Chatting with a former PacNW Milw and I think BN guy, he mentioned that yes, NP was actually the better route at the time. Both in better shape, but it also hit more population centers than the High Line did.
I wonder if that entered into anyone’s thinking at the time?
These folks were running railroads for a living. The merger planning seemd to involve railroaders from both GN and NP. Given their expertise, and the amount of time they had to plan the merger, why wouldn’t we expect that they looked at every aspect of the merger beforehand? Are you sure that isn’t just an urban legend?
Good point - one that I did not remember, but it makes a lot of sense. Why focus only on the ‘Revenue’ term and ignore the ‘Costs’ item in the “Profit = Revenue - Costs” equation ?
Was this based on - and/ or are you familiar with - the paperbound booklet Profit Management Systems; Key to Stronger Railroads by Edward C. Christ (of ConRail), published by Simmons-Boardman, New York, in 1977 (86 pp.) ? That described and advocated a similar cost-accounting system that would yield similar decision and results.
See also “RAIL PROFIT RESPONSIBILITY AND PROFIT MEASUREMENT: REORIENTING DEPARTMENTAL STRUCTURES AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS TO THE COMTEMPORARY DEREGULATED RAILROAD ENVIRONMENT” by M. B. Lawrence and R. G. Sharp, Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, 1989, at - http://tris.trb.org/view.aspx?id=302482
I’m asserting that ICLand’s Statement corroborated by others, that the NP line was more profitable and that thus consolidating 75% on the Highline was a mistake is true and speculating as to additional reasons why that might be.
Clearly, the assertion may not be true. I wasn’t there, but if I assert nothing, then there is nothing to say on the topic. Humans are fallible, I would not assume anyone at any level is above reproach and we have the advantage of 20/20 hindsight.
Stampede pass has height restrictions on it now that limit it’s viability in moving intermodal east/west. I don’t know the answer to this, but I assume that at some point Steven’s pass also had such restrictions and the tunnels were improved. This of course affects our perception of how good the route could have been then by actions that were or were not taken over the last 40 years.
Also, I’ve been told that Milw lines west was actually the profitable segment of that railroad in the early t
The Milw was in terrible shape by the 60’s The Pacific extension was down to 261/262(XL/Thunderhawk) road freights and 263/264 many time operated as a ‘dead freight’. When traffic did increase, a 261TC section ran west from the Twin Cities to move the extra traffic. The Milw route had too many mountains to climb. Two railfan trips in 1972 & 1974 revealed how bad things were on the Milw. On one trip we watched as 261 arrived in Haugen, MT. The crew wentto bed, and there was not a ‘rested’ crew to move the train over St Paul pass. It sat there until a dead freight arrived from the west. The train left with a crew with short hours and died on hours before arriving at the next terminal. This was not a bad weather situation - it was summer! The 1974 trip was to see the end of the electric operation.
The NP was in much better shape, but again had too many mountian grades/helper districts. The GN ‘highline’ was devoid of population centers, but only had one real helper district(Marias). The limiting factor of the GN line was the limit of trains that could be run through the Cascade Tunnel. The NP had a lot more ‘on-line’ traffic, but the future was through traffic between the Pacific and Chicago. GN 97/82(West Coaster) always ran much faster than the NP 600 series road freights. The NP main(now MRL) is used for overflow traffic, or traffic originating from KC/Denver/PRB. Even some of that traffic moved north to the High Line via Great Falls after the line rebuild there.
JJ Hill controlled the GN . And the NP when he saved it after the 1880’s panic. GN had the contracts with the ocean shipping, and his Glacier Park Company controlled vast areas of forests and mining. He leased this out to his friends like Weyerhaeuser, and set up companies like Plum Creek Lumber.
Remember, it’s not how many trains you run or the ton
OK, I’m sorry to spam the thread, but a few things I’ve learned.
The Current tunnels on Steven’s pass have always had their current dimensions, so that was a benefit to the line, but the Tunnel is so long that it restricts movement. Steven’s is still a problem for the railroad.
They’ve done the survey work to “fix” stampede. Just waiting on the money and being told to start.
Also, BN did the preliminary work to connect Snoqualmie to the Stampede Pass Line. Snoqualmie had it’s tunnel floors cut down and widened in the 1960s in anticipation of new services. So in fact, Snoqualmie would have offered the best root for modern traffic types.
Finally, I was reminded that between the formation of the BN and the merger with SF, BN absorbed Frisco and brought in Frisco’s management and THEY completely changed the direction of the railroad and slashed budgets and plans. So that makes it even harder to judge the choices of those at BN in 1970 and what BNSF is today.
It would appear though that optimal is not a word that describes the situation.
And it’s interesting to note that Hunter Harrison was a key part of that Frisco management team…
…just stirring the pot
The Assertion earlier in this thread was that the NP made more money moving trains over it’s “too many mountain Grades/helper districts.”
That the notion that the NP route was too winding to be profitable is hogwash.
I’d suggest that stating it is not an assumption we can make in this thread.
A point not specifically discussed here but alluded to is the fact that the operating business model being adopted over the past 30 or so years has leaned to the economy of moving freight from point A to point Z with no consideration for stops between from B to Y along the way if at all possible. American invstors moved so many industrial jobs out of the country there was no need to stop in many places, But whatever line avoided congested areas of population was favored. ( I almost believe the EL merger was the last one that chose routes through instustrial cities instead of leaner trackage. Not only did that backfire on them but CR also demoted, detached, destroyed, and dismantled much of the route when it got hold of it causing further industrial erosion along the route.) The NS and CXS acquisition recognized the high terminal costs of congested areas like NJ and Michigan and thus Conrial Shared Assets was formed. Similarly there are many terminal lines in and around Chicago co owned by the big guys but designed to absorb the costs of terminal operations.
Can’t say, as I’m not familiar with either of these publications, but I’d say Santa Fe was certainly very successful in working along those lines. Every sales rep had access to excellent decision-support information right at his/her fingertips, and if you had questions, the people generating the data were accessible and helpful. When I later moved to CN, they had a similar costing system but the information was not nearly as accessible. As a result I used it less and can’t vouch as much for its quality.
I have also read that a merged Erie Lackawanna and Milwaukee Road could have offered great potential as a transcon.
But why can’t we make the assumption, that they knew what they were doing? They were professional railroaders. They had time and resources to check out all the angles. They had absolutely nothing to gain by picking either the NP or GN mainline.
I’d suggest that they did their homework, used the information available at the time, and made the best decisions they could, based on what they knew at the time. The conspiracy theories about GN being “chosen” over NP or Milwaukee Road by those mysterious powers that be seems like like wishfull rewriting of history by fans of NP and Milwaukee Road. I don’t buy it.
Transcons were scary to many back then… Still are today in this country for some reason…only the Canadians understand and are not fearful! EL and SFe was bantied about at CR time, too. I think the MLW was spoken of because both were in similar financial situations and the concept was that two minuses make one plus (which doesn’t make sense to me either!).
Frisco Management were professionals as well. Most seem to suggest that they ruined the BN.
Pennsylvania and New York Central was filled with professionals who knew what they were doing and yet Penn Central was by all accounts a mistake.
The corporate world is littered with the ruins of companies run by professionals who knew what they were doing.
I’d reverse the question why would anyone assume that anyone knew what they were doing unless the results back them up? That’s just blind faith.
And at this point, this thread seems to be about weeding out the fact from fiction surrounding this. And only by doing that can you know.
So again, why would you “assume” they knew what they were doing. The record will illustrate that they did or they didn’t.
Once BN and SF had merged anyone who could read a map could see that UP was surrounded, so to speak, and having CNW in its pocket did nothing the break the encirclement. Only the acquisition of SP would allow UP to break out of the stranglehold created by the formation of BNSF. Fortunately for them, the SP was vulnerable because it was a very rundown property with excellent routes but desperately in need of a massive cash infusion to revive it… UP did just that although it chose to obliterate the SP’s corporate pedigree in the process…
I think the reason a true transcon is “scary” to many railroad managements may be that they don’t feel that such a merger, once everything shakes out, will leave them better off than before the merger. Right now, you have some parity between east and west - two big western roads and two big eastern roads. The eastern roads are largely neutral about which western road they interchange with, and vice versa.
Now what happens if, say, BNSF were to merge with NS? You can bet it would be quickly followed by a merger between, say, UP and CSX. The next thing that would happen is that the merged systems would internalize their transcontinental traffic routings as much as possible. For example, traffic that BNSF used to interchange with CSX would, instead, be handled by the combined BNSF-NS system wherever possible. Ditto for UP-CSX. So each of the merging roads would a greater share of the transcon traffic of their merger partner, but would get a smaller share of the traffic from the rival partners. In other words, the traffic effect could be very nearly a wash. Add to that mix the likelihood that the price for such a wave of mergers, at least for the foreseeable future, would likely be a substantial amount of re-regulation, probably in the form of so-called “open” access. It’s an open question whether this would make either of the merged roads any better off than the current system, particularly since most U.S. rail traffic doesn’t move transcontinen
Ignore the last two paragraphs of my post of a few minutes ago, which are a bit of gibberish. I meant to delete them, but forgot to do so before I posted the note (there no longer appears to be a way to edit posted material or, if there is, I can’t figure it out). Of course, you may not be able to tell the difference between the gibberish in the last two paragraphs and the other gibberish in the post which I actually meant to send.
I’d probably say that is open to debate.
Which is exactly my point.
The edit function now hides behind the “more” button at the upper right of the text box. Click on the arrow, and there is a drop-down list of options.
-Norris