Revisionist history always has an agenda.
I strongly disagree that the NP was a weak railroad. Remember that I worked for the NP from April 1966 until the BN merger. The NP had on line coal in North Dakota, sugar beets in eastern Montana and the fruit belt in the Yakima valley. Don’t forget all the grain the NP hauled.
Ed Burns
NP/MILW would have failed? How much of the NP mainline has been abandoned by BNSF? Is it not busy? How much of the MILW Chicago-Twin Cities main has been abandoned? How about from there to Terry, MT? If NP/MILW had been shut out of Powder River, they could have built the Tongue River line themselves, and tapped in as the UP did. How much traffic would the BNSF Denver line have if they did not have access to the ex-DRGW/WP line?
NP/MILW would have definitely been the weak sister and would have been stuck with a redundant Twin Cities-Seattle line. GN had a better engineered main and Burlington had a better network of Midwest routes. While the NP main has not been abandoned, much of it is leased to and operated by Montana Rail Link, not BNSF.
Ed,
I can’t see where anyone said the NP was a weak railroad; the reference was weaker compared to GN and CB&Q.
With regard to your mention of commodities: The coal along the NP in North Dakota was lignite, which is the worst kind there is (that’s why today it’s not shipped any long distance; the only thing that makes lignite economically feasible is where the facility using it is very close by, but higher grade sub-bituminous from Montana and Wyoming is shipped all over by rail, even to North Dakota); Sugar beets were not handled any great distance, rather just to a processing plant such as in Sidney or Billings (therefore low margin freight); Today, all the traffic out of the Yakima Valley is handled on one daily local making a Yakima turn out of Pasco; NP probably served a grain producing area in North Dakota on par with GN, but didn’t go to South Dakota at all. Today on BNSF, there are 23 shuttle grain facilities accessed by former GN trackage in Minnesota, but only 2 on ex-NP; In Montana, of the 23 shuttle grain facilities today, 20 are on ex-GN routes, but only 3 on former NP.
That doesn’t make it a weak railroad just a weaker one. But much stronger than the Milwaukee, to be sure.
NP did have a branch network in eastern Washington’s grain country that was much more extensive than that of the GN.
“Morgan, it all depends on whose ox is being gored.”
If you know the source of this quote, no further explanation is necessary; if you don’t, it’d take too long for me to find and explain it.
- PDN.
True, as did the UP. About 1974 the federal government provided the local barge line a free ride to Lewiston ID. Elevator operators built new facilities on the river and abandoned the railroads for the river. All of them.
BN abandoned the former GN lines ASAP after the merger. NP was cut back from Lewiston to Moscow ID, and ultimately sold off. UP sold off to shortline operator also. Shortline operator ran track into the ground and threatened to abandon track, so state bought both former NP and UP lines, what there was left of them. State is now looking for $58 million to get back to 25MPH standards, plus another $610 million for who knows what. Probably bridges since all lines have an extensive collection of timber trestles that have gone largely unmaintained for the past 40 years or so.
I think everyone has agreed that NP was the weak sister. Nevertheless, BN wisely kept the MRL line as a reserve, even guaranteeing them a certain number of trains to make sure they stayed in business. Many of the responders to this post look at the merger from the same point of view of the BN, saying that it was not a mistake. I think the original thesis of the Trains article was that it was a mistake from the point of view of the health of the railroad industry as a whole. After the merger, the MILW failed and the NP main was downgraded. Apparent competition eliminated. If the merger didn’t happen, even a struggling NP/MILW would have kept the GN/CB&Q on their toes, and from becoming complacent. They (NP/MILW) probably would have been swollowed up by the UP eventually, providing actual competition in the northern corridor.
What can one think? I was shocked to see Penn Station included as one of the biggest blunders in RAILROADING.
Gee, how many railroads even think passenger rail is important today? How many are sitting around thinking “If we just had an opulant passenger terminal in Manhattan, we could operate a successful passenger business!”? How many of the class one’s have any desire at all to be involved in passenger rail?
I could see the demolition of Penn Station being included in such a list in Architectural Digest perhaps. But including it’s demise in a railroad-centric account, seems just a little too weepy, sticky, sweet sentimentalist to me.
I just saw the “21 Blunders” article in Trains today, and as a life-long New Yorker I have no real regrets that Penn Station was torn down (of course, I was about 1 when this happened in '65) and replaced by MSG & Penn Plaza (MSG I have often attended events at over the decades - darn convenient); I’m pretty ambivalent about the “new” Farley Station Annex, because while I do appreciate the long necessary extension of platforms and expansion of underground walkays, I’m quite meh about the “train hall” skylight and not at all happy about Amtrak moving ticketing offices to Farley. From images I’ve seen, the old Penn Station IMO just had a lot of unused, open space (must have been fun to heat), and before you go on about Grand Central Terminal, consider the original plans did call for a multistory office building above Grand Central (just be thankful we didn’t get the 1968 International Style building illustrated on that page; even I think that looks silly).
But getting back to the Blunders article - IIRC at least 2 other “major” blunders dealt with passenger service
Blunder 1 was the major investment railroads made in passenger service, mostly in new passenger rolling stock, after WWII. If I understand that correctly, that means by Amtrak day in 1971 (assuming the time line remains the same otherwise), instead of relatively modern st
I loved those old Taj Mahal railroad stations – they were things of beauty and real monuments to the aspiring instincts of man and business. BUT –
Just the property taxes on them – especially in the East, where the real edifices were and the taxes highest – helped guarantee a passenger deficit for owner railroads and could not be sustained. To that extent, I understand the ‘Amshacks’ that have taken their place and think they will do very nicely for the few trains they host every day.
We can rebuild and pay taxes on cathedrals when Americans return to passenger trains in a meaningful way.
Incidently, a city does not have to wait on Amtrak. The best station new or old I saw on an extended trip last fall was New Orleans’, which is a transit center for all surface modes that, although new, has that old heroic railroad feel.
I may be wrong, and if I am then I’m sure someone will jump in to correct me. But I always thought that the major railroads, prior to Amtrak, were obligated to furnish passenger rail, as a public service. Something to do with their having been given the power of eminent domain back during their growth phase. Mom, apple pie, and serving “the greater common good” and all that noise. (As an aside, I always thought that was where the expression “accommodation run” came in as a description of some passenger service. The railroad was providing the service as an accommodation to public need, rather than in true business spirit.)
The primary benefit (within this line of thinking) of Amtrak to the railroads being that it relieved them of that obligation. I look forward to the collective responses that are sure to follow.
Under the Amtrak legislation, railroads could either join or operate their trains into the late 1970s when they could legally be discontinued (I don’t remember the specific year), which a few railroads did.
The author argues that it would have been cheaper for the railroads to continue to operate them and then cancel them all when capacity was cheap than to join Amtrak and eventually deal with their trains that do not pay full access costs.
It is always easier to criticize decisions after they have been made and one can see how they turned out than it is to make the decisions at the time they have to be made with the information available at that time.
Blunders are in the eyes of the beer holders.
Didn’t most people at the outset expect Amtrak to fade into oblivion? I seem to recall a Don Philips installment where he states that the one thing no one ever expected was for Amtrak to survive 40 years and become a budget “hot potato” (my metaphor, not his)
Exactly. Amtrak was intended to die a quick and quiet death, with the similar to SD40-2 SDP40Fs going to freight railroads. Then, in 1973, OPEC decided to start the oil embargo…
I was working for a railroad and keeping up with the news during Penn Central and the creation of Amtrak. “Insiders” can claim Amtrak was supposed to be only a flag stop enroute to abandonment, but believe you me this is not the way it was represented to the public.
To the extent abandonment was the real plan all along, shame on the planners for their misrepresentation to the public.
Instead, we have seen another example of the hardihood of ALL government programs, worthy or not. I would count Amtrak among the worthy survivors.
I completely agree. It was a shell game designed in part to soothe the segment of the public that relished passenger rail.