Location, location, location

[erikem]

I can sum Vance. I’d like to go further but that would be plagiarism. I do you a disservice because I cannot write with the elegance or sweep of Vance. So here goes:

1. Locational analysis apparently not performed
2. No traffic base not already adequately served by others
3. No significant service advantage
4. No significant operating cost advantage
5. No significant interline connection advantages
6. Too much track through too much sterile territory.

A minor nitpick - these are reasons why the Milwaukee PCE shouldn’t have been built, but I believe the original question was why it was built in the first place despite the challenges described by Vance (FWIW, I bought a copy of his book shortly after it hit the bookshelves).

Stan Johnson’s book, The Milwaukee Road’s Western Extension, does cover the overlap in directorship between Anaconda Copper and the Milwaukee as one of the reasons why construction was approved. This overlap was also a reason for the electrification as it was a consumer of large amounts of copper (something near and dear to the hearts of the ACM stockholders, but not necessarily to the Milwaukee stockholders).

[N.B. I’m treating why a line was/wasn’t built as being distinct from the question whether the line should/shouldn’t have been built.]

[Dakguy201]

Let’s say I’m a time traveler back in the 1860’s. My job is to choose the route for the Union Pacific. President Lincoln has already decided I will take the “central route” beginning in Omaha.

I dig out the works of the Army surveyors and perhaps do some of my own on the ground observation. I note that I’m going to build through almost entirely empty country until I meet the Central Pacific coming east.

There is one exception to “entirely empty country” – Salt Lake City. My location decision becomes to go north around the lake, meet the CP near Ogden and serve Salt Lake with a branch line.

I’ve never understood why I didn’t just go south around the lake to begin with.

[henry6]

They took a gamble and it did not pay off. Had they not built it, maybe they could have sold their Midwest lines for top dollar - Who knows. That is ‘History’…

Jim

And therein lies the difference in attitude, aptitude, and approach to business (and railroading in particular) between the late 19th Century and today. They were gamblers, they had to be gamblers. They were also visionaries and dreamers because there was nothing but unpopulated empty land or untapped resources out there. With religious fervor they were want to push the American way from east to west and hope to make a buck along the way; they knew there were no sure shots, no immediate 100% return on investment, no one to bail them out if they made a mistake. That is what we admire about our country and forefathers. It is what is lacking in the approach to business and investment today. Today, investors and thier generals do not lose no matter what the outcome of their decisions and actions. So in many ways we are comparing apples (19th Century) to oranges (20th Century) to pears (21st Century) when speaking of railroad building and investment.

[Anonymous]

Today, investors and thier generals do not lose no matter what the outcome of their decisions and actions.

Could you clarify whether you mean that to apply as the most likely outcome, or just as an occasional aberration?

I assume you mean the former because you are comparing business outcomes of yesterday to those of today, so each one would have to be the overall trend in order for such a comparison to be meaningful.

[Murphy_Siding]

Let’s say I’m a time traveler back in the 1860’s. My job is to choose the route for the Union Pacific. President Lincoln has already decided I will take the “central route” beginning in Omaha.

I dig out the works of the Army surveyors and perhaps do some of my own on the ground observation. I note that I’m going to build through almost entirely empty country until I meet the Central Pacific coming east.

There is one exception to “entirely empty country” – Salt Lake City. My location decision becomes to go north around the lake, meet the CP near Ogden and serve Salt Lake with a branch line.

I’ve never understood why I didn’t just go south around the lake to begin with.

The answer to that might have been, at least partly, in a post on the 1880’s engineering thread. It mentioned the WP line that ran on the south side of the lake as having problems with unstable ground/slides(?) and the lake trying to swallow the line in wet years.

I wonder, if the determination to go north around the lake was made by Central Pacific, whose route came in from the north west, heading toward Ogden? It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

[diningcar]

Let’s say I’m a time traveler back in the 1860’s. My job is to choose the route for the Union Pacific. President Lincoln has already decided I will take the “central route” beginning in Omaha.

I dig out the works of the Army surveyors and perhaps do some of my own on the ground observation. I note that I’m going to build through almost entirely empty country until I meet the Central Pacific coming east.

There is one exception to “entirely empty country” – Salt Lake City. My location decision becomes to go north around the lake, meet the CP near Ogden and serve Salt Lake with a branch line.

I’ve never understood why I didn’t just go south around the lake to begin with.

The answer to that might have been, at least partly, in a post on the 1880’s engineering thread. It mentioned the WP line that ran on the south side of the lake as having problems with unstable ground/slides(?) and the lake trying to swallow the line in wet years.

I wonder, if the determination to go north around the lake was made by Central Pacific, whose route came in from the north west, heading toward Ogden? It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

I believe that the Mormans had significant influence regarding the location; and they certainly had sufficient influemce about the hiring of laborers. I cannot recall which historian wrote about this.

[Railway_Man]

Let’s say I’m a time traveler back in the 1860’s. My job is to choose the route for the Union Pacific. President Lincoln has already decided I will take the “central route” beginning in Omaha.

I dig out the works of the Army surveyors and perhaps do some of my own on the ground observation. I note that I’m going to build through almost entirely empty country until I meet the Central Pacific coming east.

There is one exception to “entirely empty country” – Salt Lake City. My location decision becomes to go north around the lake, meet the CP near Ogden and serve Salt Lake with a branch line.

I’ve never understood why I didn’t just go south around the lake to begin with.

The answer to that might have been, at least partly, in a post on the 1880’s engineering thread. It mentioned the WP line that ran on the south side of the lake as having problems with unstable ground/slides(?) and the lake trying to swallow the line in wet years.

I wonder, if the determination to go north around the lake was made by Central Pacific, whose route came in from the north west, heading toward Ogden? It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

It’s a very good question, and it’s been addressed by some people smarter than I, which enables me to summarize their findings. The UP and CP were 100% correct in their decision to locate north of the lake. Both railways independently arrived at that decision. The meeting point at Promontory was not by design of either, nor desired by either, and jammed down both their throats. The CP’s ideal meeting point would have bee

[Railway_Man]

Let’s say I’m a time traveler back in the 1860’s. My job is to choose the route for the Union Pacific. President Lincoln has already decided I will take the “central route” beginning in Omaha.

I dig out the works of the Army surveyors and perhaps do some of my own on the ground observation. I note that I’m going to build through almost entirely empty country until I meet the Central Pacific coming east.

There is one exception to “entirely empty country” – Salt Lake City. My location decision becomes to go north around the lake, meet the CP near Ogden and serve Salt Lake with a branch line.

I’ve never understood why I didn’t just go south around the lake to begin with.

The answer to that might have been, at least partly, in a post on the 1880’s engineering thread. It mentioned the WP line that ran on the south side of the lake as having problems with unstable ground/slides(?) and the lake trying to swallow the line in wet years.

I wonder, if the determination to go north around the lake was made by Central Pacific, whose route came in from the north west, heading toward Ogden? It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

I believe that the Mormans had significant influence regarding the location; and they certainly had sufficient influemce about the hiring of laborers. I cannot recall which historian wrote about this.

Leonard Arrington did, in “Great Basin Kingdom” and other excellent histories of the Great Salt Lake Valley and the Kingdom of Deseret. Arrington was an economic

[Deggesty]

It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

Murphy, please, please, please (I’m on one of my hobbies again). The official meeting place was at Promontory Summit. Promontory Point is right on the lake, and had no railroad until the Lucin Cutoff was constructed. It is sad, but even people around here believe that the Golden spike was driven at Promontory Point. It was just a slip wasn’t it?

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Johnny, Columbus discovered America and I discovered Promontory Point.

http://www.carletonwatkins.org/views/hi-res_wpr/wr0357.htm

Jumping Jupiter, where the heck is Momument Point?

http://www.carletonwatkins.org/views/hi-res_wpr/wr0352.htm

Mike

[Murphy_Siding]

It seems, that before it was decided to meet at Promontory point, UP and CP gangs had graded a lot of miles parallel to each other in that area, one going east, one going west.

Murphy, please, please, please (I’m on one of my hobbies again). The official meeting place was at Promontory Summit. Promontory Point is right on the lake, and had no railroad until the Lucin Cutoff was constructed. It is sad, but even people around here believe that the Golden spike was driven at Promontory Point. It was just a slip wasn’t it?

Johnny

Sorry about that. The further you are from something, the fuzzier the view, I guess. I have to admit, though, as the post above this one shows, I’ve seen a lot of photos of the golden spike ceremony tagged as Promontory point.

[Murphy_Siding]

…Booster groups had only small influence on railroad decision-making at the level of a Sioux Falls. The railways were grateful for any free cash or land, and the lack of a booster group would imply that the commercial prospects of the city were uninteresting, but these groups did not command enough cash to bend a railway to their will.

RWM

Perhaps, but a little burg called Los Angeles, did get the attention of SP, as it was building a transcon eastward.

[erikem]

[quote user=“Railway Man”]

The end-game of the CP-UP was won by the UP, which must have deeply grated on Huntington as the UP’s management of that era was not his equal in competence, aggression, knowledge, or organization. Huntington very much wanted to get at least as far as Cheyenne, Wyoming, before effecting the meeting. But the CP construction forces bogged down in the tough granite and deep snow of the Sierra Nevada, and right there, the battle was lost. At about the moment that the CP cleared the Sierra Nevada and began its race up the Humboldt Valley eastward, the UP had gotten its act together at last, and Jack Casement was grimly flogging his forces through Wyoming. Huntington knew the jig was up, and immediately refocused his attention on the Southern Pacific, which would expand the field of battle, outflank the UP, and enable him to dictate commercial terms onto the UP. Completion of the SP in fact enabled Huntington to do just that, and there were actually serious thought given to scrapping the UP or selling it to the CP because its commercial viability was destroyed.

Huntington knew he was in desperate straits the moment the UP began accelerating its construction westward through Wyoming, and so did a lot of other people. The vultures were already paying visits to Huntington, asking if he wanted to give up and sell out for two or three cents on the dollar of his capital while he still could. Huntington was a very tough man, however, and decided that financial ruin was of no lasting importance to him. The story almost no one reads is the story of his building of the SP, a far more dramatic and desperate gamble than the CP-UP. Huntington’s strategic position was so untenable with a CP-UP meeting point in Utah he literally had to build the SP out of cash flow, a feat no one else ever dreamed could be possible or could even dream of accomplishing. No other transcon was built without one penny of equity or debt financing! If one

[erikem]

…Booster groups had only small influence on railroad decision-making at the level of a Sioux Falls. The railways were grateful for any free cash or land, and the lack of a booster group would imply that the commercial prospects of the city were uninteresting, but these groups did not command enough cash to bend a railway to their will.

RWM

Perhaps, but a little burg called Los Angeles, did get the attention of SP, as it was building a transcon eastward.

And they did get the SP to make a substantial change in the route. The SP’s original intent was “to build the Palmdale cut-off” first, and then run a branch line to LA. I’ve heard remarks that the LA boosters had used ladies of easy virtue as the primary bargaining tool.

The direct line to Colton would have been a natural to connect with the Cal Southern line to San Diego, which has the best natural harbor in southern California.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

I can sum Vance. I’d like to go further but that would be plagiarism. I do you a disservice because I cannot write with the elegance or sweep of Vance. So here goes:

1. Locational analysis apparently not performed
2. No traffic base not already adequately served by others
3. No significant service advantage
4. No significant operating cost advantage
5. No significant interline connection advantages
6. Too much track through too much sterile territory.

A minor nitpick - these are reasons why the Milwaukee PCE shouldn’t have been built, but I believe the original question was why it was built in the first place despite the challenges described by Vance (FWIW, I bought a copy of his book shortly after it hit the bookshelves).

Stan Johnson’s book, The Milwaukee Road’s Western Extension, does cover the overlap in directorship between Anaconda Copper and the Milwaukee as one of the reasons why construction was approved. This overlap was also a reason for the electrification as it was a consumer of large amounts of copper (something near and dear to the hearts of the ACM stockholders, but not necessarily to the Milwaukee stockholders).

[N.B. I’m treating why a line was/wasn’t built as being distinct from the question whether the line should/shouldn’t have been built.]

Murphy Siding, erikem, and anyone else who’s interested:

Vance, in The North American Railroad, says that the Milw’s PCE was built because “only their own line to the Pacific would guard their interests as they perceived them. [fn 26]” (pg. 216, bottom) - the whole discussion is only pp. 216 - 218*, and RWM (above) does it justice.

To understand that, you need to know that the infamous Northern Securities Co. arrangement included not only the common

[greyhounds]

. Greyhounds and I are sometimes polar opposites on matters of politics but I think we are in agreement that railway regulation had as its primary beneficiary not the public but the stockholder of certain companies, it turned fair economic competition on its head, it prematurely exhausted resources and the environment, and it destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth.

RWM

We are in full and complete agreement.

I know I’ve been over this before, but I think it’s one of those things that can not be said enough.

Economic regulation of transportation did not serve “The Public Interest”. It can not serve “The Public Interest”.

The agency to economically regulate transportation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, was established to stabilize railroad cartels. The railroads had tried to establish the cartels among themselves but were generally uncessful. They didn’t like competition, but they couldn’t stop competition. So they turned to the Federal Government for help. The Interstate Commerce Act was written by a lawyer in the pay of the Phildelphia and Reading Railroad. Now, do you think he wrote the law so as to be unfavorable to the railroad companies?

The cartels set prices so that all members could make money. They could set prices the same all around, but they couldn’t equalize costs of operation over various routes. This meant they had to artificially set the collective prices high enough so that the least efficient railroad could make a buck. It was a sweet deal for the investors in inefficient railroads. They were protected from price competition through the Federal Government. Of course, it screwed up the national economy big time. But those investors in the inefficient carriers didn’t have to worry.

Regulation did allow communities located on the inefficient carriers (i.e. D&a

[greyhounds]

I find this bordering on incredible, as in “unbelievable”. Essentially, the Milw “doubled down” on its commerical bets. If it felt vulnerable to the Hill lines after 1904, why quadruple your mileage with a huge extension into the backyard of the same people that you feel vulnerable to ? Why subject yourself to more of the same ? (Kind of like that joke about the young bull challenging the big old mean bull - “Just so he knows I’m a bull and not a cow !”) Neither NP nor GN went any farther east than Minn. - St. Paul, so Milw wasn’t vulnerable there. CB&Q did go to Chi-town, but only by swinging way to the south and then northwest. In its home territory, the MILW wasn’t challenged by any of these - C&NW and others, yes, but none of them went west either. Oh yeah - by then the UP was on the Pacific Coast, so there were already 3 competitors out that way, and the UP wasn’t vulnerable to the MILW’s challenge. But as George W. Hilton has written, a lot of those roads - esp. the grangers - were built and intended to be nusiances, for the main purpose of being bought out by the others. No doubt the MILW had been part of that experience, and maybe decided to use that same tactic - writ large - for its own purposes. This is the only explanantion that makes sense, given the objective realities as summarized by RWM above.

• Paul North.

.

I’m going to disagree with this. The CB&Q route between St. Paul and Chicago was not “round-about”. When the GN/NP bought the “Q” they acquired a fully competiive, direct route into Chicago.

Mileages between Chicago Union Station/Northwestern Station (two blocks or so apart) and St. Paul were:

CB&Q: 427

Milwaukee: 410

C&NW: 409

17/18 miles is no big deal and can easily be offset with other factors. Such as, the M

[Murphy_Siding]

PDN Jr.: I had to go find my copy of The North American Railroad and start reading again.

As far a the PCE goes, I still can’t quite grasp the decision making process made by the Milwaukee directors. After doing a location survey (or whatever you would call it) to determine the reason to build the line, and the where and at what cost factor, they still voted yes? By 1906, there were already 6 transcons to the west coast sharing in that asian traffic. Was there that much traffic, and was there enough to support 1 more?

[erikem]

PDN, Murphy:

As I mentioned earlier, Stan Johnson had brought up Anaconda Copper as one of the reasons that construction of the PCE was approved (in addition to the reasons given by Vance). Johnson undoubtedly put a lot more effort researching the PCE than Vance did (this is not intended as a criticism of Vance), so I’m not surprised that Johnson would have details not in Vance’s book.This is about the same time frame that Phelps Dodge had turned the El Paso & Southwestern into a bridge line between Tucson and Tucumcari, and the incentive there was to ensure access to more than one railroad.

[Railway_Man]

PDN, Murphy:

As I mentioned earlier, Stan Johnson had brought up Anaconda Copper as one of the reasons that construction of the PCE was approved (in addition to the reasons given by Vance). Johnson undoubtedly put a lot more effort researching the PCE than Vance did (this is not intended as a criticism of Vance), so I’m not surprised that Johnson would have details not in Vance’s book.This is about the same time frame that Phelps Dodge had turned the El Paso & Southwestern into a bridge line between Tucson and Tucumcari, and the incentive there was to ensure access to more than one railroad.

I wouldn’t discount Vance. Though his work was international in scope and Johson’s specific to one railway company, Vance brought to the game an international railway economic and geographic context, theoretical framework, ironclad grip on the science of economic geography, and years of research that it would be almost impossible for a non-professional to equal for lack of time, funding, and exposure to and knowledge of the available methods of inquiry. Focusing one’s inquiry on one railway or one region is good for drawing out the details of a railway, but its pitfall is that the result may only be a gigantic accumulation of unorganized, meaningless data of value only to a fellow accumulator of data, but nothing that would help or inform anyone but a fellow adherent.

Looking above, I see two hypotheses advanced for the construction of the Puget Sound Extension. Both of these are actual “business plans” in which there is a projection of investment and profit. Though both business plans are unethical, they at least could have had a genuine pro forma developed, just like a drug dealer can generate a business plan projecting the cost to buy cocaine at wholesale in a foreign country, the revenue to sell at retail on the street in the U.S., deduct the costs of transportation and security, and project a profit.