i’m wondering how exactly things were run on the rails. i was looking through train spotters guide and the captions started saying things like “Milwaukee Road U33B blah blah blah, seen here in Iowa”, did for example the ‘Road’ haul consists of their own cars on say Soo line rails with there own locos or did the ‘Road’ let Soo line take care of their cars. now don’t give me slack cause as i typed that i realized it would be pretty dumn for Soo lines to say “why yes Mr. competitor of our business, i would love to haul around your cars on my rail lines to my local customers”. but i’d still like to know this worked, because there’s a few locos that i would love to have that milwaukee road didn’t use. like an alco C-420, or a GP-30, although i do plan on getting a GP-30 and have it painted up in Wisconin Central colors and number it to match the one at the National Railroad Musuem here in Green Bay.
before the days of pooled power and run through trains, there were really only about three ways cars were handled. 1 would be an online movement without interchange to another carrier. that means the load originated on a particular railroad and was delivered to destination on that same road. example=a load of coal from western kentucky to a power plant in champaign illinois. the IC would be the only carrier involved. 2 would be an interchange situation, that same load of coal going to an industry in a town served by another railroad and not on the IC. perhaps milwaukee so the IC would give the car to the MILW at chicago and they would finish the road haul to destination. 3 would be a “bridge” carrier movement in which the load originated on the UP in nebraska and they give it to the CNW at omaha who then took it to chicago and gave it to the NYC for a some point in the east. in that example the UP would be the originating carrier, the CNW would be the bridge carrier and the NYC would be the terminating road. every railroad used every other railroads cars and the owner got paid a daily car hire or per diem charge for the use of the car. for the most part, the power and cabeese stayed on home rails. each carrier involved was compensated according to the icc published tariffs and division sheets and regardless of the route involved, the same commodity between the same points was subject to the same total freight charge. that may be more than you wanted to know but it is a basic explanation of how and why cars were often seen far from home.
grizlump
Take for example CSX. It owns tracks and runs in every state east of the Missisippi except maybe New England. CSX is from Jacksonville Florida. A train spotter guide may well say “CSX loco XXX seen here in Kentucky blah blah” and not be at all unreasonable in saying that, even though CSX is from Florida.
Hope this short answer helped!
The Milwaukee ran through Iowa, so I don’t see why it would be unusual for them to be running their power on their trains in Iowa.
In order to run across the SOO, the MILW would have to negoiate a trackage rights agreement or have a joint facility with the SOO. Normally trackage rights are granted when one railroad’s route is damaged ( a bridge washes out) or the other road has a lot of capacity and wants to ‘sell’ the capacity to gain revenue. For example the MP and MKT shared trackage between Waco TX and Denison, TX. then there are detours which are temporary for derailments, flooding and other damage.
If you want a GP30, you could have one in Milwaukee Road colors. They did have them.
There are places where one railroad regularly operates over another railroad by trackage rights. If you model the Milwaukee, you could paint up that C-420 for a different railroad (real or fictitious) and say that railroad has trackage rights over part (or all) of your layout. You could also say the C-420 is being leased by the MILW because of a locomotive shortage.
Jeff
Well generally railroads would use their own engines on their own tracks, and just the cars would be interchanged, but there are exceptions.
In recent decades “run-through” trains are more and more common. Instead of say a train of coal being interchanged between two railroads, they would just change crews and use the same engines on the train the whole way.
Railroads often worked out “trackage rights” agreements so that they could move over each other’s rail lines. Often it was done to both railroad’s advantage - you let us run between A and B on your line, and we’ll let you run between E and F on our road.
Also, railroads sometimes ran joint lines, where trains / engines of either road could use the same trackage. For example for many years the NP and Soo shared iron ore lines in central Minnesota, and CNW and Milwaukee had a joint iron ore operation in Upper Michigan.
that’s a crap load of info grizlump, but it’s not too much. i tracked down my ole train spotters guide so i could try to identify some of the loco’s they use by use and now i’m reading through the whole thing. no my problem is a lot of my favorite engines weren’t around yet. i still want to get a few that are older but won’t have room on the layout to run them, so my train modeling is gonna sorta run into collecting too. that’s sorta good news about MILW having GP30’s. i got into that one cause the train musuem in green bay here as an old GP30 from wisconsin central, and it just so happened (i can’t remember who) someone back in fall started making N scale GP30’s in wisconsin central road name, and kinda freaky here, but one of the road numbers available was the same as the unit at the musuem so i was going to get one. kind of bringing real life into fantasy if you will. plus looking through wikipedia on a search for GP30’s it had a picture of that same unit. it’s ginda cool if you go to wikipedia cause you can type in like say Alco RS-3 and it will give you a brief history on the loco and a list of road names and numbers, but Milwaukee Road wasn’t listed as having any 30’s.
Do yourself a huge favor: Go to Amazon (or similar) and look up and order “The Railroad: What It Is, What it Does” by John Armstrong. This book is invaluable for anyone who is just starting to understand how prototype railroads work.
The only book written by a model railroader ever to be used by an actual railroad to teach its employees. Well worth owning.
Keep in mind wikipedia is just some guy online who thinks he knows something making an entry on a subject. It’s not like a real encyclopedia where facts are checked and verified. If you’re looking for more accurate info on the Milwaukee, you’ll probably want to look into joining the Milwaukee Historical Society (many hobby shops carry their magazine by the way) and buying one of the many good books available on the CMStP&P.
Agreed. Wikipedia is a handy ‘quick-reference’, but do not take anything on that site as gospel. Verify everything. I have come to find that wikipedia is correct more often than naught, but its that occasional peice of misinformation that can really screw ya up. 
well there are VERY few things i take as gospel (my Camaro book which is the most complete published historical ‘record’ of the history of which, a book of the same but for Corvettes, my Caterpillar history book, and my Corvette black book which is now a little out dated. oh and my train spotters guide but again that’s a little out dated, covers 1972-2000 only) but i didn’t realize wikipedia was a garage run type thing. heck i never heard of it untill googled a specific train and it came up. but i decided to reuse a garbage pick coffee table and add a small layout so i’m going the easy way and just using all MILW cars. now i just need to learn how to change the road numbers. i’m sticking to PS-1 40 footers which i can only find in MILW under Atlas Train Man and they only have two avaible numbers.