Last night I was reading the June or July 1970 issue of Railroad Magazine. There was an article about the MILW electrics and it said they started using Locotrol helpers “the preceding summer.” My 1973 refe
The original Locotrol Masters were GP40s 2046, 2057 - 2060.
The original Locotrol Remotes were SD45s 4005 - 4009.
Yes when I was growing up, they occupied most of the Menominee River Valley in Milwaukee with shops and freight yards. They had two full circle roundhouses and side tracks. Not all the round house tracks were covered by structure when I was living but I have always wondered about earlier. Milwaukee was the main warehouse point for the whole Milwaukee Road railroad they had a creosote tie plant with ties stacked up next to it, Surplus wheel and truck sets, section rails and panel track, Frieght car and Passenger car shops. They could build anything from scratch or supply anything and you could look down from the freeway and see as you passed in progress all the railroad related stuff they were involved in. Things tapered off after the 1960’s and employment probably started to initially fall after World War II.
They held onto the skytop obs until years after Amtrak, they could not sell them because they needed to be turned at each end of their run. At one point I think in 1973, Milwaukee shop forces attempted to scrap one by torching it first…next day, front page picture on the Milwaukee Journal and instant public relations disaster for the railroad. After that they stuck them indoors somewhere out of sight and slowly sold them off. The Cedar Rapids they gave away to the Designer family of the Skytop Obs. They hung onto to it for a while before they sold it…thats why it is in such good condition. Milwaukee actually had I think four seperate frieght yards combined as one in the Menonminee valley. Muskego I think was ori
The Pacific Coast Extension was a tremendous asset … How about a mega merger of Milwaukee with The Pennsy, Southern Pacific and Rock Island! An iron lariat on top of and through the West with some serious long haul to Eastern markets. Tell everyone to just stuff it and do it.
Let’s see, MILW and RI were the weak sisters of the granger roads, PRR was hardly an innovator and was coasting on its reputation and SP couldn’t carry the financial burden imposed by the other three.
Re: Milw, Pennsy, SP and RI; All the dynamics would have changed considerably avoiding many future problems. Perhaps at some point, maybe around the oil embargo, or sooner, or after, the entire system could have gone under wires. Now you have a railroad that is way way ahead of the curve with the cleanest, least expensive and longest haulage in the nation.
Well in my view, the Pacific Coast Extension was a wise move but unlike the NP and GN. Milwaukee seemed to take a “spare no expense” approach to construction. That is instead of first putting in sharp curves and steep grades to fix later, Milwaukee opted to do everything right from the beginning and frosted the cake with the expensive electrification. Now if you look at their balance sheet and the cost estimate overuns…that approach meant at least $700-800 million in debt…escalating to close to over $1 Billion with several refinancings and Bankruptcies. Milwaukee had a lot of Bankruptcies and each time they trimmed the debt a little bit more but then each subsequent bankruptcy the debt was a LOT more then at the end of the former bankruptcy. Meaning a lot of years in the last century the railroad was not earning break even costs of keeping it running.
Another problem beyond the PCE was the merger approach of the Milwaukee. It would merge a line into the larger system and instead of shedding all the ancillary lines of the new merger partner it did not want, it attempted to keep most in operation. Leading to a lot of duplicitous lines in the Midwest and even some places in the Pacific Northwest. These also drained money.
In my view, after the last reorganization they could have kept and should have kept the Pacific Coast Extension and shed the Electrification, shed the duplicitous branch lines everywhere and if I were the Trustee I would have given it one more chance at survival as a Chicago to Seattle/Tacoma system. I believe they had some sort of rights into Portland, OR even to connect to SP as a condition of the BN merger.
I think they were sold too fast to the Soo Line.
Should we assume you meant to say duplicated or redundant branch lines, rather than lines that are deceitful?
Very nice, thank you for sharing. One cannot tell from just a movie but, does this really look like a railroad that needed to go away?
That said, looking at the stretch of the Joes’ pantograph, was the cat high enough then to clear today’s domestic double stacks?
The Milwaukee standards for cat height above rail was 24 feet where not limited by other considerations (e.g. tunnels). Minimum height in the days of tri-level auto racks was 19 feet, the Milwaukee lowered the floor of a few tunnels to get that clearance.
24 feet will clear double stacks, 19 feet won’t.
I agree that an end-to-end merger could have been very beneficial to the MILW. However, I would have advocated an EL - MILW combination (and possibly throwing in Grand Trunk as well as they’re the one who SHOULD have been able to acquire the MILW “core” system). That would have meshed both road’s strength in intermodal traffic and it could have been an intermodal powerhouse.
PRR should have been put with both UP & CNW (aka the U.S. Highway 30 merger).
Not necessarily the reason. Construction techniques and equipment and technology improve over the years. The Milwaukee Road Pacific Extention was completed 26 years after the NP and 16 after the GN. The Milwaukee had access to better engineering resources a generation later than when the NP was built. The Milwaukee benefited greatly by shipping materials for its construction on the already-built NP. And while the GN and NP did invest and rebuild most sections of their original main line route, the Milwaukee did little. They did change the 2 percent westward grade at Bruno, MT to 1.4, but not a lot else. They never put in ABS on their main line between Sorrento (Plummer) and Marengo nor did they have failed equipment detectors on their Pacific Extension right up to the time of its demise. And CTC with power switches? Almost none.
The did obtain trackage rights to Portland on BN from Chehalis, WA as a condition of the BN merger. But this route was circuitous and featured a grade (between Tacoma and Chehalis on a Milwaukee Road branch line) of over 3 percent for trains go
Los Angeles Rams Guy- “agree that an end-to-end merger could have been very beneficial to the MILW. However, I would have advocated an EL - MILW combination (and possibly throwing in Grand Trunk as well as they’re the one who SHOULD have been able to acquire the MILW “core” system). That would have meshed both road’s strength in intermodal traffic and it could have been an intermodal powerhouse”
“PRR should have been put with both UP & CNW (aka the U.S. Highway 30 merger)”
Those are great ideas as well. GT/ MIlw definitely should have been.
UP/ C&NW/PRR -Absolutely. Can you imagine. It could end up something like that in the end yet.
Yeah thats what I meant.