The Rock Island was helped, because its service – like that of the Southern and Rio Grande, the other non-joiners – was already shaved down to the point that it was cheaper to soldier on than to join up. Eventually, all were off the hook, period – the Rock Island in (I think) 1978 or '79.
The worth of the Omaha line for passenger service was restated when Amtrak started work on a new service to the Quad cities. They hoped to extend it to Iowa Ciy and eventually Des Moines, but Iowa was not interested in passenger service that they had to spend money for.
The Rock Island was better than the Burlington at being the victim of bad management. Did the Rock Island ever really recover from the Reid-Moore Syndicate in the early 20th Century?
Good enough to get and keep GM autoparts business, at least until the strike. I was told it was supposed to come back to the RI (during the period afterwards when it was operated by the KCT) but never did.
The RI (in the late 1970s, don’t know how much is still there) had a lot of industrial business between Joliet and Bureau. Which is why B&OCT eventually picked up this line. The Quad Cities and Muscatine also had a lot of business. (The Milwaukee Road picked up a lot of this, plus for a while the Quad Cities to Iowa City. That “triangle” of exRI was providing half the revenue of the Milwaukee’s paired down core system.) Unfortunately, the farther west and southwest you got, business mostly became agricultural related. Some pockets of industry here and there, but not a lot on line. Partly because one of the RI’s presidents during the 1880s decided to not make acquiring land for industrial development a priority. He thought to let other railroads serve the industries and let them interchange the business to the RI for the road haul. Also why the RI entered many major cities on other railroads or belt lines.
The early 20th century saw the Reid-Moore syndicate take control of the railroad. They used RI cash to try to build a railroad empire around the RI, SLSF and C&EI. Their financial manipulations resulted in the 1915 bankruptcy.
Those two periods in the RI’s history is what started the decline. Management decisions, or m
Showing that not all politicians, everywhere, are stupid. Megabus has the Iowa population centers on that route flat COVERED with fast, frequent, cheap express service. A rail passenger service would be left with the West Liberty-Grinnell-Atlantic crumbs.
You can’t vacate the passenger business for almost 50 years, as rail has on this route, without the public making other arrangements.
Original lyrics were uncomplicated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NTa7ps6sNU
Then came Leadbelly’s version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJEVOUqepo
The Rock unquestionably have been better off if it had had no intercity service prior to Amtrak. Yes, it soldiered on, but passenger service simply was another cash drain, a sop to unions and train nuts but nobody else.
The Rock Island continued passenger service after Amtrak because it was cheaper to run the trains then to join Amtrak . In the 2 years prior to Amtrak Rock Island had been very successful in arguing before the ICC that their (RI) were more then the railroad could afford to operate. Losing lots of money had a few advantages. Amtrak 's admission price was the cost of the previous 2 years of passenger losses. One of Rock Islands problems were it went everywhere but not on their own tracks. Kansas City is a good example. The last 100 miles if the route there were owned by Union Pacific. Memphis they went in over a bridge they did nit wholly own. Oklahoma City was servers from El Reno on the North South line. Memphis California could have been a decent run but from New Mexico west SP owned it and SP had the Cotton Belt to Memphis and St Louis. The interesting thing is Rock Islands pieces were more valuable then the whole at the time. The Iowa lines ended up with Ed Ellis and Iowa Interstate, and Dan Sabin and the Iowa Northern. Tucumcari - Kansas City is a niece piece for UP. Same for Minneapolis - Kansas City Not to mention all the big grain elevators that have popped up along their old routes. Rgds IGN
The last two intercity trains were partially subsidized by the state of Illinois. When the subsidy ended in December 1978, so did the trains.
Jeff
Jeff:
Good point on the Joliet - Bureau area. CSX still runs trains out to that area. Also the Davenport - Muscatine area is pretty good source of business, both now and back in the day.
There was an article back around 1985 on Culver Tower in Muscatine, which goes down in my top 10 (maybe top 2) articles ever in Trains. The author (name escapes me, but he was/is a professor and also wrote an article on the “Fast Train” on the Rock Island) was an operator at Culver and details the amount of traffic originated there.
Muscatine is a destination for me about 1x year and I enjoy the drive along Rt. 22 which hugs the Mississippi River and the old Rock Island line. Lots of industry just west of Davenport, primarily rock or limestone type material.
While BRC had difficulties accessing BRC, their yard on 95th Street in Chicago was very convenient for hot auto parts off of NYC or PRR. That connection is still very busy as NS and CSX runs trains thru to BRC Clearing Yard via that connection
Ed
I believe their song was great!!!
On the Rock Island Line, it’s a mighty good road
On the Rock Island Line, there’s a road to ride
On the Rock Island Line, it’s a mighty good road
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
On the Rock Island Line, there’s a mighty good road
On the Rock Island Line, there’s a road to ride
On the Rock Island Line, there’s a mighty good road
If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
you gotta ride it like you find it
Get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line
I may be right and I may be wrong No,
you are goin’ to miss me when I’m gone
On the Rock Island Line, there’s a mighty good road On the Rock Island Line,
it’s a road to ride On the Rock Island Line,
there’s a mighty good road If you want to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it
Re. Chicago-Omaha, you’re thinking of Henry Posner III’s Railroad Development Corp., which bought the line in partnership with Heartland in 1991, then bought out Heartland’s share in 2004. (No Ed Ellis to it, as far as I know.)
CAZEPHYR, your handle reminds me of another example of the truth of ACY’s post above, which instructs us not to take literally the route descriptions found in songs like “Rock Island Line” and “Wabash Cannonball”:
Hank Williams wrote and recorded a pretty good song called “California Zephyr” – which train, however, he routed over “the Union Pacific line”!
[quote user=“dakotafred”]
CAZEPHYR, your handle reminds me of another example of the truth of ACY’s post above, which instructs us not to take literally the route descriptions found in songs like “Rock Island Line” and “Wabash Cannonball”:
Hank Williams wrote and recorded a pretty good song called “California Zephyr” – which train, however, he routed over “the Union Pacific line”!
Yes, I know, but the song was catchy.
I was born in Independence Mo during WWII and Dad told me about the RI Northerns he used to watch. I never got to see them, but they were interesting to my Dad.
You mean like when the Downeaster service was re-instituted? Iowa is like New Hampshire… they’d use the service, they just don’t pay for it.
Mike, let’s wait and see if Illinois gets even its part of the service up and running. It looks like a money pit to me, and the state is simultaneously broke and with a new (Republican) governor.
[quote user=“richhotrain”]
And let’s not forget Lonnie Donegan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXQgG98VSOs
Rich
Leadbelly had the first “hit” with that tune, I gather it is an older traditional song…
The Rock Island excelled at retaining marginal branch lines longer than most grangers.
[quote user=“carnej1”]
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line
'The earliest known version of “Rock Island Line” was written in 1929 by Clarence Wilson, a member of the Rock Island Colored Booster Quartet, a singing group made up of employees of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad at the Biddle Shops freight yard in Little Rock, Arkansas. The lyrics to this version are largely different to the version that later evolved and became famous, with verses describing people and activities associated with the yard.
John Lomax recorded “Rock Island Line” sung by prisoners in Arkansas twice in 1934.
Lead Belly recorded the song at Washington, D.C. on June 22, 1937"