Yet the the rates the MILW charged for this low volume traffic didn’t cover their operating cost now did it? The historical traffic base for the PNW has been higher revenue Westbound bulk traffic. That mostly ignore(s) the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma for Columbia River Ports down state, and Port of Vancouver, B.C… Guess which RR never had its own track to these all important export facilities? So in hindsight it doesn’t matter if MILW had virtually “ALL” of this traffic. It’s freight that didn’t pay the bills…
For a good bit of this thread, two individuals argue quite lengthily and vociferously; sometimes it seems almost personal.
For someone like me who doesn’t know the history of the MILW, can someone explain in thirty words or less the crux of what this conflict is basically about?
You have two scholarly individuals with very different opinions, who in the best tradition of ancient Internet flame wars do battle to prove very different explanations of a common thing.
This is only a resumption of a timeless topic that became memorable on the old Forum; in fact much of it predates my joining here. If you look up ‘Michael Sol’ in community search, and go back in time to 2004 and before, you’ll see battling titans in their prime.
(There is an amusing post where someone carefully tots up all the firsthand experience one of them claimed over the years, to wonder implicitly if it could be possible. Decide for yourself…)
But what, basically, is in dispute?
Whether the Pacific Extension could be the basis of a profitable railroad or not.
You mean “could have been?”
Or is there some talk of trying to resurrect the line? (I’m thinking probably not.)
Overmod, I think you meant “could have been…”
Just trying to be helpful.
For them it might as well have been present tense for over two decades. And the beat goes on.
The MILW Board of Directors in 1910 or so had delusions of grandeur when they decided to built west of Aberdeen, SD to the Pacific Northwest. It cost three times the budgeted cost. GN, NP, and UP had the traffic patterns already.
Please read Jim Scribbins “The Hiwatha Story” and “Milwaukee Road History” for his insights.
The MILW mad a foolish move to upgrade the Chicago to Omaha main line for UP passenger trains instead of improving the Pacific Extension. Now most of the line is abandoned.
The “Olympian” was a train that was not needed.
Ed Burns, Retired Class 1
The decision to build the extension was made circa 1904 and the “last spike” was driven in 1909.
The Milw board of directors included a fair number of men associated with the Anaconda Mining Company, and the decision to build the extension was partly driven by Anaconda wanting more competition in rail service for Butte and Anaconda. Similarly, the decision to electrify was seen as a way of increasing demand for copper.
A couple of good resources would be Myrick’s Railroads of Arizona, Vol 1, specifically the chapter on the El Paso and Southwestern (Phelps Dodge) and Stan Johnson’s The Milwaukee Road’s Western Extension.
FWIW, one of the first things that my grandfather did when he arrived in the U.S was helping his brother-in-law provide horse teams for the grading on the extension around Terry, MT as well has later on having dealing with the Milwaukee shops in Miles City.
I am always entertained when Mark Meyer has to refer to “me” – my website – in his struggle to explain what he does not know. The formal record is well-developed. An honest observer has to know what it is, however.
The Milwaukee Road’s success “out West” after 1968 is well documented. The 1960s took their toll on all railroads as the Interstate Highway System cut into the high-end revenues that formerly went by rail. And that was particularly true in the Midwest, but is also well-documented in the Interstate Commerce Commission Reports regarding the “Northern Lines Merger” case, which was initially denied by the ICC.
When the Merger Committee “came back” offering enhanced protections for competing railroads, the ICC noted singularly, the conditions requested by the Milwaukee, and granted, were the “sine qua non” – “without which, nothing” – of the Burlington Northern merger.
But, the Northern Lines had no choice. They were failing rapidly under the rapidly changing rail traffic conditions of the 1960s, and projections, without the merger, were catastrophic.
As a result, there was a success story, and it was the success of the merger conditions on Milwaukee Road’s Lines West.
Recall, in the period 1967 through 1977, the carloads on Milwaukee Road Lines East plummeted from 1,008,000 carloads to 651,866 carloads. A decline of 35%, as railroads lost their high revenue traffic to the Interstate Highway System. By contrast, traffic on Lines West grew 41%, virtually all high revenue, premium long haul traffic that Milwaukee could move faster than trucks could over the highways. And that was because Milwaukee could “outrun” the highways. Train #261 average speed through Montana was 43 mph. Trucks could not come close.
Rock Island filed for bankruptcy in 1976. The three railroads in the nation with the highest levels of deferred maintenance were 1) Chicago and North Western, 2) Milwaukee Road and 3) Burlington Northern.
After the “Rock” folded, everyone expected Illinois Central Gulf to be next, but William Johnson kept the money supply flowing
The Milwaukee Railroad Restructuring Act provided for both federal funding (loans) and provided for a plan of reorganization, and a broad coalition of shippers, states, and employees, representing everyone except notorious Quack, Dixi Lee Ray, Governor of Washington, whose principal adviser was BN VP Taul Watanabe, the coalition quickly put together a reorganization plan, essentially modelled along the “Louisville Transcon” alternative proposed by Booz, Allen, Hamilton.
https://www.milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Bankruptcy/NewMilPlanCover_small.jpg
https://www.milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Bankruptcy/NewMilwaukeeLines.pdf
Ed Burns wrote: “The MILW Board of Directors in 1910 or so had delusions of grandeur when they decided to built west of Aberdeen, SD to the Pacific Northwest. It cost three times the budgeted cost. GN, NP, and UP had the traffic patterns already.”
Most of this is false.
At the time of construction, the Milwaukee Road was owned by William Rockefeller and H.H. Rogers, who after John D’s retirement from the Standard Oil, ran the thing. They had bought the Anacoda Copper Mining Company from Marcus Daly, but noted that the “Hill Lines” were dominated by J.P. Morgan, who they didn’t particularly like. They didn’t want to have anything to do with him, including his two railroads, the NP and the GN.
After the “Northern Securities” imbroglio in 1901, Rogers told his stockbroker, Thomas Lawson, that “it won’t be too long before we won’t have to deal with Morgan.” By which he meant, he and Rockefeller were planning to take the Milwaukee Road “out West,” to Butte, and the lucrative traffic in the mines, the smelters, the supporting lumber interests, and, of course, the lucrative long haul traffic in supplies and in copper product.
And, while building, Milwaukee looked to other lumber traffic, mining traffic, and began buying thousands of acres of the best timberlands in the United States in northern Idaho and on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Too, the Milwaukee Road took the lead in developing agriculture in Montana and eastern Washington, a increased the population of Montana by over 50,000 in a few short years of promotion and support through 14 experimental farms in Montana alone.
After that, Milwaukee went after “port traffic” at Seattle and Tacoma, and in 1909 was the only American railroad in either of those ports that even HAD any international trade. By 1916, Milwaukee had to lengthen its passing tracks on Lines West. Because of unexpectedly heavy traffic, the trains were
Erik_Mag: “A couple of good resources would be Myrick’s Railroads of Arizona, Vol 1, specifically the chapter on the El Paso and Southwestern (Phelps Dodge) and Stan Johnson’s The Milwaukee Road’s Western Extension.”
Stan Johnson was a meticulous researcher, and a very good writer. I worked with him on most of his later works, proofing and commenting. I provided open access to my own manuscripts (8,000 footnotes!), and much enjoyed his explorations, made, always, as an homage to his beloved step-father, Frank Fiebelkorn, Milwaukee Road passenger conductor.
Ed Burns wrote: “The MILW Board of Directors in 1910 or so had delusions of grandeur when they decided to built west of Aberdeen, SD to the Pacific Northwest. It cost three times the budgeted cost. GN, NP, and UP had the traffic patterns already.”
It did not cost three times its budgeted cost. In 1904, in preparation for the construction effort, Milwaukee executives, as part of their budgeting process, started out by asking for an estimate of what it would cost to duplicate the Northern Pacific. They did not WANT to duplicate the Northern Pacific, but it was a start for planning purposes.
The estimate came back to build a railroad that wandered all over the place to avoid heavy construction, and I believe was about $45 million. Milwaukee’s final actual estimate was closer to $70 million, and the final cost was $99 million as the rail industry was just then settling on higher construction standards for bridges and tunnels, and using “compensated curves” for example. The Milwaukee Road out West was built with compensated curves, whereas the initial construction of NP and GN were not.
The “cost” that contaminated the historical record, $257 million, was a wholly fictitious number that Max Lowenthal had found in an engineering study done by Coverdale & Colepitts that had estimated the total capital investment through the year 1925. “Total capital” is not the same as “cost of construction.”
I had asked Max Lowenthal if I could look through his research papers, and he had consented, but then he keeled over and died, so I did not get actual access to them until his family finally hauled them out of his barn in Conneticut and donated them to Lowenthal’s alma mater, the University of Minnesota, where I did finally review the records, still in their boxes covered with barn dust, hay seeds and pigeon poop.
Lowenthal knew he had mistated that historical record. He had done it on purpose.
I remember you writing about the book when it was being published and ordered a copy from the local B&N when it became avialable.
OK, I’m missing something here…
The Milwaukee Road’s western extension was making money hand over fist right up until it was abandoned?
GN-NP-CB&Q-SP&S, with all their traffic, natural resources (timber, iron ore, etc.), were on the edge of total collapse c. 1968 if they hadn’t merged? They tried merging for more than half a century before that, from what I’ve seen/heard/read they were doing OK in the 1960’s I thought?
I am choosing my words carefully as I write this reply.
This topic have been off topic for a long while and has become personal attack on myself and others. Karlmbach had a special edition of “Classic Trains” a number of years ago about blunders of railroading. The PC debacle and the Pacific Extension were at the top of the list.
The original question about the Olympian was simply this: The passenger traffic would not support four passenger trains between Chicago and Seattle/Portland. The weakest one went first.
End of argument.
Ed Burns
Not believable. SP’s Brooklyn Yard was the primary SP yard in the Portland area, and SP had more interchange traffic than any other railroad since it was the primary railroad to and from California. The Milwaukee operated but one train in and out of Brooklyn. Meanwhile, BN and UP were still interchanging trains with the SP and there were numerous transfer runs to and from other yards in the city. Moreover, Brooklyn was the main marshaling point for the north end of the SP – not only for longer distance trains, but for the numerous locals operating out the terminal. In the 1970s still, Brooklyn was still the location accommodating the many locals on both sides of the Willamette River from Silverton to Salem to McMinnville to Hillsboro. The Milwaukee Road trains obviously were a small contribution to overall traffic.
But the Milwaukee Road’s Portland traffic is a good example of how flawed the Milwaukee Road route structure was on the Pacific Extension. A great explanati