I discovered this very interesting article from the September 1936 BULLETIN OF THE INT. RAILWAY CONGRESS ASSOCIATION “Note on the high-speed trains
between Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis”. A couple items really caught my eye.
I, — “Reason for the introduction of the high-speed trains. The railway crisis in the U. S. A. began in 1921. Relatively to 1920 the passenger traffic receipts had fallen 33 % in 1929, and 60 % in 1935. The drop was greater in the area north west of Chicago than anywhere else, and was accompanied by an enormous increase in the traffic by other methods of transport, such as road motor and air services. At the present time the road passenger traffic is more than 20 times the railway passenger traffic. Consequently if one twentieth of the road traffic could be recovered, the railway traffic would be doubled.”
II, The costs to upgrade the lines for the new high speeds were remarkably low, even adjusted for inflation. Specifically:
Burlington - “Permanent way work which had to be done before the high-speed services could be introduced cost 230,000 dollars.”
Milwaukee - “The cost of putting the track into good order for the high-speed trains, the signals and interlockings, was about 154,000 dollars.”
North Westen - “The cost of putting the line in order for the high-speed trains was 145,000 dollars.”
Adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars these were approximately: $5 mills, $4 mills, and $3 mills respectively.
These numbers shock me. Why does anything today cost so much to upgrade? Illinois just spent $2,000 millions (not a typo, that’s $2 billion) to upgrade CHI-STL (a shorter distance than CHI-MSP) to just 10 mph more than 90 years ago.
Anyone have any thoughts? Is this why we can’t have nicer things today? Here is a graphic showing how high are infrastructure costs are compared to other countries. It’s not just rail either.
Remember that this was Depression wages… and you’re looking at an increase over what would be by today’s standards an enormous expense in manpower keeping section crews to maintain jointed rail under comparatively high-augment steam locomotives.
The factor of safety operating over the ‘improved’ track was also likely far less than modern standards would involve. Look at a couple of the running (e.g. newsreel) shots of the CB&Q track under the Pioneer Zephyr runs – that track would need extensive attention to stay lined and surfaced even with lightweight motor trains.
By comparison, I remember reading in Trains Magazine that JNR was having to spend the equivalent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars every six weeks to renew line and surface of the original New Tokaido Line…
Maybe but 10,000X more? $2,000,000,000 over $200,000. I can’t think of anything even remotely close to being 10,000 times more expensive since the depression. This is just very odd.
Look at us compared to other countries like France Germany and Japan. It’s a disgrace. The FT is a pretty sober business newspaper. Our infrastructure is not up to snuff. Now we know why.
You do realize that Union Pacific literally rebuilt all of the track structure between Joliet and East St. Louis from the sub grade up, right? This involved:
All new rail
All new concrete ties
All new ballast
Quad crossing gate protection even for private farmer’s crossings
Signal spacing reduced approximately to 1 mile
PTC system certified for 110 mph operation
All new switches for every industry, yard, and siding track connected to the mainline
UP also rebuilt all of the passing sidings from the subgrade up and extended some passing sidings into 8-10 mile sections of double track.
All this work and capital investment is hardly comparable to the very incremental track improvements made by the CB&Q, MILW, and C&NW back in the 1930’s. And its worth remembering that a serious accident on the CB&Q route is what led to the 79 mph restriction on lines without ATS/ATC. Some of the speed gains clearly came at the expense of safety.
P.S. And, unfortunately, since the government was paying for most of the labor and materials, there wasn’t much consideration given to constraining the cost of the project.
It was my understanding that the Naperville accident had nothing to do with track class or maintenance, or with 100+mph permitted speed. The 59/60 and 79/80 came into the Order because there was already Congressional law mandating them (from the post-Esch Act re-privatization that conveniently included a plan for passenger ATC).
On the other hand there was at least one contemporary railroad that thought it was OK to run diesels with postwar lightweight cars over a single-track line with semaphores at 127mph… clearly prioritizing some aspects of ‘improvement’ over many others.
Lack of cab signalling/ATS running at 80+ mph speeds was always going to bite someone in the rear end (no pun intended!). My point is that all the extra money spent on the Chicago-St. Louis corridor addressed that risk. The CB&Q did not. Sometimes cheap is cheap for a reason.
Thanks. I did know it was a lot more work than the CHI - MSP upgrade 90 years ago.
But your P.S. was kind of what I had been suspecting all along. Since Uncle Sam rather than Uncle Pete was paying there wasn’t much consideration given to constraining the cost.
I wonder what it could have cost if just the UP was paying. 1/2?
Again thank you for you post. It was quite informative and interesting.
The Alton had ATS from the 20s through the 60s. The Milwaukee had cab signals same time frame. So they already met the new regs imposed by the 1947 ICC order (as a result of the 1946 CBQ accident).
The CNW added ATS and the CBQ added cab signals to comply with the 1947 ICC order.
That of course was not an employee timetable speed…
There were a number of references in the Federal Register discussion with cowboy details that had references to particular railroads removed. Apparently the diesel-electrics and ‘modern’ suspensions were taken advantage of in the immediate postwar years – this was the same era as the Arnold Haas tall tale about more than 140mph on the Trail Blazer, one of the more grand whoppers in the American story of high-speed ‘records’. This was the era of doubleheader K4s taking curves at 90mph as one story in Trains in the early '70s had it ‘a series of jerks, not like curved guiding at all’… imagine how bad it might get on a diesel with no critical speeds in the suspension, and no speed limiter other than back EMF and cumulative winding damage…
127 was the supposed speed record with an E7sa and four cars between AY and Elida. That was the reason Alfred Bruce used 128+mph as a speed he had observed on Milwaukee A 4-4-2s; he had ‘American Locomotives’ in manuscript before the British fudged Mallard’s record.
The only detailed T1 story I remember was Crosby’s, as published in Trains, but it was spoiled by a rookie mistake. He refers to the speedometer showing 120mph. This was a common speed for a car speedometer to show… but the Jones-Motrola units on the T1s only read to 100mph. (Even the S1 only went to 110…)
The story I mean was told by Arnold Haas (he of the ‘Niagaras and Hudsons regularly went over 120mph’ fame) to a German journalist who apparently swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, and the tale has grown in the telling. Supposedly the Big Engine pulled a Trail Blazer (all modern coaches) at over 142mph (the actual number having a suspiciously Teutonic decimal place, making it equally suspiciously close to a metric ‘round’ speed that had been converted). “The ICC” clocked this speed and sent PRR a very expensive ticket (which in some versions made PRR never again try high-speed running). I actually went so far a couple of decades ago to contact the ICC archives, where I presume any actual enforcement action of the kind would be mentioned… they charitably answered and said not only was there no indication at all, but even enforcement of ATC regulations had left no trace.
There is a Popular Science story that has the S1 going through some small Indians town at 132mph or some number equally monstrous. Then you look at aerials and there are building corners within a few feet of the track… and a diamond crossing right at the edge of town, just the thing to thunder across with a trainload of passengers…
Stan Repp said repeatedly in his book on the Super Chief that the one-spot twins and other early ATSF motors were run up to speeds in excess of 120… and even 150… miles per hour. Baldwin advertised the 3469 class as 120-mph locomotives.
I found some timetables of the Hiawatha from the Official Guide March 1940 and also from Amtrak for this week. LaCrosse WI (LSE) is 281 miles by rail from Chicago. St Louis is 284 miles. Essentially the same distance.
The Hiawatha’s best time CHI-LSE was 4 hours flat with 3 stops with steam locos. According to an article in The Railway Gazette January 5, 1940 the Hiawathas ran 93% on time.
Amtrak’s best time today after $2 billions upgrade is 4:46 with 4 stops. Per FRA reports for the last two quarters on time percentage for the Lincoln Service was 61% and 67%.
Sad that after 90 years and $2 billions that I ride slower trains with approx. 5 times worse on time performance than my grandmother who visited her uncle in Wisconsin on Hiawatha steam trains.
The killers for the Lincoln Service corridor are Chicago-Joliet and Alton-St. Louis. I did some analysis of train 301’s schedule. Average speed Chicago to Joliet is 38.95 mph over a distance of 37 miles. Average speed Alton to St. Louis is 34.47 mph over a distance of 27 miles. Average speed Joliet to Alton is 72.53 mph over a distance of 220 miles, including two passenger stops and scheduled meets with trains 302 and 22. If this average speed could be sustained over the entire 284 mile corridor, travel times would be under 4 hours.
The fastest part of the schedule is the 87 miles between Joliet and Normal, which only takes 64 minutes at an average speed of 81.56 mph.
I can’t speak for the STL end as I’ve not been there but the CHI end is pretty much all industrial. Not much population. Unless industry is the nimbies. Maybe but I kind of doubt it. It’s Metra’s Heritage Corridor and it’s the lowest ridership line.
Excluding Joliet which is also served by the Rock Island line only 100,000 people live in the towns along the line. And that’s over a 30 mile stretch again excluding Joliet.
And I suspect it’s the same on the STL end. Not much on the Illinois side of STL but industry.
Industries tend to fight hard, with large legal departments, to retain the land they currently own - for whatever their reasons. I recall the circuitous route B&O used to go the 30 mile for Grand Central Station to Pine Jct. at Gary that was scheduled for an hour - industrial most of the way.
They wouldn’t need any new land. The right of way is very wide in most places. They would just need to upgrade that stretch and put overpasses over the several railroads that cross it. The CTA orange line did that along the corridor.
LA Metrolink also did that in an industrial stretch just south of Union Station. Remarkably steep (guess 3%) but if Metrolink can get over it so could Amtrak and Metra. Given the number of trains it could be single track.
