The
Milwaukee Road, officially the
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad
(
CMStP&P RR) , was a
Class I railroad that operated in the
Midwest and
Northwest of the United States from 1847
until its merger into the
Soo Line
Railroad on January 1, 1986. The company went through several
official names and faced bankruptcy several times in that period.
While the
railroad does not exist as a separate entity anymore, it is still
commemorated in buildings like the historic Milwaukee Road Depot
in Minneapolis
, Minnesota and in railroad hardware still
maintained by railfans, such as the Milwaukee Road 261 steam locomotive.
History
The Milwaukee Road appeared as the
Milwaukee and Waukesha
Railroad when incorporated in 1847, but soon changed its
name to
Milwaukee and Mississippi.
After three years, the
first train ran from Milwaukee
to Wauwatosa
, Wisconsin, and the first passenger train ran on
February 25, 1851. Critical to the development and financing
of the railroad was the acquisition of significant land grants.
Prominent individual investors in the line included
Alexander Mitchell,
Russell Sage,
Jeremiah Milbank and
William Rockefeller. In 1874, the name
was changed to
Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul.
By 1887,
the railroad had lines running through Wisconsin
, Minnesota
, Iowa
, South Dakota
, and the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan. Contrary to the common name of
the railroad, its headquarters were in Chicago, Illinois, and not
in Milwaukee. The company General Offices were located in the
Railway Exchange building in Chicago until 1924, at which time they
moved to Chicago Union Station.
Expansion
In the 1890s, the Milwaukee's directors increasingly felt that they
had to extend the railroad to the Pacific in order to remain
competitive with other roads. A survey in 1901 estimated costs to
build to the Pacific Northwest as $45 million. In 1905, the board
approved the Pacific Extension, now estimated at $60 million. The
contract for the westernmost part of the route was awarded to
Horace Chapin Henry of Seattle.
Construction began in 1906 and was completed in 1909. The route
chosen was to be 18 miles shorter than the shortest competitor's,
as well as better grades than some. It was an expensive route,
however, since the Milwaukee, receiving few land grants, had to buy
most of the land or acquire smaller railroads. In addition, the two
main mountain ranges that had to be crossed (the
Rockies and the
Cascades) required major civil engineering
works and the use of additional locomotive power. The completion of
2,300 miles of railroad through some of the most varied topography
in the nation in only three years was a major feat. (It should be
noted that original company maps denote five mountain crossings:
Belts, Rockies,
Bitterroots,
Saddles and Cascades. These are slight misnomers as the 'Belt
Mountains' and Bitterroots are part of the Rocky Mountains.
In fact,
the route did not cross over the Little Belts
or Big Belts
but over the Lenep-Loweth Ridge between the
Castle Mountains and the Crazy Mountains.)
Some historians question the choice of route, however, since it
bypassed some population centers and passed through areas with
limited local traffic potential. Much of the line paralleled the
Northern Pacific Railroad.
It was primarily a long-haul route.
Electrification
The Milwaukee soon found that operation of steam locomotives over
the mountain passes was difficult, with winter temperatures that
reached −40 °F.
Electrification seemed to be
the answer, especially with abundant hydro-electric power in the
mountains and a ready source of copper on-line at Anaconda
, Montana. In 1914, electrification began between
Harlowton
, Montana and Avery
,
Idaho. The first electric train ran in 1915 between
Three
Forks
and Deer Lodge
, Montana. The system used a 3,000 volt
direct-current (DC) overhead line.
In 1917,
the board approved the construction of a separate electrified
district between Othello and
Tacoma
, Washington, extended to Seattle in 1927.
The two electrified districts were never connected, but a total of
656 route-miles (1,056 km) of railroad were electrified,
making it the largest electrified railroad in the US.
The electrification was successful from an engineering and
operational standpoint, but the cost of building the Puget Sound
Extension and electrification had cost $257 million, not the $45
million the road had originally budgeted for reaching the Pacific.
The debt load and reduced revenues brought the road to bankruptcy
in 1925.
In 1927, the road launched its second edition of the
Olympian as a premier luxury
limited passenger train and opened its first railroad-owned tourist
hotel, The
Gallatin Gateway Inn
in Montana. The railroad was re-organized as the Chicago,
Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company in January 1928
and officially adopted the familiar trade name The Milwaukee
Road.
The company had hardly a chance to make anything of its fresh start
before the
Great Depression hit.
Despite innovations such as the famous
Hiawatha high-speed trains
that reached speeds of over 100 mph, the road again filed for
bankruptcy in 1935. The Milwaukee operated under trusteeship until
December 1, 1945.
Postwar
Relative success followed the war. The railroad
dieselized in the mid-1950s, replacing most
steam locomotives by 1955 and retiring the last in 1957. Other
modernizations included modern freight yards. In association with
Union Pacific Railroad, the
Milwaukee took over operations of the "Cities" – the
City of Los Angeles, the
City of San
Francisco, the
City of
Denver, the
City of
Portland, as well as the all-coach
Challenger from the
Chicago and North
Western Railway.
1960s
The whole railroad industry found itself in decline in the late
1950s and the 1960s, but the Milwaukee was hit particularly hard.
The Midwest was overbuilt with too many competing roads, while the
competition on the transcontinental routes to the Pacific was
extremely tough as well. The premier transcontinental streamliner,
the
Olympian Hiawatha,
despite the innovative scenic observation cars was cancelled in
1961, becoming the first visible casualty. The resignation of
President
John P. Kiley in 1957 and his replacement with the
fairly inexperienced
William John
Quinn was a pivotal moment; from that point onward, the road's
management was fixated on merger with another railroad as the
solution to the Milwaukee's problems.
Railroad mergers had to be approved by the
Interstate Commerce
Commission, however, and in 1969 the ICC effectively blocked
the merger with the
Chicago and North Western
Railway (C&NW) that the Milwaukee Road had counted on and
had been planning for since 1964. The ICC asked for terms that the
C&NW was not willing to agree to. The merger of the "Hill
Lines" — the
Northern Pacific, the
Great Northern, and
the
Burlington Route, as well as
the
Spokane,
Portland & Seattle Railway — was approved at around the
same time, and the merged
Burlington
Northern came into being on March 3, 1970, completely
surrounding the Milwaukee Road.
Early 1970s
Almost immediately after the BN merger, the owners of the C&NW
offered to sell the railroad to the Milwaukee outright. The
Milwaukee board rejected the offer, even though it would have given
them what they had wanted throughout most of the previous decade,
stating that they now believed only merger with a larger system —
not a slightly smaller one — could save the railroad. Almost
immediately, the road filed with the ICC to be included in the
Union Pacific merger with the
Chicago, Rock Island
and Pacific Railroad. Nothing came of this, nor other attempts
to force the Milwaukee into other mergers against the desires of
the other participants.
Fortunately for the Milwaukee, the BN merger required opening more
markets to competitors, and in 1971-73, the MILW's traffic on its
Pacific Extension increased substantially, although the reverse was
true on its Midwest lines. The railroad's foothold on
transcontinental traffic leaving the Port of Seattle increased so
exponentially that the Milwaukee Road held a staggering advantage
over BN carrying nearly 80% of the originating traffic along with
50% of the total container traffic leaving the Puget Sound (prior
to severe service declines after roughly 1974). The deferred
maintenance on the railroad's physical plant, however, which had
been building up all through the 1960s as the road attempted to
polish its financial appearance for merger, was beginning to cause
problems. The road's financial problems were exacerbated by their
practice of improving its earnings during that period by selling
off its wholly owned cars to financial institutions and leasing
them back. The lease charges became steeper and steeper, and more
and more cars needed to be sold off in order to pay for the lease
payments. The railroad's fleet of cars was becoming older and older
because more money was being spent on finance payments for the old
cars than on buying new ones. This, in turn, contributed to car
shortages that turned away business.
De-electrification
In February 1973, and against the advice of studies conducted by
both the railroad and independent groups, the Milwaukee decided to
scrap its electrification scheme. The board of directors considered
the electrification scheme an impediment to its merger and
consolidation plans, and that the money required to maintain it
would be better spent elsewhere. The high copper prices of time,
and the $10 million the railroad estimated it would get for selling
off the copper overhead wire, contributed to the decision.
The surveys had found that an investment of $39 million could have
closed the "gap" between the two electrified districts, bought new
locomotives, and upgraded the electrical equipment all along the
line. Furthermore, the displaced diesel locomotives could have been
used elsewhere and thus reduced the requirement to purchase new,
reducing the true cost of the plan to only $18 million.
General Electric even proposed underwriting
the financing because of the railroad's financial position.
Rejecting this, the railroad dismantled its electrification just as
the
1973 oil crisis took hold. By
1974, when the electrification was shut down, the electric
locomotives operated at half the cost of the diesels that replaced
them. Worse, the railroad had to spend $39 million, as much as the
GE-sponsored revitalization plan, to buy more diesel locomotives to
replace the electrics, and only received $5 million for the copper
scrap since prices had fallen.
The badly-maintained track, which was the part of the system most
in need of renewal, was never touched.
Decline to bankruptcy
Things did not get much better after the electrification was
dismantled. By 1977, much of the Pacific Extension was under slow
orders due to the condition of the track, and transit times had
almost tripled. Cars needing repair were being sidelined for lack
of money, and locomotives needing major service were being parked.
The road filed for bankruptcy for the third time on December 19,
1977.
The bankruptcy resulted in the Milwaukee abandoning the Pacific
Extension completely in 1980 and restructuring as a small regional
line, which was eventually taken over by the
Soo Line Railroad in 1985. However, the
ICC's auditors discovered (too late, as it were) that for some
reason the Pacific Extension's expenses had been double-entered
during most of the 1970s. Far from the unprofitable boat-anchor the
railroad and the bankruptcy trustees said it was, the ICC found
that the Pacific Extension had been returning a profit to the
railroad even through 1977 and 1978, at which time traffic was
severely down due to the road's problems.
In Washington State, the Milwaukee Road right-of-way was acquired
by the state and is used as a non-motorized recreational trail
called the
John Wayne Pioneer
Trail. It is currently managed by the Washington State Parks
and Recreation Commission and by the Washington State Department of
Natural Resources. The corridor is effectively "railbanked" under
state legislation that allows for the potential reversion to rail
usage in the future along with the creation of an alternative route
for a cross-state non-motorized recreational trail.
In the
Bitterroot Mountains
between Loop Creek, Idaho and East Portal, Montana, a 14.5 mile
(23.3 km) section of the right-of-way was purchased by the
USDA Forest Service (see
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company Historic
District). It was made into a bike trail, known as the
Route of the Hiawatha
Trail.
Regional railroad, 1981–85
The restructured Milwaukee Road proved no more profitable than the
previous, losing money every year. Competition by other, larger
railroads for control of the Great Lakes area attracted a bidding
war for purchase of the railroad in 1984, with the C&NW and the
Soo bidding up the prices. On February 21, 1985, railroad
operations were sold to the
Soo
Line Corporation, which reorganized the property as
The
Milwaukee Road, Inc., and on January 1, 1986, the company
was merged into the
Soo Line
Railroad. , a few locomotives transferred as part of the sale
to the Soo Line remain in the Milwaukee's paint scheme, sans the
Milwaukee Road logo.
Epilogue
An aging
The Milwaukee Road
logo on a trestle still in use near Rosalia, Washington
The successor-in-interest to what remained of the Milwaukee Road
after the Soo Line sale was its holding company, the Chicago
Milwaukee Corporation (CMC). This Corporation's primary function
was now to dispose of Milwaukee Road rolling stock and real estate
not sold to the Soo Line, primarily former urban rail yard
locations in cities such as Milwaukee and Minneapolis. These
properties were developed into big-box retail or industrial sites.
The CMC itself was beset with legal and financial woes, filing for
bankruptcy (under its new name CMC Heartland Partners) as a result
of environmental cleanup costs and liabilities at former Milwaukee
Road sites.
Passenger train service
The Milwaukee Road aggressively marketed passenger service through
much of its history, maintaining a high quality of service until
the end of private intercity passenger operations in 1971. The
Milwaukee prided itself on its passenger operations, providing the
nation with some of its most innovative and colorful trains. The
railroad's home-built equipment was among some of the best
passenger equipment ever run on any American railroad. The
Milwaukee's reputation for high quality service was the principal
reason that the Union Pacific shifted its service to the Milwaukee
Road for its "City" streamliners in 1955.
The Milwaukee Road's
Pioneer Limited was one of the first
named trains and its colorful
Hiawatha trains were among
the nation's finest streamliners. The post-World War II
Hiawatha trains remain a high water mark for passenger
train industrial design.
Starting in November, 1955 the Milwaukee Road assumed joint
operation of the Union Pacific's
City of Los Angeles,
City of Portland,
City of Denver, and
Challenger trains as well
as the Union Pacific/Southern Pacific
City of San Francisco.
After assuming operation of the UP's services, the Milwaukee Road
gradually dropped its orange and maroon paint scheme in favor of
UP's Armour yellow, grey, and red, finding the latter easier to
keep clean.
The Milwaukee Road's streamlined passenger services are unique in
that most of its equipment was built by the railroad at its
Milwaukee Menomonee Valley shops including the four generations of
Hiawatha equipment introduced in 1933-34, 1935, 1937-38,
and 1947-48. Most striking were the "beavertail" observation cars
of the 1930s and the "Skytop Lounge" observation cars by industrial
designer
Brooks Stevens in the 1940s.
Extended "Skytop Lounge" cars were also ordered from Pullman for
Olympian Hiawatha service in 1951. The
Olympian
Hiawatha set was later sold to the
Canadian National Railway.
Postage stamp
On August 26, 1999, the United States Postal Service issued the
33-cent
All
Aboard! 20th Century American
Trains commemorative stamps featuring five celebrated
American passenger trains from the 1930s and 1940s.
One of the five stamps
featured an image of the Hiawatha, known as "Fastest
Train in America", as it traveled over on its daily run connecting
Chicago
, Milwaukee
, Wisconsin and the Twin
Cities
.
See also
References
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