For those of you that like to read railroad stories
here are a few pages about the end times of the
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific.
http://www.wwvrailway.com/milwauke.htm
This is from the perspective of a railfan on the
Pacific Division in Washington State.
Enjoy!
Dennis
Thank you very much for posting that link; it was truly excellent.
I have always contended that the Milwaukee Road may be the most interesting of all railroads–and this is from somone who was less than 4-years old at the time of its demise and has spent the majority of his life away from former Milwaukee Road lines. I wish I could have got a glimpse of its intrepid soul before it departed.
There are times when I rail fan in Southern Indiana and stand aside the former Milwaukee Road Chicago-Louisville main. It is almost chilling to think that at one point in time–before the era of mega mergers–the line I am standing on once stretched to Pudget Sound.
Gabe
At somewhere around age 19 or 20, I decided to take a month and a half leave of absence and use my half rate priveleges to take a Chicago-LA-Seattle-Chicago trip. My plan for the Seattle-Chicago leg was to fill a long held wi***o ride the Olympian Hiawatha. To this day, I regret having been about three months too late to use that train, and the best I could do was catch the truncated train from Butte.
I agree with Gabe’s view of the CMStP&P, and I am glad Dennis gave us the link.
I may be a bit off on my facts but I believe the Milwaukee Road was the result of combining and merging about 150 railroads, which accounts for the wild variety of depots it had, and also accounts for the incredibly out of the way places it tended to have branch lines.
Dave Nelson
Not only were the branches in out of the way places but the same could be said for the Chicago-Omaha main. It managed to miss or hit only the outskirts of every sizable between the endpoints. Only the Chicago Great Western did worse. It may explain why both of them have been in large part abandoned.
CSS-Probably right on there. I have a 1923 Map of rail lines in Wisconsin prepared for the WI Railroad Commission showing the MILW all over the place, including the branch that ran through the property that later became my family farm. Abandoned in 1943, the ROW is still there, used as a smowmobile trail. Interestingly, the ROW is still listed on property rolls as CMStP&P ownership. Keep meaning to do more research on the actual ownership. Calls to CP and CN got responses that amounted to big ? mark. Is it hallowed ground or something? I’ll give the forum updates if I solve the mystery.
Jay
Funny how the disadvantage of not serving intermediate cities then would be an advantage today. Maybe the Chicago-Omaha main might have been a nice thing to have now for coal and stack trains. (EL main, too with its substantial clearances to boot?)
tomtrain:
Also, with city zoning preferences being what they are now days, hitting the sizables on the outskirts of town would also be an advantage.
I find it kind of ironic. There was a recent post under an Erie heading that said he had hoped the Erie and Milwaukee Road would merge in the 70s. I have heard many of the same criticisms of the E that have been credited to the Milwaukee Road under this heading. I miss them both, so they share yet another similarity.
Gabe
The Milwaukee’s Puget Sound Extension was built from scratch. They purposfully avoided all the population centers because those towns and cities were already served by the NP, GN or both. The MILW decided to compete on transit time to the coast, and they built the shortest, fastest, and only continuous route from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest in the process. After that they built the branch lines.
Couldn’t agree more with all of your contentions, Mark. But, to steal a line from Trains–if scenery could pay the bills . . .
Your point about local bias is kind of why I am so taken by the Milwaukee Road. I will forever be an Illinois Central fan because of the bias you described. But, when the Milwaukee Road filed for bankruptcy, I was roughly 2 and I probably didn’t even see a rail that once belonged to the Milwaukee Road until roughly law school–yet I am drawn to it. I suppose that is why I like it–it bucks the trend.
Given my time machine, I would have to visit the Milwaukee Road in the “Fall.” I suppose the fact that I never got to see it and yet seem to have missed it by so little is what drives my choice. I don’t know if it is the orange diesles blending well with the landscape, but every time I see a picture of the Milwaukee Road during its final years, it has a swansong quality to it. Also, it would mean a lot to me to know that I would be seeing something that there are few traces of now days–in short, all we have lost.
I have always said the reason I love railroading is because it reminds me of everything we once were while simultaneously speaking to what we still may be. This post, and Mark’s ennunciation of how traffic has grown in the last 30 years and the difficulties in predicting how it will grow in the next 30 is why I will always keep coming back.
Gabe
Perhaps this is a dumb question – what about silk traffic? Not that it would have justified the whole financing of the extension – but it would have represented a cargo that rewarded fast and timely end-to-end service from the Pacific Northwest ports (in generally cool climate) through to a connection to Paterson (clearly an Erie thang!) or other areas where the mills were. Acetate rayon and other substitutes didn’t get a foothold til the late '30s, IIRC, and while my knowledge of silk trains is pretty much limited to the Freeload-Cubbard-style Railroad Magazine sort of coverage, I’d think that the CMStP&P would have been in an interesting position to provide competition…
Mark-
Since the Milwaukee Road was built 2-3 decades after the GN and NP they had access to “modern” earth moving equipment and could have build a superior alignment. I have never inspected the northern lines, but from you comments abour operating expense it appears that their alignment was inferior. Could this be that all the “good” valleys were already occupied or what. Could you expand on their quality of ROW?
Thanks
Mark,
If GE or EMD were significantly worse than the other, would one of them be a goner as well? You seemed to indicate in past posts, that locomotive manufacturers could hide under the price umberella of the superior manufactuer. Why can’t rail lines do this as well–especially when you consider that many have captive customers?
Is it that the excess capacity of the superior line makes the price umberella non-existant? When the Rio Grande–good choice for a favorite railroad–was in business, didn’t it compete well against competitors (at times, I realize), even though today most everyone would seem to acknowledge it was the inferior route? Are there regulatory forces at work here to explain this phenomenon?
Does this mean several of the Omaha - Chicago lines better start mortgaging their future–as well as either CSX’s or NS’s Chicago-New York main?
Say it ain’t so, Say it aint’ so.
Gabe
What a great website. Those are well written and entertaining stories. Makes you wonder what could have been, if only things could have held out just a few more years…when cross country intermodal could have ressurrected the fast line of the Milwaukee. Among other things.
Wow, great topic! I think that the Milwaukee’s birth, expansion, and eventual death is one of the most fascinating railroad stories ever. Though I really don’t remember much of the Milwaukee Road, most of my “memories” and knowledge have come vicariously through my brother, 12 years older than me, who is now a conductor on the Milwaukee Road… err, Canadian Pacific. (strangely, though, I do remember seeing on the news about the shutdown of the Rock Island when I was about 3 years old)
Jay,
Where is this branch? I have recently become interested in an old MILW branch that ran from the “first Wisconsin rail line” (currently the Wisconsin & Southern’s mainline from Waukesha to Milton Jct.) at Eagle to the old Racine & Southwestern at Elkhorn (currently the junction of the WSOR Elkhorn branch and the White River State Trail). It ran through Troy Center, and also had two other stations (?) at Mayhew and Pecks.
I found this line in SPV’s Atlas and roughly traced the line in the DeLorme Atlas, and even found a road called Peck Station Road! I would be interested in finding out more about this line, when it was abandoned, and what the purpose of the line was. I also noticed a quarry near the r-o-w.
Thanks!
-Mark Hintz
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken
For what it’'s worth, there are a few articles and books out there (CTC Board March 2000 issue, I think) that alledge manipulations of costs and revenue to purposely make the Puget Sound extension look bad.
Also, the Omaha mainline was originally in the first reorganization plan. The Kansas City line was to be abandoned. This changed before the 1980 cut back. I don’t know why the change, but my guess is 2 fold. First, the U S Government was pumping 4-R money into the CNW at the time. Second, the Rock Island was going completely out of business. The RI and MILW both operated lines from the Quad Cities to Kansas City, sharing trackage on both ends. The MILW picked up a lot of business. One MILW employe told me they couldn’t understand how the RI went bankrupt. He said at the time (early 80’s), the business the MILW picked up in the Quad Cities, Muscatine and the line to Iowa City (now IAIS) was bringing in half the revenue for the entire MILW core system.
Jeff
Good stories. As a Milwaukee Road employee for over 12 years I appreciate the comments. I worked in the Engineering Department for 10 years, first at the division offices in Savanna, ILlinois and Aberdeen, South Dakota and then in the corporate headquarters in Chicago. Later I was in the real estate department until the end.
One correction Mark. The Milwauke Road line from Chicago to Omaha did not go through the quad cities. That was the Rock Island now Iowa Interstate. The Milwaukee Road main line missed the big cities and crossed the Mississippi river at Savanna between Clinton and Dubuque.
Because the Milwaukee west coast line paralleled the NP for long distances across Montana, I had thought it would have been better to combine the NP with the Milwaukee instead of the GN. By eliminating the duplication, both the NP/Milwaukee combination and the GN might have made it as separate railroads. Because of the common ownership of the GN and NP that was probably not practical. The BN did acquire and I believe it still operates the Milwaukee line between Minneapolis and Terry, Montana. Except within the cities, most of the track west of Terry was eliminated.
I was at the closing of the sale of the eastern remainder of the Milwaukee lines to the Soo Line in 1985. We got court approval late in the afternoon and about 40 or 50 of us from both companies met and worked into the night. We delivered the deeds to the Soo Line just about midnight.
Larry
Mark (fb)
My property is north in Lincoln County. That branch ran from the Valley Line (exWC now CN) at Irma east to Gleason then south east through our property to a spot in northern Marathon County. Since I now live in Delavan I am familiar with the area that you are looking at, but haven’t tried to do any ROW locating for that line.
Jay
Thanks Mark. I often wondered why UP did not make a run at Milwaukee to give them coverage directly east from Seattle instead of through Salt Lake City. Their more circuitous route through SLC apparently was cheaper to operate than the Milwaukee.
Since I’ve given up trying to find my copy of “Milwaukee Road West”, I’ll post a few observations regarding Milwaukee’s Puget Sound extension.
It is true that the Milwaukee profile from Minneapolis to Harlowtown MT was and is still the best of the Northwest transcons. Even the route west out of Harlowtown to Lombard MT had only a 1.4% westbound and 1% eastbound ruling grade, and was a situation where the Milwaukee took advantage of an existing rail grade of the Montana Central to cut down on construction costs.
However, from Lombard on west to Puget Sound one can only scratch one’s head at the thoughts of the locating engineers. Instead of taking either the easiest route south-southwest along the Jefferson and Big Hole Rivers to Deer Lodge Pass (el 5901’, used by UP for it’s Butte line) OR following the Boulder River to Basin MT and then paralleling GN’s Butte extension over Elk Park Pass (el 6368’, westbound grade 1%), the Milwaukee instead built a convaluted line over Pipestone Pass (el 6453’) at a 1.9% grade to reach Butte. Granted, the Pipestone Pass route was the shortest, but if you are going to build a railroad with the easiest possible alignment for 1000 miles from Minnesota, at least keep a consistent philosophy and stay that course!
Also, it was well known at the time that the next lowest crossing of the Continental Divide (after GN’s Marias Pass) in Montana was over Rogers Pass (el 5610’) southwest of Great Falls. Although also slightly out of the way, it still would have made more sense for the Milwaukee to take this alignment than the chosen route over Pipestone Pass through Butte, but possibly Milwaukee saw mineral transportation from the Butte mines as a potential money maker.
After that first line locating fiasco around Butte, the Milwaukee’s line from Butte to Missoula (paralleling the NP) had a real nice alignment. Instead of taking the logical route over Lolo Pass (el 5235’) which would have given the Milwaukee an entire region all to its