This post concerns the Midland Continental Railroad that ran north and south of Jamestown, ND. I do know that French interests were going to build a railroad from Canada the Gulf of Mexico, but WWI caused that plan to be abandoned. They only connected a few grain elevators in the Jamestown area.
When was it finally abandoned and what remains of that railroad.
Bonus points if you can name the 1960’s TV show that depicted that Ephram Zimbalist, Jr. was a fireman on a special passenger train. A map was shown in the TV show that mimicked the MC.
The MC was surely the most inconsequential pike ever to harbor transcon (albeit N-S) ambitions. It doesn’t even rate a place in Kalmbach’s Historical Guide. People can Google it for themselves, but I can attest you can still follow the old grade in places it hasn’t been plowed under yet.
The Midland Continental’s end is a sad song itself. In 1966 the Soo Line bought the line from the family that owned it, promptly selling a half interest in it to the Northern Pacific, mainly to keep the C&NW from getting it (connecting via its ex-M&St.L line into Jamestown ND). In 1969 most of the main line washed out, and Soo and NP took over operations on the few remaining miles. The MC’s two RS1s, neither one of which was usable, were shoved into NP’s roundhouse in Jamestown ND, from which BN scrapped them a couple of years later.
Comes from working out of my head instead of checking the books… My mental map of the C&NW had more than a bit of fuzz on it.
The C&NW “threat” that was probably more imagined than real would have been a connection from the ex-M&St.L line to Aberdeen, presumably via the NP branch to Edgeley, the southern end of the MC. Trackage rights over the NP branch to Edgeley would have done the trick.
But it did rate an article in the June 1972 Trains Magazine. That article had the reason the NP was interested in buying it’s part has being, aside from the originating traffic, to thwart any ideas the MILW may have had about expansion in that area.
I hope I’m not taking this discussion down a blind alley, so please correct/disregard if I am. Back in the early 1960’s, a railroad-themed display was established north of Akron, Ohio. The artifacts were later moved to downtown Akron, where they remain today (or what’s left of them). Included in the equipment is/was an ex CB&Q 0-6-0 no. 1548 and an ex- Monon bay window caboose. As I recall, these were both supposedly from the Midland Continental. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t square with the info presented above, so I wonder whether this was the same operation, or another operation with a similar name, or misidentified equipment. Maybe some entirely different explanation. I also vaguely recall that there was a similarly named very short switching railroad described in Railfan & Railroad several years ago. Maybe I’m way off base here.
Continuing down the blind alley, Re: the trains in Akron…
The 0-6-0 and some passenger cars (ex-Pennsy, I think) were part of a display at “Railways of America”, a huge O scale layout built and owned by Mack Lowry. It was billed as the larghest train layout in the world.
I think the equipment was brought to the site on a recently constructed mile-plus spur off the PRR Akron Secondary to Allside Aluminum on Ohio Route 8. *(Across the highway from R of A). The equipment was later moved to the former REA spur on Mill St. in Akron (adjacent to Quaker Oats). The equipment (including the O scale trains) seemed to fade away after several years.
Sorry I don’t have any info on the MC. Seems to be one of those rarely documented shortlines that never received the attention it deserved. However, I had a book of short stories by Garrison Keilor that talked about the mythical North Dakota State Railroad which was tagged the “Andy Yes Sir”. I’ve always wondered if thye Mid-Continental was the inspiration for that story
I don’t think any of the equipment listed above was from the MC.
I did locate my “Trains” CD and have read the Midland Continental article twice. That article did state that the NP purchased the MC in 1969 so that the MILW could not gain access to the James River valley. My whole railroad career was at Northtown (Minneapolis) and I did not hear any information about the NP purchase because that was on the Fargo Division and we were the St. Paul Division. Also, I was calling crews so my attention was to TYE people.
In Wallace Abbey’s book about the Soo Line he explained the Soo’s purchase and partial resale of the MC to the NP, along with its demise. He maintained it was to block the C&NW. Not sure whose story is right, beut Abbey was working for the Soo in the main office at the time. Most of what was left of the MC at the end did end up as part of the NP.
Wallace Abbey may have misstated the CNW for the MILW. Having said that, the CNW came north into Oakes, North Dakota which was 69 miles south of Jamestown. Presumable the CNW would have asked the NP for trackage rights into Jamestown to serve the MC. I doubt that the NP would have granted that request.
As information, Oakes was a joint NP-CNW agency. One agent was a CNW man and when that man bid off the job, the agent’s job reverted to the NP and the cycle continued. Bob Heyer was an Assistant Agent at Northtown after the merger. He said that the Oakes agency job was a good job.
All this branch-line skirmishing was a little silly even 50 years ago, not just in light of later developments. Today, where the MC roadbed leaves off, at Edgeley, you can follow the abandoned grade of the MILW – not the NP – down to Aberdeen.
When it came to competition over picking up distressed short or branch lines, the losers were the winners.
An aside on the futility of branch lines, again from North Dakota:
In the 1960s, the rising waters of Lake Oahe – aka the Missouri River, behind a dam now – threatened the river-hugging eastern portion of the 127-mile “South Branch,” Mandan to Mott. So, about 1963 or 1964, the NP incurred the considerable expense of taking off cross-country, building about 35 miles of brand-new railroad to hook up with the still (marginally) viable portion of the line at Flasher.
A short 20 years later – not very long in railroad time – NP successor BN was lifting the track. This one deserved to hurt the career of somebody, if he was still around.
I know it’s not that easy to see even a little way into the future. The “North Branch” out of Mandan is humming to this day, only because of power plants and coal mines fortuitously located on that line later on in those same 1960s.
Do any color photos exist of the RS-1s? What color scheme did they wear? A pity the line didn’t get built from Winnipeg to Galveston. A close second would have been to purchase the Twin Cities-Galveston line from the Rock Island when it shut down and named it Midland Continental. A jazzy color scheme would have been the Rock’s red and black with the fancy white wings that they used on their GP7s with the name spelled out where Rock Island was on the body.
I considered freelancing the MC just this way in S scale recently. Not much room in an apartment but the dream remains just the same!