This evening I was studying a route map of the Chicago Great Western Railway for the first time.
From looking at the map, I was struck by how beautifully the CGW knit together some of the most important cities in the Midwest: Chicago, Omaha, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Kansas City. (See the map below.)
According to the Wikipedia entry on the CGW, the railroad was a very efficient operation. It was also rid of its passenger trains by 1962. Those are two very big pluses for a 1960’s-era railroad in my mind.
For whatever reason, the CGW merged with the Chicago & Northwestern in 1968.
Naturally, I wonder: Was a merger really necessary? And could it have survived without merging?
A related question: Could it be a viable regional railroad today?
The Wikipedia entry says that the directors felt it had to merge in the 1960’s or else perish. But I wonder if that was true or just a perception; did the financials really bear that conclusion out? Here is the Wikipedia quote:
Upon the failure of a merger opportunity with the Soo Line Railroad in 1963, the board of the Great Western grew increasingly anxious about its continued viability in a consolidating railroad market. Testifying before the Interstate Commerce Commission in Chicago, President Reidy claimed, “The simple fact is that there is just too much transportation available between the principal cities we serve. The Great Western cannot long survive as an independent carrier under these conditions.”
The CGW, therefore, was open to a merger with the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), first proposed in 1964. After a 4-year period of opposition by other competing railroads, on July 1, 1968, the Chicago Great Western merged with Chicago and North Western.
Chicago Great Western system map:
[IMG]http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc481/mytrainsaccount/cgwmap.jpg