Out of curiosity, I wondered if this was ever a possibility. Could it have worked? Would it have worked? If it was a possibility, what caused it to not happen?
Sort of doubt it. WP was not a big money maker, and the Rock was in and out of financial stress most of it’s life. CB&Q traffic to the Moffet line and MP traffic to the Tennessee pass line were the big drivers of the Rio Grande Acing them out of that traffic to the east may have made them route their trains to the UP.
Jim
MP would have been paired with WP/DRGW under the flawed Ripley/Prince Plan. CRIP would have been matched up with Frisco. Barriger had concerns about the eastern CRIP spiderweb IIRC. (bears out JRB’s comment)
It’s an interesting “alternate history” idea that would make a great theme for a “proto-freelanced” model railroad…
Could be an outgrowth of the real life proposed merger of the C&NW, Milwaukee Road, and Rock Island (though that scheme involved selling everything south of Kansas City to ATSF)…
The Rio Grande was the only one of the three with the wherewithal to initiate such a merger, and they were rather conservative. They survived on originating traffic and a share of Q/ BN grain bridge traffic (that is why you saw DRGW PS1 hoppers when the Rio Grande had no grain in their area, it was price of being in a pool with WP and BN). The Rock Island actually used Denver North Yard as their terminal, connecting to their UP/KP trackagae rights on the Rock Island “Belt Line” which ran EW just north of I-70 between North Yard and the UP near Monoco, there still was a Rock Island neon sign on the side of the yard tower in the eighties. My uncle was a brakeman on the Rio Grande and I recall him talking about what junk the Rock Island’s units were. Rio Grande bought the Belt Line between North Yard and the UP Cheyenne line after the Rock Island failed (most of the rest is a short line, Denver Rock Island) and considered buying the line across Kansas to Omaha and Kansas City. But that track was awful, even the RI hotshot parts train avoided it, running on the UP from Omaha,t o Salt Lake, short hauling themselves. The merger you mention might have made sense if the Rock Island hadn’t let themselves go to attract a merger partner.
Man, am I getting rusty; I can’t recall that proposed linkup. But what did ATSF need with the Rock south of Kansas City? (It was SP who needed and ended up with that.)
I
It would have given them a line between Amarillo and Memphis, and between Kansas City and St. Louis, which they craved and had been denied (being blocked from merging with the Frisco, etc).
(1) Not the Cheyenne line (Denver Pacific); try the Kansas Pacific Line at Sandown (in from Limon); (2) Don’t look now, but UP has an operating easement from Sandown to Belt Jcn. (in exchange, DRIR got UP’s stockyards lead and N. Washington Industrial Park); (3) NorthWest Terminal RR (NWT) was built by D&SL (absorbed in the 1947 consolidation) and later phased out by DRGW/SP…
BellevilleKS -Limon CO was good railroad, poorly maintained.
In the late 1960s the RI had for a short time a Ford train from St. Louis to Denver. It didn’t last too long because of deteriorating track conditions.
Jeff
It would have been interesting to see a RI+DRGW+WP if they could have worked some sort of haulage agreement with CB&Q Denver-Omaha. East of Omaha the RI was in better shape, and the old CB&Q line was busy with coal trains anyway. Anything would have been better than a virtual monopoly in the central corridor (UP).
I don’t know, Mike; UP obviously had to get to Chicago, and in fact was the last of the transcons to do so. It’s shocking that it took them so long. They could have really lost out.
“Monopoly” is a consideration only if you discount the former CB&Q line and the road by which the majority of Omaha-Chicago freight traffic moves to this day, which is I-80.
Interesting, I’m not sure if it was there then but there is a big car unloading area right about where the RI went into the DRGW North Yard, I’ll bet that was the destination. I saw the RI across Missouri in 1979 or so, my parents went to the Ozarks every summer, it was not only in rough shape, but very curvy. One of the regulars here posted something a while back about being part of a group trying to buy it (it is still there after 35 years without trains). He said that the Rock Island had derailments toward the end and just left the cars there and built a shoo-fly around it, and that some of them were still sitting there. Can you imagine a shipper: where is my car?
While the UP once looked at RI as a Chicago link, they finally chose C&NW.
BNSF’s former CB&Q line to Denver only crosses half the central corridor. Although they have trackage rights to cross the rest of the corridor, they seem to have a very minor presence there. When DRGW was independant they had an alternative soda ash loading facility (Green River?) which competed with UP. Although they were not a big player in that trade, it made the UP price that commodity competitively. Once UP got the Grande, the commodity became captive again. I qualified my original statement by saying virtual monopoly. By context, the inference was we were talking about rail.
…now it’s BNSF Parachute (not Green River)…Roper-Denver turns still busy in there.
The Moffat line might not have happened had there not been a friendly CB&Q. (Gore Canyon war)…And DRGW might be very different if CB&Q had built into western Colorado. Their surveyors were there 2-4 years ahead of the D&RG guys. (first into Aspen and Glenwood Canyon, although they never built after a financial panic left them vulnerable)
“Over by Vasquez” turns out to be either UP Junction (3.10, where the connection to the NB UP Greeley sub is) or UP Transfer (4.06). Both are either original NWT(EDBL)/D&SL/DRGW or original UP. CRIP never owned either or had rights to either. (Belt, MP 2.76 is where CRIP connected to the NWT circa February 1951 in conjunction with the 1948 North Yard construction/ reconfiguration.
The east Denver Belt Line was built by North Western Terminal RR (by DNWP/D&SL forces) in 1912-13. The only piece of NWP built by others west of UP-Conn to Belt was part of the wye connection at Utah Junction (Original DL&NW built in 1909 that died circa 1922, but was another victim of USRA traffic manipulation in the first World War, similar to Colorado Midland…) Add -in the D&I/C&S squirrels nest of interurban tracks in there (Utah Jcn-/Modern-Globeville) and you have corned-fusion.
Trying to go east from UP Jcn to Pullman (on the DP "Greeley Sub) to east on the KP towards Limon is an ugly move with a long train. (Knuckle buster and operational mechanical nightmare, thus UP acquiring the old CRIP Belt Line operating easement from DRIR/COE)
Sorry, Mike; I thought we were talking Omaha-Chicago, not transcon.
I can’t remember the details anymore, I do know that RI parked their engines in DRGW’s North Yard, it may be that the west end was DRGW owned all along. The Rio Grande bought some of the RI Belt and leased all the rest for a time until the DRI to
I meant to comment on this, the excellent Bollinger/Bauer The Moffat Road book (I have one ten feet from me now) talks a lot about the importance of the Burlington, what at that time was the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad. The importance of that connection historically may be why the DRGW wouldn’t consider a Rock Island purchase, even decades later when the connection had declined with the BN merger. My great grandfather helped build the Moffat Tunnel (my grandmother grew up in East Portal), and my grandfather was a fireman for the Rio Grande during the 40’s, until my grandmother talked him into getting off the extra board, they later lived in Pinecliffe overlooking the railroad, where my parents live now.
The DRGW did eventually reach Kansas City by rights over the exMP, a condition of the UP-MP-WP acquisition IIRC. I’m thinking the price and then money needed for upgrading the RI was the big reason the DRGW passed it up.
From what I’ve seen about the Ford train, it was traffic that went to the DRGW. Not just for delivery to local Denver points.
Jeff
The Rock Island was a better route, it followed river valleys and had large grain shippers, the MP was the last built and ran up and over ridges, and there isn’t as much grain (or other business) in southern Kansas. If the Rio Grande had been able to look into a crystal ball and see the future I’ll bet they would have bought the RI line, it would have been cheaper than maintaining the ex-MP Hosington district themselves (UP told them toward the end that they would perform any maintenance the SP would pay for, and since Moyers didn’t want to pay for any it didn’t get any, it was as bad as the Rock Island toward the end). But also in 1980 Rio Grande couldn’t have predicted that the UP/MP/WP merger would wreck a good chunk of their bridge traffic. That Ford traffic probably bypassed them completely after the merger, going through Wyoming instead.