Hello, just joined this board, apologies if this seems to be a very obvious question.
I have long been puzzled by the relatively early demise of the Milwaukee Road’s ‘Olympian Hiawatha’ [1961]. I understand that of the three northern trans-continental roads, the CMStP & P was the weakest financially and that the ‘Olympian Hiawatha’ had to compete against two magnificant rivals in Great Northern’s ‘Empire Builder’ and Northern Pacific’s ‘North Coast Limited’. But it is this that partly puzzles me. My understanding is that, along with the Florida streamliners, the Western transcontinental streamliners were amongst the last profitable / viable passenger trains in the States. (Think not only of the two Hill roads’ trains, but also Santa Fe’s ‘Chiefs’ and Union Pacific’s ‘City’ trains).
So, after that long preamble, my questions are: did the Milwaukee Road give up on the ‘Olympian Hi’ without really trying to save it? Or was the competiton from the ‘Builder’ and ‘NCL’ just too much?
I don’t have the answer to your question. That being said, if you search through the forum for posts from a former poster ‘Michael Sol’, a expert on things Milwaukee Road - you can probably find the answer(s) you are looking for.
The MILW Pacific Extension was built at a later date than the NP where the larger towns had established themselves. Population was sparse along the MILW.
IIRC, between Aberdeen and Butte, the largest city on the route of the OH was Miles City with a population of a bit over 10,000. The Empire Builder served a lot of sparsely populated territory, but did have Glacier National Park adjacent to the line. The North Coast Limited did serve Billings as well as a couple of the larger cities in North Dakota.
Some of my earliest memories were of riding the Olympia Hiawatha between Seattle and Miles City at the ripe old age of 33 months.
The Milwaukee “gave up” on the Olympian Hiawatha simply because it wasn’t worth saving, a precursor of sorts to the same situation for the railroad as a whole 20 years later. It was simply a train that never should have been run on a railroad that should never have been built.
Milwaukee Road management, historically speaking, had delusions of adequacy comparing itself to the competition. Be it its route to the Pacific Northwest, or its route across Iowa, they couldn’t see their own insurmountable inadequacies.
The Olympian Hiawatha’s equipment (homemade and Pullman-Standard) was generally considered inferior to that of the Empire Builder, and later the North Coast Limited (both Budd), especially dome cars, which were a big deal in the 1950s. The Olympian Hiawatha’s only dome car - the Super Dome - offered little forward visibi
Mr. Sol’s “expertise” is debatable. On the website indicated and elsewhere, one will find his treatises on the Milwaukee Road. Specific to the Olympian Hiawatha, one of his claims is especially entertaining from the “American Rails” website: “From these numbers it is clear to see that despite what you may have previously read or understood about Milwaukee’s Northwest flagship, the railroad was far more efficient than its competitors with transcontinental rail service.”
Of course, this begs the questions about why the train was discontinued a decade before most of its competitors, and why the competitors who were so inefficient (and kept operating their passenger trains) were able to upgrade their railroad for the future with CTC, power switches, lineside failed equipment detectors, and longer sidings - all things that the Milwaukee never had the money to do. (The Milwaukee never even had the money to place block signal protection on its main line between Plummer, Idaho and Marengo, Washington.)
Thanks for your responses, everyone, has made for fascinating reading for me. ‘VerMontanan’ in particular, I really appreciate your detailed response, certainly makes clear the hopelessness of the Olympian Hiawatha’s situation compared to the traffic bases of the GN & NP trains. Also, I hadn’t considered the point about the inferiority of some of the Hi’s equipment, think I was distracted by the Stevens’ ‘Skytop’ observation cars.
May be of interest to note that the Olympian began in 1911, making it older than the Empire Builder by almost 20 years. After the war, and the success of the Twin Cities - Chicago Hiawatha, the Milwaukee began adding “Hiawatha” to the names of it’s trains that had been streamlined. So it wasn’t a new train the Milwaukee added in the forties expecting a big post-war surge, it was a revamping of an established train.
The Olympian Hiawatha most certainly did serve Miles City, my family rode the train between Seattle and Miles City in 1957. Not sure if the Hi’ stopped in Terry and the line was on the wrong side of the river for Forsythe.
You’re absolutely correct. I didn’t mean to include Miles City, and errored when I did. As information, the Olympian Hiawatha didn’t stop at Terry or Forsyth. Their Milwaukee passenger train service ended when the Columbian was discontinued. Interestingly, in Milwaukee passenger train schedules (and the Official Guide), there is a footnote by Terry and Forsyth in the Olympian Hiawatha’s column, which says, “Rail tickets destined to Terry or Forsyth will be honored to Miles City; thence via bus to destination.” Similar footnotes indicated such bus connection to places like Drummond, Alberton, St. Regis and Haugan (Greyhound, three trips daily on US 10) as well as Lavina, Ryegate, Barber, Shawmut, Two Dot, and Martinsdale (Canyon Transportation, one bus daily between Billings and Helena via Harlowton and Townsend). Stopping the train at these locations would simply had added time to a schedule (which by 1961 was already over 2 hours slower than the Empire Builder westbound), and probably wouldn’t be huge generators of ridership.
Though I errored in including Miles City in the list of NP exclusivity, I wouldn’t have included Terry and Forsyth regardless. The original premise was cities with a population of 3,000 or more, and neither community achieved this threshold. But the whole exercise was meant as a generalization of how little exclusivity (and population) could be attributed to Milwaukee Road service. And even beyond that, I excluded (and probably shouldn’t’ve) Laurel and Toppenish because they weren’t stops for the North Coast Limited - the most dir
Also of interest to note is that Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited began in 1900 - 11 years before the creation of the Olympian, and was discontinued in 1971, 10 years after the discontinuance of the Olympian Hiawatha. Its 71 years of operation is the same as that of the Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension as a whole (1909-1980).
That the Olympian began operation before the Empire Builder is not a mystery. The Empire Builder is named after James J. Hill, who was still alive and well in 1911 when the Olympian was inaugurated. The “Empire Builder” moniker is therefore a posthumous eponym. It’s unlikely that Hill would have tolerated a passenger train named for him while he was still alive given his famous (or infamous) quote, “The passenger train is like the male teat - neither useful or ornamental.” Nonetheless, the Empire Builder celebrates 92 years of continuous operation this year.
I had my tongue partly in cheek when mentioning Terry and Forsyth (the Milw line was on the north side of the Yellowstone river when passing Forsyth). Did give a bit of thought to mentioning Hathaway…
I was 33 months when riding the Olympian Hiawatha, so only have a few vignettes of the trip in my memory, including one that may have been switching from diesel to electric power. I rode the North Coast Hiawatha in 1976 and remember a lot more of that trip.
As for stops vs timekeeping, it wouldn’t have been too bad of an issue with the passenger Joe’s that could provide 10,000 dbhp for a short term. OTOH, they were only usable on 440 miles of the route.
My point was that the Olympian Hiawatha was not a new train that started after WW2, but rather a revamped version of a longstanding train, the Olympian. The Milwaukee didn’t just decide in the 1940’s to start competing head-to-head with the Builder and NCL.
In a characteristic fashion, I did not write the quote attributed to me.
Milwaukee Road was the most experienced of the “three railroads mentioned,” by far. It’s primary markets for the transcontinental service in 1955 were: Butte, Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma.
In 1955, the Milwaukee succeeded in getting the “Union Pacific” passenger contract. This gave the Milwaukee Road passenger service, over the UP, to Butte, Spokane, Seattle, and Tacoma. After that, add on Portland, San Franciso, Denver and Los Angeles.
Now, why would Milwaukee Road even “want” to offer TWO passenger routes to Butte, Spokane, Portland and Seattle, and why would it want to turn down adding passenger service to Denver, Portland, San Francisco and Los Angeles? Milwaukee began moving quickly to preserve and expand its passenger services, and, at the same time, clear the schedule on its own line for high speed freight service, while increasing profitability from its passenger service. The slogan was “All Freight by '58.”
Railroad service abandonments “being what they were” in that era, the abandonment could not occur until 1961, despite Milwaukee Road serving those key destinations over Union Pacific.
The Milwaukee turned the money-losing transcontinental passenger operation – GN and NP were crying loudly about their losses – and made it profitable.
And the Empire Builder is “just as profitable!” That is, yet another complete fabrication by Mr. Meyer.
“ABOARD THE EMPIRE BUILDER (Reuters) - Its passengers are mostly silver-haired retirees, oil-field workers and a few young families gazing out the windows of Amtrak’s least-profitable and third-longest line, rumbling from Chicago through eight states and on to the American West Coast.”
At the same time the “City” trains were generating a small positive cash flow for the Milwaukee, the Olympian Hi was costing about $4.00 for every $2.50 of revenue, according to ICC reports of the period.