What happened to The Rock Island?
In Two words… No dice!
The old cliche that said the Rock Island went to all the same places as the Burlington but the long way around has more than a little truth to it. The Rock Island was never financially strong and in the postwar merger era it seemed more interested in staying alive until somebody else picked it up. One could describe it as the Erie Lackawanna of the Midwest.
Among many fans in the Chicago area, the Crown family is considered one of the villains in the final collapse of the Rock Island as a railroad. The family was a major bondholder and pushed long and hard for liquidation to get their money back. Bondholders are secured creditors so they are first in line in a bankruptcy liquidation.
The Midwest simply had too many railroads. The weakest of the weak got to disapear. The Crown’s control meant the CRIP paid the highest dividends in the railroad industry from 1955-1965 but never put a dime into locomotives or cars.
Wow. I never knew that it was that complicated. And by complicated I mean I am a kid, and don’t know alot about industry and trains yet. Wow.
Don’t have the info right in front of me, so someone can correct me if I don’t remember this exactly, but along with the “Rock Island was nothing but a poor man’s Burlington” idea which has already been mentioned, there was also the problem of the Union Pacific wanting to acquire or merge with the Rock Island in 1964. When this happened, the RI management began what I believe is referred to as the deferred maintenance program…which if I recall was a theory of why spend money on the upkeep of the Rock Island when UP would sweep in eventually and let them spend the money needed to fix the tracks. Apparently no one foresaw that it would take the ICC (?) until 1975 (?) to deny the application, and by then the Rock Island was in a mess.
Add in an ill-fated image fixing problem, where ex-employees felt a lot of money was wasted on blue paint, a strike in 1979, the railroad industry as a whole was in a bit of a slump in the '70s and then here comes the oil crisis in 1979…too much to overcome. Like a previous poster said, someone had to go.
Funny someone had to go but we still have the same ammounts of trackage. Lets see how many to Omaha in the 70s out of Chicago? C&NW, BN, RI, IC, Mil. Today UP,BNSF,IAIS,CN but no Mil? Seems all that redundant track is still there, kinda odd for that argument.
The Rock went under for a number of reasons, and not only the Crowns but the wonderful BRAC strike and the Judge saying ( with money out being topped by money in and a list of assests not even looked at)well you cant reorganize.
I know that if I work for a company with a Crown family member in it I would be looking for a new job. Guess who was on the board at Maytag in Galesburg. Old Henry’s kid.Like worthless father like worthless son ( actually probably worth billions but you get my point)
If you do not think there were too many railroads in the Midwest take a look at a map. Iowa say their mileage went from 7,731 in 1974 to 4,163 today. http://www.iowarail.com/industry/history.asp That is a drop of 46%! Other states in the Midwest have had the same expierence.
Actually the ICC approved UP’s acquisition of the Rock Island in 1975 but UP backed out when they saw what condition the railroad was in by that time. Eventually the UP got some big chunks of the Rock Island anyway when they merged the MKT, CNW and SP.
Kinda figured I might have forgotten exactly what happened with that, (the ICC and UP in '75) so I used a ? there. Thanks for giving the correct information. I should be more careful.
Adding my two cents. The amount of trackage between Chicago and Omaha are only a part of it. The Milwaukee was saddled with the the pacific extension that I think had a hand in starting the ball rolling toward the end. The Rock just didn’t fit well into many of the prefered routes in the 70’s. Also prt of it was who was running the road. C&NW could have just as likely have been one to go under but got lucky with good leadership and the ability to eventually get into the Powder River area, which lead it to become part of UP eventually. If UP had gone with the Rock a little earlier the C&NW route could have been the route of the IAIS. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time in the 70’s could very easily push t a railroad over the edge.
As mentioned, the Midwest (Iowa, in particular) had WAY too many RRs. The CRIPpled had too much competition, so it cut down on track maintinance, and trains slowed to a crawl, so, RI filed bankrupcy for the third and final time in 1975, and shut down in 79-80.
Part of all the granger roads problems was that they were the middlemen between the western transcons that originated EB traffic and the eastern trunk lines that originated WB. The RI had some good routes, I believe-Chicago/Omaha was OK, Chicago/Tucumcari and Twin Cities/Kansas City were all viable, I think. A big problem was that their most likely connections really didn’t have any compelling reason to use the RI. The CB&Q, being part of the Hill Lines had a pretty good presumption of traffic from the NP & GN. The Milwaukee Road built it’s own Pacific Coast Extension to secure traffic (for those that haven’t visited that thread lately, the wildfires have died down and there are some good discussions about line relocations now in progress). The UP scored by getting a settlement from the abortive Harriman Lines merger with SP in the 1910’s by an agreement with SP to turn over 40% of their originating traffic from an area of northern California to UP for movement east, along with whatever traffic the UP gathered from it’s Portland and Los Angeles lines (someone more familiar with that, please fill in the details/corrections for me-thanks!) UP could (and did) use the C&NW for it’s Omaha/Chicago connection-eventually merging it into the UP-and SP used it’s Cotton Belt route to get the long haul to St. Louis for eastern connections, giving those two lines steady traffic volumes. I seem to recall reading an estimate that perhaps 75% of RI’s trackage is in use but for different owners. As a single system the CRI&P may have been an also ran but it apparantly had many good parts.
What was kind of neat about the whole thing, is that they kept an SW1500 and 3 GP9s around I believe, to move cars to the new owners, and start making deadlines and stuff. So after the Rock shut down, they were still working a little bit. Heres a shot of what im talking about. http://railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=145886 Alec
Andrew:
Lots of good comments here about why the Rock Island failed. I really dont have too much to add to it except that the Crown family’s interest has been and continues to be about the CROWN FAMILY. No surprize there. It should be, as should be all of our interests.
Lets face it, the Rock was a weak railroad. It didnt have a strong franchise on much…perhaps it’s route structure in Chicago (starting on the south side) gave it a head start going west. It also generated some good traffic in the Muscatine, Iowa area, but for the most part there was nothing special.
Do a couple of things for yourself this summer. First, purchase an old Official Guide. You can get them on Ebay pretty cheap. Get one from the late 50’s/early 60’s and study the maps of the carriers.
Second go to your liabrary and check out Richard Saunder’s books on mergers. He covers the mergers of the railroads from about 1900 on to current. Excellent reading.
ed
Just as perspective —
When the UP went to the Government Regulators to get the OK to take over the Rock Island it was in pretty good shape and was the UP’s first choice of a route to get Chicago access - that was when I was in the 6th grade.
When the regulators finally made a decision I was in graduate school.
And that time included two years service to Uncle Sam before grad school.
It was a bad joke.
Some of the Rock Island’s problems go way back to the late 1800s when the railroad was expanding. For a time, one of the RI’s presidents (Tracy, I think) was also at the same time, an officer on the CNW. Some investors were involved in both lines. The RI was initially ahead in building across Iowa. It stalled out and the CNW beat them to Council Bluffs by about 2 years.
Later on, during the time of the Cable ( I think) presidency, the railroad stopped acquiring land for industrial development. During his time the RI leased it’s way into many major citys via trackage rights instead of building their own line. His idea was for the RI to be a bridge line. Let other carriers do the terminal switching and switch the loads to the RI for line haul. I think that these actions came back to haunt the railroad in the later years.
I think one of the few good periods of management were during the Farrington years, mid 1930s to the mid 1950s. When he retired, Jenks took over for a few years. When Jenks left, Farrington came back until a replacement could be found. Farrington died in early 1960s and I think with him the last chance for the RI to have survived on it’s own. It seems the next management teams were only focused on selling the property to someone else.
Even then, they focused too much on the UP/RI merger. When it started to drag, they should’ve looked for other options. They had convinced themselves it was the UP or nothing and nothing (except for some of the stock/bond holders) was what they got.
Even if things had worked out differently, the RI would’ve eventually wound up as part of someone else, probably the UP. I see that Trains places the RI in the UP family tree. That’s not true. The UP wound up with much of the RI’s surviving mains, but thru acquiring the SP/SSW, MKT and CNW. The RI corporate structure eventually went to Maytag. Sadly,
Supposedly, “the Rock Island Railroad” is back running.
Wonder what a Maytag locomotive would have looked like? [:D]
Since my last post, the IAIS did a heritage unit. Also one, that while not an actual heritage unit, has a Rock Island inspired paint scheme.
That new company operating under the CRI&P name has been discussed on some of my RI groups. Not a whole lot of information, but appears to be a short line/contract switching outfit starting up. I see they’re looking for engineers and conductors for “future” needs. I don’t think I’ll send a resume.
Jeff