
I have combined the southwestern and northwestern groups in Poor's Manual to get all the roads between the Mississippi and the Rockies, again except Louisiana.
Hart, Empire and Revolution, 122.