Hi, everybody,
Just a few questions,
The milwaukee was merged into the soo line,right? And now soo is part of CP. What happened to all the Milwaukee road trakage, like the Pacific extension?
Thanks,
Trainboy
The Milwaukee Road went bankrupt in the late 70’s. Part of the recovery was the ‘shutdown’ of the ‘Pacific Extension’. Most of the line was torn up, and selected parts were sold off to several other railroad(BN bought some of the lines to provide rail service to customers). Some of the ‘Lines East’ trackage was removed, some was sold off to other railroads.
The SOO bought the Milwaukee in 1986(?) and the SOO was bought out by CP(CP owned about 1/2 of the SOO since 1888). The Kansas City line and the remaining Iowa Division was sold off to I&M Rail Link, which was bought by DM&E a few years ago.
The ‘H&D’(old Pacific Extension west of Mpls was sold off to TC&W, and the South Dakota part of the main line was sold off to the state and leased to BN(now BNSF). I believe that line is now owned by BNSF. In Wisconsin, several secondary lines were sold off to regionals/short lines(WOSR now owns a lot of that trackage).
On my HO scale ‘Pecatonica Div’ of the Milwaukee Road, it is always 1959 and the ‘pumpkin’ orange GP9’s still ply the branch lines of SW Wisconsin!
Jim Bernier
Funny MILW story, sort of, at my train club, we were watching the Pentrex vid on the WC with ex BN SD45s, and the colour was funky in places, and the BN Cascade green gave way to MILW orange as the engines went into a corner!
Trainboy
some of the old MILW track here in Iowa is now…bikepaths!
Javern
That’s what our town Peoria IL is doing, all Rock Island to be trails, even if the line is an active railline. Talk about progress.
They had probably the best pass over the Cascade Mountains in Washington.
It’s a path now.
Jeff,
The Milwaukee line over Snowqualame(sp?) is better than the NP line over Stampede, but does not even compare to the GN line north of it. Also the old Milwaukee line between the Spokane area and this tunnel is a real ‘hill & dale’ line.
Out of Spokane, the best line to access Seattle is the ex-GN ‘high line’. To access Portland, the ex-NP/SP&S 'North Bank ’ routing via Pasco is the favored route. BN rebuilt the old NP ‘Stampede’ line as it provided a ‘mid point’ route between Tacoma and Seattle. IIRC, the BN bought up the ex-MILW line and had sold the ‘Stampede’ line to the state. They later ‘swapped’ the properties and rebuilt the ex-NP line. It has been used as an EB ‘return’ route for empty grain trains returning to the midwest from Portland /Tacoma/Seattle. There are current rumors that BNSF is looking at another tunnel clearance project so that stack trains can be routed via Stampede. Stampede has sort of become a return empties route due to the heavy grades on it. A loaded WB unit grain train needs to be ‘doubled’ to make the crossing, but a empty one can run EB without be split up.
Jim Bernier
Why would that be? Not enough engines?
Trainboy
There is a total ‘weight’ restriction for trains on the line(nothing unusual). This can be due to climbing or desending the grade. I think the current limit on Stampde is something like 5500 tons. A 100 car loaded grain train can weigh about 13,000 tons. An empty weighs about 3,000 tons. On heavy grades this might put a lot of stress on the drawbars, or a lot of D/B would be needed to brake the train down the grade. Just putting more engines on the train can lead to more problems in mountain territory. It takes about 3 sets of engines to get that loaded WB train over Stampede.
Jim Bernier
Yeah, I know what you mean. I have, on my model railway, a 2.2% grade, with 24" curves. With anything more than 20 free-rolling cars (No cleaning cars) you need mid train helpers, which are finicky themselves.
Trainboy