Well vis a vis the Milwuakee the “feather” was the Fremont cutoff that bypassed Omaha on the C&NW. Getting between Chicago and Omaha, in and of itself, without the added benifits provided by the Rock Island route, meant nothing.
Saving an hour to Omaha was nothing compared to the benifits of the Fremont cutoff. Rock Island was first choice, Milwaukee Road obviously wasn’t second.
Odd that neither company saw that as a particular advantage accruing to the proposed merger. Perhaps they didn’t understand the situation as well as you did.
Didnt UP court the MLWK for awhile? If so, that make CNW the third choice
Ed, thanks for starting this thread.
If the Southern had a major project underway, like the rebuilding of the Rathole Division, would it show up in these numbers, or somewhere else ?
You are right about Fremont. The point was to set up an through route between the UP’s hump yard at N. Platte and hump yards east of Chicgo on CR (Elkhart), NW and CO/BO (Willard). What the lawyers said to win their then dead merger case did not come up. Lawyers say a lot of things defending their clients interests.
It was my impression they never asked for the traffic. I was working with the Green River soda ash shippers over a 13 year period. I knew my two significant competitors were the BN and IC. As I recall the MILW’s service or car supply into Green River was never a factor. I also was working on SK potash off the DWP at Duluth going to Chicago connections. The traffic was handeled by us and the SOO. The BN was out of the picture because of their truck/rail train and the MILW just never got the customers interested in what they had to offer.
Lets take a look at the terminal facilities in the Chicago area.
Proviso Yard and Bensenville Yard seem to be pretty similar yards. I realize quite a bit of traffic today is run thru. When did that practice begin? Both CNW (Proviso) and Milw (B’ville) had a severe disadvantage by being so far north in the Chicago mess. Both had to get down to the south side to connect with Conrail, NS, or CSX.
Not exactly sure how that worked, with the trackage rights over the IHB or BOCT. Of course CSX owned BOCT and Milw owned part of IHB (correct me if I am wrong).
Perhaps someone can shed some light on the IHB routing or other routings used thru Chicago.
Gabe…glad your case is over. Hope you did well. Come on up and fill me in on the details. I will differ with you regarding Rock having the best routing. Sure, the South Chicago issue would have been huge, but the routing thru the Quad Cities was brutal. Did you read the issue in Trains called “The Big Train”. Author really covers the problems with the Rock line well.
Of course UP’s cash could have made the Rock line work. That is the issue we will never know.
I am starting to dig deeper into Moody’s and take a look at the other carriers, particularly the well run lines such as Southern and MoPac. The line that really surprized me was the Rio Grande. After this thread runs its course, perhaps we will turn our attention there.
Gotta get to work.
ed
A merger case is not an adversarial proceeding, it is an effort to combine the best features of the applicant companies. The developed record in that case is thorough, and based on actual numbers which both companies jointly developed to present a best case scenario.
Rio Grande? Where are we going to find someone on here who knows something about the Rio Grande?
Well for the Rock Island…a Civil War general once said that a big part of winning a battle was “get there first with the most” (men, supplies etc.). Rock Island tended to get there last with the least - they’d be the 3rd or 4th railroad to enter a city, and usually had to try to squeeze in their yards and pick up business wherever they could, and then being a latecomer their mainline routes tended to be slower and less direct. If there was a big profit in moving freight from Iowa to Oklahoma the Rock probably would have been in great shape!! Plus the “last straw” for the Rock was the strike that started in I think 1978 or 79. Employees really didn’t believe the railroad would just fold rather than give in, but I guess they were wrong.
MILW had been in and out of bankruptcy quite often over the years. Some people would argue their pacific extension wasn’t really a great idea. They were the third or fourth transcontinental to go thru basically the same area of the northwest, so they picked up very little business between say eastern Montana and the coast.
As mentioned by someone earlier, the fact that CNW/CMO’s remote “Cowboy Line” in the west ended up being near the Powder River coal, and that they were able to tap into coal shipping, probably was a huge huge plus for them.
Notwithstanding the penchant of some to look for heroes and villains, gut and brains, “foresight” and all many of labels that support generally predetermined ideologies, it remains to me an underutilized observation regarding simple luck and even sometimes dumb luck.
Looking back at the “60s” thread – and yet another capital intensive business – generally considered well managed:
“Boeing’s bad luck continued. The company was hit badly by the 747 crisis, the discontinuation of the supersonic airliner program SST and declining orders. It was initially planned for the profits of the 707’s and 727’s to keep the 737 and 747 projects afloat. However, the board of directors in Seattle were not able to predict the impending recession. The result was debts amounting to $1 billion. In 1968 Boeing reduced its staff from 100,000 to 38,000. …At one point early in 1970, Boeing had some 30 planes parked at its plant that could not be delivered until Pratt & Whitney had corrected the deficiencies of its JT-9D engine. It took a year before the engine problems were solved. In the meantime, too little money was coming in, the country was experiencing an economic recession, and new orders were drying up. The company almost went broke.”
Does anyone seriously think it was a lack of “brains and guts”? Or the luck of the draw of timing and general economic conditions?
It continues with that huge company:
“Cargo plane sales booming as Airbus stalls,” Business Week, 12/29/06. “… a confluence of luck …” for Boeing due to “marred production of Airbus’ A380 …”.
"Boeing’s troubles were the result of a number of factors; from their arrogance, a tendency to rest on their laurels, taking their custom
At the start of the last century the CNW was a Vanderbuilt railroad. It owned a piece of the IHB along with the NYC and had a direct connection out of the East end of Proviso(Provo Jct.). When we ran trains with UP and CR between North Platte, NE and Elkhart, IN it was a very clean run through interchange at Fremont, NE and Provo Jct., IL.
How is that different from moving freight from one side of Iowa to the other side of Illinois?
(?) How is it the same?
? Moving freight from one state to the state two states away is inherently less profitable than moving freight from one state to the state right next door? Oklahoma and Illinois are both states? Is it uphill to Oklahoma but downhill to Illinois? I don’t understand the remark.
Michael, 7 lines connected Omaha with Chicago, while the RI was the only line connecting central Iowa with central Oklahoma.
First of all, interesting post.
There seems to be a range of opinion on this post in regards to “superior route”. Does anybody want to try to clarify what this means? Best engineered (route), best maintined, highest profit, fatest speed, etc. The “superior route” is probably just the right combination of many different factors. Luck also might be one of those factors. The CNW line accross Iowa is a very well engineered route. (Rememer the floods of '93? Who kept their tracks above water while everybody else sank in the mud?) Perhaps, having the “superior” engineered route allows for lower maintenance costs.
CC
But, how did that hurt Rock Island and help C&NW?
Its great to have a very favorable route with fewer curves and lower grades than any of your competitors. However, your customers don’t care. They only care about your service and price. The Rio Grande between WWII and the BN merger is an example. They were very succesful on the central transcon corridor. However their route, compared to the curves and grades on the UP, was much poorer.
I have found in most cases there is a correlation between working hard and smart and LUCK. Just my opinion, but often luck is the final (and important) ingredient.
We can look at Boeing v Airbus if needed, you wont get many comments from me on it, as I am not much of a airfan. But, take a look at the corporate structures of both companies and it should be evident which company should be the superior company. Airbus is made up of a syndicate of a number of companies, some state owned. To me that would be very cumbersome management. Too many committees.
Regarding the Iowa to Oklahoma statement, I read it as meaning Rock would have had a great advantage of handling that freight as it would not have had much competition in that route (ATSF) thru a the southeastern sliver of the state of Iowa. Rock basically went everywhere that many other carriers went and never had the advantage of superior route and little competition. It did between Iowa and Oklahoma. I seriously doubt if there was much traffic moving between the two states other than some farm implements out of the Quad Cities area, hardly enough to justify the duplicity in other routes.
ed