Which railroad is more prevalent in the US Midwest? CP Rail or Canadian National? (Thanks, because I live in Australia)
Both. [;)]
I guess it depends where exactly in the midwest you mean.
For example here in the Minneapolis - St.Paul area of east-central Minnesota (along the Mississippi River) our locally headquartered Soo Line railroad was taken over by Canadian Pacific, so CP trains are quite common here (although many engines and even cabooses are still in using wearing Soo Line colors and lettering). In northern Minnesota on the Mesabi Iron Range (west of Lake Superior), the Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific and the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range railroads both became part of Canadian National, so CN engines and trains are common there. (Note that CN appears to repaint engines much quicker than CP, so there’s only a couple of DMIR engines still in the original maroon.)
Of course, Duluth Minnesota (and nearby Superior Wisconsin) were served by the Soo, DWP and DMIR, so CN and CP trains can both be found there.
Keep in mind too not everyone in the US agrees with states are in the midwest. In Minnesota we tend to think of Ohio as an “eastern” state, not a midwestern one…but someone from the east coast would probably think of Ohio as being midwestern. [:S]
Some of it is dependent on your definition of Midwest:
Back when the thirteen colonies finished kicking the Redcoats out, there was an area called the Northwest Territories. These days we call those territories Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan(!)
Later the name was applied to states in the Western time zone north of California.
My own take is that the Midwest is the area of the United States which uses Central Time. That excludes Ohio and part of Indiana…
Actually, the best way to answer the original question is to get system maps of CN and CPRail and compare the two. Since the only player in my neck of the desert is UP, I didn’t bother.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Mojave Desert garage)
Thank you guys. I guess i’m not too brushed up on my US Geography. My layout is based is roundabout Illinois.
Canadian National now owns the former Illinois Central, whose main line runs north/south from Chicago to Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico, and generally follows the Mississippi River.
Up north, around Chicago and the northern tier of states along the Canadian border, such as Minnesota and Michigan, it would probably be the Canadian Pacific, as already stated.
One advantage of modelling “Chicagoland” is pretty much every railroad wanted to reach there, so you have many options. As noted, CN now owns Illinois Central so CN does serve Chicago. CP took over the Soo Line and uses the Soo’s former Milwaukee Road mainline from St.Paul MN to Chicago.
Of course, in recent decades “run thru” trains with engines from non-local railroads are pretty common, so it’s hard to say what wouldn’t be OK to include on a layout. On my way to and from work each day in downtown St.Paul I drive along the Mississippi River southeast of downtown for about 10 miles. In the area between the road (Highway 61) and the river the BNSF’s former Burlington Route mainline and CP’s former Milwaukee Road mainline parallel each other…in fact they run so close that they look like a multi-track mainline. Anyway, besides CP/Soo and BNSF engines it’s not unusual to see Norfolk Southern run-thru engines on coal trains, or various colors of lease company engines like CEFX, and sometimes some CN/IC engines. Plus Amtrak of course!!
Course if you like both CN and CP, you could always model Canada, eh?? [C):-)]
Two thumbs up for Canadian Roads!! In addition, the DM&E/IC&E trackage on exMILW tracks to IA have been purchased by CP. Although it was a common sight to see CP engines on ICE lines into Chicago much sooner than the actual change.
I agree with previous Posters, you can do both, at almost anytime as they usually have some common rights in certian places. Please don’t base an assumption on one locale as a ‘normal’, it may be very different the next town over.
It is an ever chaning scenerio, so model it as you wish, it is probably happening somewhere!
I guess it depends on what era you are modeling.
Lots has been written here already about modern day railroading, but, if you are modeling the 50’s, CP is it.
CP has had controlling interest in the Soo Line for pretty close to 100 years, although they functioned as separate companies up until recently.
CP equipment was constantly run through on the Soo fron the junction at Portal, N.D.
Also, there were several joint CP-Soo passenger trains.
For me, CP all the way!
Should’ve said yeah it is present day, 1990s onward modelling.
Before the early-mid nineties, Canadian railways couldn’t run in the US and vice-versa. In places where they did - like CN cutting across Maine, or south of Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota, they had to create separate US railroads. The Soo Line, Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific, Central Vermont and others were US railroads that were like 49 pct Canadian owned. (IIRC a Canadian RR could be the majority stockholder, but couldn’t own more than half of the stock.)
In cases of trains running jointly between a US and Canadian railway, there were restrictions on how long the Canadian engines and cars could be in the US before they had to return - I think with passenger cars, it was only 24 or 48 hours.
When NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) came in, that all changed, and soon the subsidiary / affiliated US companies became part of the CP or CN outright. Of course, here in St.Paul you can still see quite a few SOO engines (and cabooses) on CP trains, even a few orange and black ex-Milwaukee MP-15s.
Thanks mate, very interesting info, more reasons to have more variety haha
“Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan” AND Wisconsin!!!