Well I finally nailed down the RR of Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul or (The Milwaukee Road) as my first layout since I found out yesterday that it is the RR that went through my Mom’s home town of Atkins, IA. (Never released that trying to pick out ONE RR to model after could be so difficult).
I joined the historical society, ordered some books off of Amazon and now I am looking for anyone that might have modeled after The Milwaukee Road and has pics on the internet to go see of their work.
Figured this is the best place to ask for this info.
Kids are very excited as well as my Mom. She remembers her Mom taking her from the farm to the roundhouse to have lunch with her dad.
I listen to her stories and look at the direction America went by moving away from RR for passanger service and BOY DID WE screw up.
I model the Milwaukee, but only very loosely. Mostly, it’s my choice of locomotives and cabeese, but I don’t try to model any specific location.
The GP9s are Proto 2000 models. The RSC-3 is a Proto 1000.
The Milwaukee also had some very interesting electric locomotives, including the Little Joe and the Bi-Polar, both of which are modeled in HO by MTH. I don’t model any catenary myself, so I can’t justify having these, but they are really interesting engines. If your plans allow it, a portion of the Milwaukee’s electrified lines would be a pretty neat thing to model.
Joining the historical society and doing reference work are two of the right things for a great start.
I don’t know what books you’re getting, or where you live now, but if you need photos of the general “look and feel” of railroading in Iowa, check out the titles by Don L. Hofsomer, such as Iowa’s Railroads and Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland. The Milwaukee Road by Frederick W. Hyde may also be very useful.
Next difficult question is, what time period are you going to model…the Milwaukee was around over 100 years!! [;)]
My guess given your comments about your family’s memories is you’d be looking at when the CMSt.P&P was still hauling passenger trains, like the transition era of the 40’s-50’s up to Amtrak Day (May 1 1971).
The Milwaukee Road was neat in that they did pretty much everything a railroad could do - iron ore lines in Upper Michigan, commuter trains in Chicago (and the Twin Cities), transcontinental streamliners from Chicago to the Pacific, all on their own trackage - and sometimes under wire!! They also carried the Union Pacific streamliners from Omaha across Iowa to Chicago after 1955.
As late as the early thirties, they even operated some 3’ gauge lines - in Iowa!!
Excellent choice on modelling the Milwaukee Road- Atkins was once the site of a busy yard and crew change oint on the Milwaukee’s Iowa Division. In fact the society magazine did an article on Atkins not long ago with some good photos and information.
