With Skytop sleepers.
You can’t eat Skytop sleepers, unless you’re Godzilla. Sometimes filling the ol’ stomach is a lot more important than enjoying the scenery! [dinner]
Tastes Great - Less Filling
Yes, but it is uncomfortable to sleep in a potato – the butter congeals overnight and is hard to remove from sleepwear on a moving train.
The Northern Pacific diner cookbook mentioned that the Great Big Baked Potatoes were unsalable items in general commerce; nobody wanted a meal for a family of eight rolled up in one Irish overcoat – not even rooming houses. So the NP agent could get them at a knockdown price… to be sold for a value better than gold.
In fact I wish I had me one right about now, with the pound and a half of creamery butter it would take to get it all down. I’d let you know next Tuesday, when I finished, how good it was…
And quite the success story they were, too!
https://streamlinermemories.info/?p=3700
There was even a song written about it which “Wanswheel” found for me!
Trust me, it’s not something Michael Buble’ or Taylor Swift are likely to cover.
http://bonafidaho.com/GreatBigBakedPotatoFinalHTMP3.mp3
Make a great concert closer for someone not over proud of themself, just like that Bolcom piece about something NEVER found on the NP: the lime jello marshmallow cottage cheese surprise…
Thanks Mod-man, you made my evening!
Of course, I’m just a little depressed thinking my two unobtainable “Holy Grails” are an “Electro-Burger” on a North Shore Electroliner and a Northern Pacific “Great Big Baked Potato.”
Oh well, as the saying goes:
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened!
One “Holy Grail” for me would have been a ride on the Electroliner with the field shunts in use. Now if only the North Shore track and signalling been up for the tasks of handling 105 - 110 mph top speeds…
All of the passenger services on the Northern Tier lost money. That was, recall, the argument behind creating Amtrak in the first place. The Northern Pacific, running the route comparable to the Milwaukee Olympian Hiawatha, was losing $2 million a year. The ICC, rejecting an NP plea to abandon half of its transcontinental passenger services said “Nope! You’re not losing ENOUGH!” “NP, Discontinuance of Trains,” Finance Docket 25718, Interstate Commerce Commission.
The ‘last nail in the coffin’ of private railroad passenger service was the federal government taking mail off of the trains in the 1960’s. There were a lot of railroads whose passenger service was at least breaking even with the mail contracts, but found they were losing money at an alarming rate when that indirect subsidy ended.
Mail contracts made the losses tolerable, they rarely eliminated them. The loss of RPO contracts hit harder since the PO paid a better rate than with a bulk storage mail contract.
By NOT having passenger service, even with Amtrak, in the way, Milwaukee Road was very successful in getting the “Mail contracts.”
"The Milwaukee Road has been awarded long-term contracts to handle U. S. Mail both ways between Chicago-St. Paul,
Maybe because BN had all those other trains to work around while the Milwaukee Road’s tracks were just sitting there unused? [;)]
[quote user=“TRR”]
By NOT having passenger service, even with Amtrak, in the way, Milwaukee Road was very successful in getting the “Mail contracts.”
"The Milwaukee Road has been awarded long-term contracts to handle U. S. Mail both ways between Chicago-St. Paul,
Indeed, that I would say that is a fabrication.
I don’t know the specific purpose of this “drive-by” posting (since the thread is on the Olympian Hiawatha). But context is in order.
So “experienced” that the Milwaukee didn’t offer leg rest seats in its Olympian Hiawatha until 1953, 6 years after the train’s debut. Pretty much a given for a route over 2,000 miles.
And, of course the C&NW - whose line today remains the primary route between Chicago and Omaha/Council Bluffs/Fremont - might say something kind of similar but adding/changing a few words: In 1955, the C&NW succeeded in getting RID OF the “Union Pacific” passenger contract."
[quote user=“TRR”]
This gave the Milwaukee Road passenger service, over the UP, to Butte, Spokane, Seattle, and Tacoma. After that, add
It was pretty clear to me, at the time, that the Milwaukee expected the interchange freight traffic, from the UP, to follow the routing change in passenger traffic.
It did not happen.
There is no doubt rail passenger services lost money, and Amtrak does to this day, and the Empire Builder is one of the biggest “losers.” However, if “we” are going to have rail passenger service, that is likely a necessity.
When Paul Reistrup and Marty Garelick were given a stab at running Amtrak, that was their biggest headache: Amtrak was essentially two unrelated passenger services. The first, the profitable Northeast corridor, where Amtrak controlled its destiny in a high-use environment. The second, the long-distance passenger trains that nearly all lost money, and where Amtrak did NOT control, effectively, its borrowed resources. Marty, as the COO, faced the stark reality of two completely different management needs, and the inability of Amtrak to effectively do that.
Why did Milwaukee “want out?” Probably for the same reasons that everybody else did, except that Milwaukee managed to find a way to preserve “most” of its service and turn that into a profitable operation. It’s UP Contract was, in fact, profitable.
Good? Bad? Well, they did what other railroads did not do in that particular instance AND opened up its freight service to offer services far superior to its direct competitors. Did they get additional freight traffic, Omaha to Chicago? According to officials, “some” but perhaps not what was hoped. Did Burlington Northern practically destroy itself in Lou Menk’s drive to carry all the coal traffic that it could? Well, pretty much. The resulting 95% operating ratio at BN was shown to be “one way” to lose your job as the disaster unfolded at BN. Bringing over the “Frisco” management was another.
What is, ultimately, notable is that railroads spent heavily to upgrade their passenger services post WWII, expecting a different result from the public. Automobiles AND the Interstate Highway System dashed those expectations.
As the most experienced “passenger hauler,” Milwaukee
We know, factually, that the “demise” of the Olympian Hiawatha was a well-designed approach that 1) got money losing passenger services out of the way of fast freights, 2) preserved that passenger service to key locations, and 3) opened up direct passenger service to more Western locations while cutting costs! If only poor GN and NP could have been half so astute!
The freight speed-ups were part of that success story.
In 1962, GN’s fastest freight (via CBQ), Chicago to Seattle, was 94 hours. NP could do it in 97 hours, notwithstanding the burdens of grades and mileage. 328 ICC 474. NP’s bigger problem for the high value auto traffic was that it couldn’t haul the triple level auto racks coming into service. [“328 ICC 474” is the recognized citation to volume 328, Reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission, begining at page 474].
Milwaukee Road’s fast freight in 1962, #263, ran its schedule at 77 hours – which already beat GN’s fast freight by 17 hours.
GN and NP could not offer competitive freight service after the Olympian Hiawatha was terminated. Taking advantage of the transfer of passenger services to the Union Pacific, the acquisition of more origins and destinations, Milwaukee began turning a profit on its transcontinental passenger services. GN and NP could only whine and cry (along with virtually all operators of long distance passenger trains" Amtrak was a result, not a “suprise.”
With the resulting progressive upgrade of freight services, the tunnel floor project in 1962, giving Milwaukee the auto traffic that could no longer use the Northern Pacific, the Kent Auto Facility finishing in 1969 taking virtually ALL of the rail auto traffic into and out of Seattle, the Stacy Street Intermodal Facility in 1969 which captured 50% all ALL intermodal traffic into and out of Seattle, were just precursors to the business caputured as the result of the Burlington Northern Merger and the ending of the long-haul discrimination fomerly practiced by the NP and GN.
In addition to forest products, high profit auto traffic, and containers, by 1973, “fast freights” were being increased in in numbers and, unfortunately, in tonnages as well. #261C and #261TC, as well as