Years ago there were some people here who had a veritable, almost religious, belief that the Milwaukee’s Pacific Coast Extension was THE superior rail route to the Pacific Northwest. They fervently argued that the rail line was done in by skullduggery and dirty deads ranging from government corruption to most foul play by the BN. I came to regard them as basically a cult.
In contrast, I think this is a good and reasoned analysis.
That author of that piece posts here as VerMontanan, as recently as yesterday, so hopefully he will chime in.
My personal opinion is that the Milwaukee built it as they had no friends to the Pacific, so tried to stop themselves from being boxed in. They made a few mistakes, though. They could have used Roger’s Pass near Great Falls, probably at a 1% ruling grade, and instead of dealing with the huge mess of a track profile west of Missoula run it down the Clark Fork parallel to the NP and around the south shore of Lake Pend Oreille at the same ruling grade, and entered Spokane on their own trackage rather than inconvenient trackage rights. There is also enough space on the east side of the Cascades to have reduced the climb from the Columbia west of Beverly from 2.2% to probably 1% with a bunch more curvature. Cost wise, the Milwaukee couldn’t bear it though.
Ultimately grades and the lack of feeders killed it. Like the SP&S, there are usually good reasons why a route dies that don’t involve conspiracies.
One thing foamers always overlook in their discussions of what railroad did or didn’t do is the sheer volume of traffic that is required to make a line profitable and self sustaining. It is always about the money. When outgo exceeds income trouble ensues.
Them? All two of them. [(-D] In reading your post, I first thought of VerMontanan who was always the one spoiling MichaelSol’s and Futurmodal’s revisionist railroad history fantasies with logic and reason. Then I started reading the article and had Deja-Vu.
I view the Milwaukee Road PCE much as I do the Ford Edsel. It’s easy to point out the problems now, but it probably made perfect sense to the people who initiated it back then.
Murphy S.: Just finished reading the PDF by Mr. Myers, all 44 pages of a fascinating autopsy of the Milwaukee’s PCE, and all its ‘warts’. Very thorough, and speaks to his years of marshaling power in that region…He sure gets a “tip of the Kromer cap” for it. [tup][tup]
Oh my God, Don’t start this again. Your going to smoke out the idiots that think General Motors did in the Interurban system again. Seriously though the argument that the BN ran the Milwaukee out of business was never supported by former Milwaukee Road employees to a large extent. Most of the former Milwaukee PCE employees point to lack of money and poor physical plant in places along the route. Compared with their later employers (BN, WP, and UP).
BTW, in each successive Milwaukee Road bankruptcy the PCE debt is specifically cited as one of the main contributing reasons why the railroad could not make it financially. It is rather interesting that even though it is pointed to in several bankruptcies not a single Bankruptcy Trustee…wrote off the damn debt. Nope, they reorganized each time and kept the PCE debt on the books all the way to the sale to the Soo Line. Which I think is pretty ironic.
Question for my knowledge database on the PCE regarding segments that made sense to keep:
I know the PCE across South Dakota from Appleton MN to Terry MT is owned by BNSF and is still being utilized, having originally been purchased by the State of SD and then in turn sold to BN.
Are there are there any other segments of the PCE that is still being utilized west of Terry MT?
The Milwaukee’s PCE flat out sucked and we’re well rid of it…"
If really interested in the PCE you will find a very through study by a very knowledgeable individual… At the end of the PDF is a name, and link to ask the author directly… ENJOY !
No kidding Milwakee’s PCE sucked! Not only did paralleling the NP main line affect thier profits, the route bypassed major population centers, had steep mountain grades and branch lines in extremely remote locations. In fact I once read a doucument that said MILW has been paying for the PCE since 1909!!!
Plus, MILW was not given land grants like the GN and NP and had to purchase the land from private owners or take over them somehow.
The Great Northern Railway was entirely privately funded–unlike all the lines that had already been built to the west coast, it made use of no land grants.
The Milw line between Forsythe and Terry was a bit straighter than the NP line, recall hearing some talk about the BN utilizing that line as a second track.
The line east of Roundup would have been good for routing coal eastbound - ruling grade about 0.6% except for a short segment in North Dakota. The 30% severance tax that Montana imposed on coal shipped out of state was likely the nail in the coffin for the Roundup - Mile City segment.
A few nit-picks on the central Montana discussion (Lewisto to Roy, Winifred and Winnett). The ruling grade from Grass Range and Winnett to Lewiston was 1% with the exception of 2 miles of 2% (should have been easy to double the hill). The line from Winifred was 1% with a 3 mile stretch of 1.5%. The GN line between Lewiston and Grass Range was graded but not track was laid - the better gradient of this line was due to two tunnels. The Grass Range to Winnett section would have been jointly operated by GN and the Milw.
The Winnett area was a significant oiil producing area in the 1920’s prior to the discovery of the west Texas oil fields.
Finally a comment on why the PCE was built (as opposed to whether it should have been built). The Board of Directors for the Milw included several men who were also on the board of Anaconda Copper Mining - Stan Johnson’s book on the PCE mentioned this as well as discussions about increasing competition for service to Butte and Anaconda which reminded me of the story of the El Paso & Southwestern as covered by Myrick. Demonstrating the benefits of RR electrification was also a consideration, as it presented a large market for copper.
Careful there Chico’s Bud…MILW had 1875 grant R/W, but no checkerboard (pre-1872 grant R/W)…conversely, by the time MILW got out there, a lot more time had passed and a lot more patents had been granted which left not that much vacant real estate to claim from GLO under the terms of the grant act.
The Rockefellers were connected to the Union Pacific Railroad company of E.H. Harriman. They were involved in the sponsorship of the Kuhn & Loeb bank in the United Kingdom and they had numerous business deals with Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany.
The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Coast Externsion was not killed by the Burlington Nothern (BN) conspiracy. The Bilderberger Illuminati (BI) conspiracy killed the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Coast Extension.
Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in double wide in Montana along the abandon Milwaukee Road Pacific Coast Extension.
Murphy S.; Are you braggin’ or complaining? [:-^] For years the rumor was that Elvis was working in a McDonalds in Kalamazoo…
[#offtopic] Sorta, had I not watched my neighbor’s nephew get ‘cuffed and stuffed’ back in August of '77 (for his part in a plot to dig Elvis up, and hold his body for ransome); I would have bought into that too. Elvis, his mother Gladys, and father Vernon, and his maternal gran’maw, are all firmly ensconsced in the garden at Graceland.
Ask me,sometime, about Jerry Lee, (and the time he drove his Caddy into the Front Gate at Graceland.) [sigh] [swg]
