The technology and most of the RoW for HSR are there right now. It only needs imagination (use HSR to boost economic delopment in Iowa) and will.
That imagination is in extremely short supply at Terrace Hill and the State Capitol in Des Moines these days. Hence Iowa nixed efforts to get Amtrak (at regular speed) even as far as Iowa City from the Quad Cities.
[quote user=“VerMontanan”]
Los Angeles Rams Guy
the truth of the matter is that the MILW was SUPPOSED to have received the majority of UP traffic at Council Bluffs and its President at the time (John P. Kiley) was badly misled by UP
If this was really the “truth” there would specific documentation of this or a contract. The C&NW was smart enough to figure out they weren’t getting a lot out of running these trains and the UP was dissatisfied with their operation over the C&NW. In the mid-1950s, long distance passenger trains were still considered something that was desirable, so it would logical that UP would embellish the benefits of taking on the extra traffic because they had to get the trains to Chicago somehow (CB&Q denied the request to handle the streamliners over its route, for example.) Prior to getting the “Cities” trains, the only reserved-coach train on the Milwaukee Road was the Olympian Hiawatha; the addition of the Cities trains required that the Milwaukee add 15 more reservation clerks to handle the business in and out of Chicago. Another huge added expense.
This type of passenger-related expenditure on the part of the Milwaukee was not unique. In the 1920s, it built the Gallatin Gateway Inn as its gateway to Yellowstone Park: off the main line and pretty much out on the prairie, this one-quarter of a million dollar expenditure was hardly what anyone (else) would consider a “gateway” to anywhere. The Milwaukee paid to put in automatic block signals on its branch line between Plummer, Idaho, and Manito, Washington and on the UP from Manito through Spokane to Marengo Washington to afford its passenger trains the safety of ABS. But the Milwaukee’s main line
That is what I heard off and on throughout those 20 years.
Nobody says much about the Chicago Great Western’s route from Chicago to Omaha being abandon. Would it be the same for the Milwaukee to Omaha had not the Milwaukee hosted the Union Pacific’s Cities streamliners in the twilight of private intercity passenger trains?
It’s not a huge surprise that the Milwaukee employees thought “they were supposed to have received the lion’s share of UP overhead traffic.” Like, they’re going to think that or be told by senior management that the expediture was the boondoggle it was? Referencing people with a natural bias is anything but the “whole picture.” Not wanting to blame ourselves is a common human trait.
That the Union Pacific didn’t shift traffic to the Milwaukee and that the C&NW was revived to become the primary conduit of UP’s Chicago traffic is proof not only of the C&NW’s utility, but also the likelihood that Milwaukee management undertook this huge expenditure without any contractual commitment or guarantee of more freight traffic.
Here I thought in the 50’s a man’s word and a handshake were his bond. Guess we had a culture clash, MILW believing the UP’s word was bond, and the UP doing the 21st Century practice of ‘putting one over on the competition’.
I think the MILW’s decline has many factors, among them the resignation of President John Kiley in 1957, replaced by the less knowledgable Quinn. The failure of the planned merger with the CNW also hurt.
thought in the 50’s a man’s word and a handshake were his bond. Guess we had a culture clash, MILW believing the UP’s word was bond, and the UP doing the 21st Century practice of ‘putting one over on the competition’.
Well that’ makes sense…getting closer to the truth.
Observation about the late MILW Chicago-Omaha main. It was once noted in the pages of TRAINS that the various passenger stops on that line for the “Cities” Streamliners depended on bus connections to reach the city that was nearby. This would suggest that the line may have been suitable for overhead traffic but very little local business.
Marion, IA is a good example of the late to build to Omaha Milwaukee missing major cities. The C&NW built earlier and mainline served nearby, but much larger Cedar Rapids.
Clearly the Rock Island (Des Moines, Davenport, Iowa City) had the most large cities en route in Iowa. The rest (C&NW, CGW, IC and CBb&Q) had few to almost none, yet the surviving major routes are the C&NW (Cedar Rapids, Ames) and CB&Q (Ottumwa, Creston). Intermediate traffic was not the key, the Union Pacific or ownership of a route to Denver and beyond was. The IC did OK as long as the packing house business en route thrived.
The MILW definitely did serve Cedar Rapids. They had a yard in downtown Cedar Rapids (next to the IC’s facility) not to mention a Regional Accounting office in downtown Cedar Rapids as well.
But not on the MILW main line.
Marion and Cedar Rapids have always been one big metropolitan area.
I defer to your expert knowledge.
If ALL the Milwaukee Road trackage, as it was in 1955, miraculously appeared intact tomorrow morning and someone told you to make a railroad out of it I think it would be extremely viable and very competitive in today’s market as it once existed.
Not always. In 1860, Marion had 1500 people and Cedar Rapids 1800. Being six miles apart and very small communities, they were very separate entities. In fact, Marion was the county seat of Linn County until 1919 when it was moved to the a-bit-larger (by that time) Cedar Rapids. Of course, in more modern times, Cedar Rapids grew to the point that Marion became known as a suburb even though people in Marion still don’t think they are (my aunt lives in Cedar Rapids). (My 1947 Rand McNally Road Atlas shows them clearly as separate unconnected entities.) And that’s the point: Marion became known as the stop for Cedar Rapids on the Milwaukee Road, but on the C&NW, Cedar Rapids WAS the stop. One could also say that the C&NW served Marshalltown, Ames (Iowa State University) and the Rock Island served Des Moines directly and the Milwaukee “just missed” all these places on the route, but when it came to tapping population along a route, the “near miss” at Marion for Cedar Rapids was just luck. Though the other cities were anywhere from 10 to 25 miles away from the Milwaukee Road, there was never an attempt to establish stops nearby or dedicated bus connections (there were bus connections early on at places like Davis Jct., Savanna, and Perry, but these were not specifically timed to meet the trains). With the exception of the Chicago suburb of Elgin and Davis Jct., “Cities” trains on the Milwaukee Road stopped only at crew change points: Savanna, Marion, Perry. When the UP lost its link to Chicago via the North Western and CB&Q wouldn’t take the “Cities” trains, obviously UP pretty much wrote off everything in between Chicago and Omaha.
It wouldn’t. Strong routes survive.
Good research but it does not concern the failure of the MILW in Iowa. That failure is primarily a consequence of little online business because it missed most Iowa cities of consequence and it failed to achieve a guaranteed source of interchange from the UP.