What if the Milwaukee Road didn't de-energize the Pacific Extension

[fredmcain]

I think what is truly unfortunate is that the ROW was not preserved in a reclaimable form. It is understandable that a fully maintained track cannot be retained when there is no traffic. But the unfortunate penny wise pound foolish way in which taxation was structure in many places ensure the destruction of ROWs almost as quickly as the track became non-viable.

Good thoughts, jis, I fully agree !

 

[fredmcain]

<SNIP>. I live in Southeast Arizona. This area has never recovered from the 1961 severing of the SP’s EP&SW south line through Douglas. It has been devastating to the whole county and change the economic equation to the worse. We need to stop pulling up railroads willy nilly. This is the harm caused by the Staggers Act which is our equivalent of Britain’s Beeching Axe which is severely hurting Britain to this day.

Tod,

Most interesting. You see although I now live in northern Indiana, I largely grew up in Arizona in the Tucson and Phoenix areas. I have always lamented the loss of the Douglas or "south line" as the SP used to call it.

In my own personal, honest and humble opinion, this is yet another example of how managers have trouble seeing more than about ten years into the future. Had the line survived, they could have organized a directional system with all westbounds moving over the north line and all eastbounds over the south line and vice versa. That could perhaps have obviated the need to double track the North Line. Then an added plus would've been to keep rail freight service in southeastern Arizona.

It might not have helped matters much that back in the 1960s, the State of Arizona imposed some of the highest property taxes on rail lines in the country. At one point the SP and AT&SF brought suit against the state. I do not remember how that litigation was resolved.

But what's truly intriguing is that the YouPee, a few years ago, repurchased the abandoned right of way. For what? I have no idea. If I were to ask they prbly wouldn't tell me anyhow. I don't know if they reacquired the entire thing or just Benson to Douglas.

 

[fredmcain]

More fantasylanding from Mark Meyer. It's hardly even worth commenting on.

<SNIP>

Mark Meyer believes in the "just world" fantasy. He wants to believe that whatever has happened, must have made sense. This isn't true. All kinds of idiotic nonsense happens. History is a series of accidents.

<SNIP>

Not sure if I should type this or not - perhaps moderation can delete if they wish. But I just have to say that I have had some correspondence, well, a lot of correspondence, really, with people who had worked for the Milwaukee and were inside the Company. They have told me that Mr. Meyer is just plain flat wrong. Oh, sure, he does his homework extremely well, but the conclusions he draws are not right. There are no doubt people who would agree with Mr. Meyer and both they and Meyer are certainly entitled to their opinions. But that doesn't make their opinions fact.

Can I prove them wrong? No. I don't even want to try but I trust those who have told me that he's wrong.

Regards,
Fred M. Cain

 

[Mark Meyer]

I think what is truly unfortunate is that the ROW was not preserved in a reclaimable form. It is understandable that a fully maintained track cannot be retained when there is no traffic. But the unfortunate penny wise pound foolish way in which taxation was structured in many places ensured the destruction of ROWs almost as quickly as the track became non-viable.

This could be true to a certain extent. I think a national transportation policy - especially for present and future passenger routes - would be beneficial. Examples are the Big Four Route from Kankakee to Indianapolis and the ex-SAL route from Petersburg, VA to Norlina, NC. But beyond that, it gets complex, especially considering that the government provides all the infrastructure for the railroads' competition, and that most of the freight railroads' infrastructure is privately-owned. So, there has to be judgment calls somewhere. In the case of this topic, if it was widely acknowledged that extra freight railroad capacity was needed across the Northern Tier and the goal was to draw as much traffic away from truckers, why would anyone contemplate rebuilding the Milwaukee (the higher cost route than BNSF) rather than simply adding capacity to the lower cost route?

 

[Mark Meyer]

I live in Southeast Arizona. This area has never recovered from the 1961 severing of the SP’s EP&SW south line through Douglas. It has been devastating to the whole county and change the economic equation to the worse. We need to stop pulling up railroads willy nilly. This is the harm caused by the Staggers Act which is our equivalent of Britain’s Beeching Axe which is severely hurting Britain to this day.

Well just to interject some reality here: The Staggers Act was enacted on October 14, 1980. The EP&SW ceased as a through route in 1961, and the Milwaukee Road west of Miles City in March of 1980. Therefore, the concept of time being what it is, the mere suggestion that these two railroads disappearing were as a result of the yet-to-be-enacted Staggers Act is ridiculous.

In regard to the EP&SW, railroads exist to serve customers. The loss of the railroad is linked to the loss of customers, in this case, mining and smelting. That reality aside, other than property taxes, what specific benefit would there be today just having trains running through Douglas on their way between Tucson and El Paso? And what should the government have done to force SP (later UP) to keep both routes? And should whatever entity that forced continued operation via Douglas have been required to compensate SP for the additional expense associated with doing so? And more specifically, why do you think the Sunset Route needed this alternative route in this area, but not elsewhere?

For those unfamiliar, the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was a railroad acquired by the Southern Pacific. It was built primarily to serve the rich (mostly copper) in the Douglas and Bisbee areas. As a Southern Pacific entity, it was referred to as the "South Line" in reference to the Sunset Route (current UP route) to the north (routes between El Paso and Tucson). The "South Line" slower, curvier, and 30 miles longer than the North Line. Douglas and Bisbee did retain service after the route was severed, becoming a branch line from Benson. Currently, all that's left is 7 miles of track from Benson. The North Line continues as UP's Southern transcontinental, and is access to two ex-SP branchlines (now the Arizona Eastern Railroad) at Bowie, AZ and Lordsburg, NM as well as the Southwestern Railroad at Deming, NM (a BNSF connection via Rincon).

 

[Mark Meyer]

But I just have to say that I have had some correspondence, well, a lot of correspondence, really, with people who had worked for the Milwaukee and were inside the Company. They have told me that Mr. Meyer is just plain flat wrong. Oh, sure, he does his homework extremely well, but the conclusions he draws are not right. There are no doubt people who would agree with Mr. Meyer and both they and Meyer are certainly entitled to their opinions. But that doesn't make their opinions fact.

Well, Fred, you can believe as you wish, and you have demonstrated that you do. I know of the people you speak, and there is no greater verification of my point of view than their thinking I'm wrong. But it's not about homework, it's about experience. Having managed power on 32,000 miles of a present-day Class I railroad and its connections, I can state without fear of contradiction that there is nowhere where a 2% grade is as efficient as a 1% grade or where a serpentine 1.7% grade is anywhere as palatable as a .8% straighter railroad largely along a river.

It should also be noted that these "inside the company" at-the-time people are not speaking with any knowledge of the evolution of railroading. Specifically, the huge trains that are now commonplace on today's railroads, but never existed on the Milwaukee. There is simply no place in this country where unit trains of 16,000 tons operate on a profile that would necessary if the Milwaukee were to run unit grain trains between Montana and Columbia River ports (one of many examples).

Referring to item #3 here:
http://trainweb.org/milwaukeemyths/The unit grain train fuel use comparison between the current BNSF route and the Milwaukee main line was done with current BNSF fuel use and simulation of the Milwaukee route inputting actual Milwaukee road operating characteristics using a program actually in use today. There is no speculation or opinion, just the data. While the scenarios of operation on the Milwaukee Road vary (because there are so many possibilities because the route has so many steep grades so many miles distant), the conclusion that the Milwaukee Road operation would likely to be twice as costly is clear.

And it's not just my "opinion." Remember, even after WWII, Milwaukee management knew their operation was marginal at best. As parallel railroads upgraded their routes, the lack of business and higher cost didn't allow the Milwaukee to do the same. Toward the end when the Milwaukee was trying to unload its Pacific Extension (either by merger or sale) on anyone - there were no takers, despite the fact that both the UP and BN had surveyed the route and were intimately familiar with its operation. Unlike the Rock Island that also went away in 1980 with longstanding management ineptness conspiracy theories surrounding it, the Milwaukee Pacific Extension was pretty much jettisoned in one fell swoop. Yet, long stretches of the Rock Island from Chicago to New Mexico and St. Paul to Texas survived because even in 1980 - a dark time for railroads - many saw the value in keeping it. So, please ask yourself (conspiracies notwithstanding), why did no one choose to save the Milwaukee when opportunities were abundant to do so? Because so many understood its operating deficiencies. I'm in good company. And a lot of it.

In other words, Fred, color me: Happy To Be Wrong!

 

[toddinde]

In my own personal, honest and humble opinion, and I know some on this group would disagree, but I have always believed that the abandonment of the Milwaukee Road to the Northwest was a terrible and short-sighted decision. Corrupt or inept managers may have been to blame but so too were our Beltway politicians who dropped the ball.

In order to get inside the heads of the managers, we need to get into a time machine and return to the 1970s to really get a feel for what was going on in American railroading at that time.

In the ‘70s, the very future of American railroading was in doubt. Railroad managers and rail analysts alike were very pessimistic on the future. Wall Street was extremely bearish on rails. I recall an article in Railway Age in the late ‘70s that questioned if the rail network would even survive at all beyond a few “heavy-haul” lines. Thankfully, that never came to pass.

Things were so bad that railroads just about couldn’t borrow or raise money from investors. Track maintenance along with any improvements had to come out of net operating income or they didn’t get done.

With this kind of an economic and political environment, a consensus emerged that there were too many parallel lines – way too many. A second mainline from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest was deemed redundant and would probably need to be disposed of. There simply was not enough business to justify a second line never mind a THIRD line!

So, out of the three the Milwaukee was in by far the worst physical shape in spite of the fact that it had been splendidly engineer and constructed. Where in the world could the money come from to fix it? Not from investors, that’s for sure. The only possibility was the Beltway and they dropped the ball. There was at least a suggestion made that perhaps legislation could be passed to bring Conrail west but there was insufficient support.

So, although it’s my sincere conviction that this was short-sighted, I can nevertheless understand why it happened and see the managers (corrupt or not) point of view.

It’s too bad, a pity, really. In today’s railroad world it could’ve made a nice intermodal route if they could’ve found a way to keep it. The Milwaukee Road could’ve well abandoned all their branch lines and secondary mainlines and just kept the one trunk line from Chicago to SeaTac.

One problem with human beings is that we have trouble seeing the future more than about five or ten years out. So, I can kinda understand what happened. But now that it is what it is, can we fix this? Tragically, probably not.

You are absolutely correct. The loss of the Milwaukee was stupid and shortsighted. The current configuration of the railroad industry are regional monopoly systems. They abandon infrastructure to carry less freight at higher prices with poor customer service. A better approach would have been to keep more railways and only allow competition where it enhanced competition. If operating subsidies were required to keep a railroad operating them provide it. We don’t hold highways to any metrics, and we don’t close money losing highways. It’s a stupid mindset which left us with an industry right sized to 1980 while the country is a third again larger today and continues to grow. It’s time we own up to these mistakes and understand what caused them; corporate greed, monopolization, and idiotic thinking.

 

[toddinde]

Well just to interject some reality here: The Staggers Act was enacted on October 14, 1980. The EP&SW ceased as a through route in 1961, and the Milwaukee Road west of Miles City in March of 1980. Therefore, the concept of time being what it is, the mere suggestion that these two railroads disappearing were as a result of the yet-to-be-enacted Staggers Act is ridiculous.

In regard to the EP&SW, railroads exist to serve customers. The loss of the railroad is linked to the loss of customers, in this case, mining and smelting. That reality aside, other than property taxes, what specific benefit would there be today just having trains running through Douglas on their way between Tucson and El Paso? And what should the government have done to force SP (later UP) to keep both routes? And should whatever entity that forced continued operation via Douglas have been required to compensate SP for the additional expense associated with doing so? And more specifically, why do you think the Sunset Route needed this alternative route in this area, but not elsewhere?

For those unfamiliar, the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad was a railroad acquired by the Southern Pacific. It was built primarily to serve the rich (mostly copper) in the Douglas and Bisbee areas. As a Southern Pacific entity, it was referred to as the "South Line" in reference to the Sunset Route (current UP route) to the north (routes between El Paso and Tucson). The "South Line" slower, curvier, and 30 miles longer than the North Line. Douglas and Bisbee did retain service after the route was severed, becoming a branch line from Benson. Currently, all that's left is 7 miles of track from Benson. The North Line continues as UP's Southern transcontinental, and is access to two ex-SP branchlines (now the Arizona Eastern Railroad) at Bowie, AZ and Lordsburg, NM as well as the Southwestern Railroad at Deming, NM (a BNSF connection via Rincon).

My comment was a short paragraph on short sighted decisions and their impact on communities. I never said the Staggers Act, a stupid piece of legislation, had anything to do with the demise of the South Line. I also mention the Beeching Cuts. Did you think I was asserting that Beeching had something to do with the demise of the South Line? I am taking issue with your whole premise which is based on a simplistic view of an economy based solely on engineering profiles and existing customer base, and doesn’t take into account economic growth and creating wealth on a macroeconomic level. It’s that kind of thinking that created anemic economic growth, and consigns regions of the country to whither on the vine. Arizona has very low levels of rail use. Arizona continues to grow, and the lost rail lines would have been an economic engine for the future. By the way, there is talk of building a new rail line from Douglas north to the UP.

 

[toddinde]

Well, Fred, you can believe as you wish, and you have demonstrated that you do. I know of the people you speak, and there is no greater verification of my point of view than their thinking I'm wrong. But it's not about homework, it's about experience. Having managed power on 32,000 miles of a present-day Class I railroad and its connections, I can state without fear of contradiction that there is nowhere where a 2% grade is as efficient as a 1% grade or where a serpentine 1.7% grade is anywhere as palatable as a .8% straighter railroad largely along a river.

It should also be noted that these "inside the company" at-the-time people are not speaking with any knowledge of the evolution of railroading. Specifically, the huge trains that are now commonplace on today's railroads, but never existed on the Milwaukee. There is simply no place in this country where unit trains of 16,000 tons operate on a profile that would necessary if the Milwaukee were to run unit grain trains between Montana and Columbia River ports (one of many examples).

Referring to item #3 here:
http://trainweb.org/milwaukeemyths/The unit grain train fuel use comparison between the current BNSF route and the Milwaukee main line was done with current BNSF fuel use and simulation of the Milwaukee route inputting actual Milwaukee road operating characteristics using a program actually in use today. There is no speculation or opinion, just the data. While the scenarios of operation on the Milwaukee Road vary (because there are so many possibilities because the route has so many steep grades so many miles distant), the conclusion that the Milwaukee Road operation would likely to be twice as costly is clear.

And it's not just my "opinion." Remember, even after WWII, Milwaukee management knew their operation was marginal at best. As parallel railroads upgraded their routes, the lack of business and higher cost didn't allow the Milwaukee to do the same. Toward the end when the Milwaukee was trying to unload its Pacific Extension (either by merger or sale) on anyone - there were no takers, despite the fact that both the UP and BN had surveyed the route and were intimately familiar with its operation. Unlike the Rock Island that also went away in 1980 with longstanding management ineptness conspiracy theories surrounding it, the Milwaukee Pacific Extension was pretty much jettisoned in one fell swoop. Yet, long stretches of the Rock Island from Chicago to New Mexico and St. Paul to Texas survived because even in 1980 - a dark time for railroads - many saw the value in keeping it. So, please ask yourself (conspiracies notwithstanding), why did no one choose to save the Milwaukee when opportunities were abundant to do so? Because so many understood its operating deficiencies. I'm in good company. And a lot of it.

In other words, Fred, color me: Happy To Be Wrong!

Mark, you have made the same mistake people often make: you’ve fell in love with your opinion, and now you’re so invested in it you need to keep justifying it even as it’s proven wrong. Most rational people can see that the Milwaukee was the best engineered line to the Pacific, and with sound business decisions, would have been the railroad to the Pacific Northwest. Many railroaders share that view as do many insiders. The Carter Administration took a different and wrong headed approach. If a Conrail type entity had been formed to take over the Milwaukee and the Rock Island, it would have been just as successful and been around today in some form. The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension would be thriving. Poor planning, poor decisions, and monopolies in the railroad industry caused this. You need to open your mind to other opinions and not just keep justifying bad decisions.

 

[Mark Meyer]

Mark, you have made the same mistake people often make: you’ve fell in love with your opinion, and now you’re so invested in it you need to keep justifying it even as it’s proven wrong.

It's never been proven it's wrong. So I challenge you: Explain how a train between two common points, such as Minneapolis and Seattle or Great Falls and Portland, where the Milwaukee train could be handled with fewer resources than the competition. I've given you actual numbers used by actual railroads and railroaders in determining locomotive utilization and equipment and fuel usage, and the Milwaukee fails badly. So, let's see your proof.

Most rational people can see that the Milwaukee was the best engineered line to the Pacific, and with sound business decisions, would have been the railroad to the Pacific Northwest.

Not true. There's a huge difference between "best engineered" and best profile. Sure, the Milwaukee - when it was built - was the best engineered because it had decades of technology on its side during its construction. But with the exception of the Loweth line change and a few other inconsequential changes, the Milwaukee at the end was pretty much the same as it was when it was built. Not the same for the GN and NP which rebuilt much of their main line routes eliminating huge amounts of grade and curvature. The salient point is that you can have really good engineering on a route, but if the route is inferior to begin with, there is likely no amount of "engineering" to fix this. Example: The Milwaukee Road's St. Paul Pass was a horrible piece of railroad with numerous huge trestles, 1.7% grade and much curvature. The last year that Milwaukee Road's Olympian Hiawatha ran, it and the NP North Coast Limited departed Missoula westbound only 1 minute apart, but the NP train arrived in Ellensburg, WA 2 minutes before the Milwaukee train, despite having to travel 99 more miles. The reason was that NP made a lot of line changes to increase efficiency and track speed. In fact, in 1961, the Olympian Hiawatha averaged only 48,73 MPH from Chicago to Seattle, whereas the North Coast Limited 51.15 MPH and the GN Empire Builder 51.6 MPH. (The Empire Builder was also over 2 hours faster than the Olympian Hiawatha). The Milwaukee was a well-engineered railroad over an inferior route, necessitated by the fact that the best routes were already in use by the competition. And as operationally deficient as the Milwaukee's main line was, its branch lines were that much worse, which made the whole operation all the more costly.

Many railroaders share that view as do many insiders. The Carter Administration took a different and wrong headed approach. If a Conrail type entity had been formed to take over the Milwaukee and the Rock Island, it would have been just as successful and been around today in some form. The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension would be thriving. Poor planning, poor decisions, and monopolies in the railroad industry caused this.

Many more railroader's don't share that view as did many insiders. The Milwaukee's routes were well-known by the competition that had every - repeat EVERY - opportunity to purchase and/or merge with the Milwaukee. NO ONE (with the financial wherewithal) wanted it. How could so many people be so wrong? Well, because they weren't. They correctly identified the Milwaukee as the high-cost railroad. Your reference to the Rock Island and Conrail proves your reasoning is fatally flawed: The Rock Island didn't meet the same fate as the Milwaukee. While a lot of it was abandoned, huge sections of it were saved. And since it was probably in worse shape as far as physical plant than the Milwaukee, that proves that a huge cost in rehabilitating infrastructure is no deterrent to acquiring a railroad when it is know to be worth saving. Twin Cities to Texas, Chicago to Council Bluffs, and the connection to SP's Golden State route all still survive because unlike the Milwaukee Pacific Extension, they were identified as a valued entity. The Conrail analogy is not accurate because in the Northeast just about all the railroads were included, including Penn Central which included the ex-NYC and ex-PRR. Other than the B&O which only had minimal penetration in the area, there were no strong or solvent railroads. Not the case with the Milwaukee Road. Not only did it have the poorest operating profile, most circuitous branchline network, and failed to serve (adequately or altogether) major markets, it was surrounded by solvent railroads who - unlike the Milwaukee over the years - had upgraded and improved their right-of-way capacity. A "Western Conrail" simply wasn't needed.

You need to open your mind to other opinions and not just keep justifying bad decisions.

I'll be happy to do that the minute that anyone can show me that more tonnage can be moved with the same amount of locomotive power over the 2% grade of Milwaukee's Pipestone Pass than GN's 1% Marias Pass, that the Milwaukee's climb over the Saddle Mountains is flatter than the SP&S route along the Columbia River, or that the Milwaukee's serpentine climb to St. Paul Pass is faster than NP's trek along the Clark Fork. Never was the case when the Milwaukee was operating, and wouldn't be now. And, my opinion is bolstered by 40 years of railroad dealing with what it takes to move tonnage. But you have my challenge, and I await your response.

 

[Mark Meyer]

The loss of the Milwaukee was stupid and shortsighted. The current configuration of the railroad industry are regional monopoly systems. They abandon infrastructure to carry less freight at higher prices with poor customer service.

Prove it. An article in the June 2003 issue of TRAINS magazine with an accompanying map showed that between 1979 and 2001, traffic (ton-miles) handled by Western railroads increased 65% (while the population increased only 25%). And no, it was far from all being coal. NAFTA was cited as one of the main contributors with routes in Texas as well as CP and CN interchange locations along the northern border, as well BNSF's route from Portland to Sandpoint as one of the over-performers. DOT tonnage maps published in 1980 shows the ex-GN route in Western Montana handling between 20 and 30 million gross ton-miles of traffic, while the ex-NP route handles between 10 and 20 million. By 2003, the ex-GN route was handling over 40 million, and the ex-NP between 20 and 30. Things change over the years, so I challenge you to prove your "higher prices" claim. That would be proving that the tonnage handled in loose box car traffic was moved at a cheaper rate than lading handled in today's stack container trains (because that's how many consumer goods move today). Likewise, prove that single car movements of grain were cheaper than today's unit trains.

A better approach would have been to keep more railways and only allow competition where it enhanced competition.

This is vague at best, but it appears to be a good argument for doing away with the Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension. Since it couldn't compete with the competition due to its inferior profile and circuitous feeder route structure, you appear to be understand that it would not be a railway that should have been kept.

If operating subsidies were required to keep a railroad operating them provide it.

Who would pay for the subsidy?

We don’t hold highways to any metrics, and we don’t close money losing highways. It’s a stupid mindset which left us with an industry right sized to 1980 while the country is a third again larger today and continues to grow. It’s time we own up to these mistakes and understand what caused them; corporate greed, monopolization, and idiotic thinking.

Highways are also not beholden to stockholders like freight railroads are. Hating railroads has been popular since the turn of the 20th Century. But doing so also ignores that governments provide the infrastructure for the competition. This is the problem. We have no national transportation policy nor do we invest in our railroads like we invest in highways, airports, and waterways. So, it's no surprise that freight railroads look at things a little different when it comes to infrastructure additions or rationalizations. It's unfortunate that railroads are discriminated against as they are in the country, but that's the reality. The real competition for railroads are the other modes of transportation, and that's why the best chance to win back business lost to the subsidized competition is to focus on routes that are the most efficient to operate. There have been many questionable abandonments in the U.S., but the Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension was not one of them. With 5 major grades between Chicago and Portland versus one for the competition, the cost of rehabilitating and upgrading, and the perpetual cost of subsidization to create a tariff even remotely comparable to the competition would have been/would be enormous - a continuing albatross.

 

[Seaboard92]

I think there is a wording problem in here. "Best Engineered" can mean from construction but that has nothing to do with the actual profile of the route. In my opinion the Seaboard Airline Mainline was the "Best Engineered" route from Richmond south. But it's profile was horrible as far as Gaston, SC with tons of curves and grades as part as the sandhills. While the EX Atlantic Coastline was flat and straight. The fact that the Seaboard was able to compete with the Coastline was sheerly incredibly fast running and they maintained the physical plant and continued tweaking it where they could.

I love the Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension. And I can see an argument for keeping it for some form of a capacity reliever route but it was a poor alignment. Few cities and towns with any sort of overhead customer base. The NP had and still has the more populous route to the PNW, while the GN has the fastest overall. The Milwaukee was slower than their competition and had little on line traffic base to rely on. It really needed the long thru moves that it just couldn't achieve.

The SP&S route from a grade standpoint is superior to any of the alternatives other than the UP south bank line just because it's largely water level. Now there is only so much space available to double track the route available especially in the areas of Home Valley to Bingen. To add a track you would have to essentially put a fill into the River which would be incredibly costly and time consuming.

The GN's major issue is you can only run so many trains in Cascade Tunnel per hour which gives you a capacity problem. Stampede Pass has somewhat relieved the strain and I believe has some excess capacity. But it is largely a directional railroad at this point in time.

I think had the Rock Island been able to shed at least 60 percent of their Granger Era roots and eliminate most of those branch lines across the midwest they might have been able to survive. There is a reason most of their routes have survived to this day. The real shining examples of this being the Spine line south from St. Paul, MN to Texas, and the Golden State route from Kansas City, MO to Tucumcari, NM. Iowa Interstate has done a tremendous job transforming that property from the weeds they acquired into the modern right of way it is today. Even in the 1970s the Rock Island was operating a few time freights a day off the Union Pacific who routed them that way because of a disagreement with the Chicago, & Northwestern, and Milwaukee Road. The Rock Island route honestly is the premier passenger route from Chicago to Omaha hitting the Quad Cities, Iowa City, and Des Moines whilst the Burlington hits relatively small towns. If the right of way could be upgraded to 79 mph you could make the argument for rerouting the California Zephyr off her home rails onto the route of the Rocky Mountain Rocket.

I agree there really wasn't a reason for a western version of Conrail because only the Rock Island and Milwaukee Road were in dire straights. Union Pacific, Chicago & Northwestern, Southern Pacific, Burlington Northern, and the Santa Fe were all in relatively good financial state. The problem Conrail was designed to fix was all of the railroads in the Northeast and eastern midwest were on their last legs. There really wasn't a healthy one left by the time Conrail emerged. Which would have tanked the entire nation's economy had rail service ceased.

Even if the smaller railroads in the northeast could have survived they all had to deal with the hulk that was the Penn Central which would have decimated them had it closed down. The Erie Lackawanna had a route west but it wasn't really a superior route bypassing most major cities. Basically an extended branch line into Chicago. The Reading relied on the Penn Central essentially for any car that had to be transported west, just like the Lehigh Valley, Central Railroad of New Jersey, and so many others included in Conrail. Penn Central was really the main culprit and honestly should have never been approved. Without that merger while the Northeastern Railroading scene was shaky because of the closures of industries along their routes Conrail likely wouldn't have happened. As there would have been some way for those other lines to get cars in and out had one collapsed. Both the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central were showing the beginning signs of a recovery just before the merger. Had they stayed independent our railroad history would have been different.

 

[Willbridge]

No loss for the state of Oregon especially heading into 1980 and deregulation when BN would have drastically undercut the Milwaukee with its superior routes, especially with regard to grain - much more of which is exported through Columbia River ports than Seattle and Tacoma. As unit grain train sizes increased in the 1990s, the Milwaukee would have been shut out of this traffic due to its horrible profile. Much wheat grown in Montana is exported through Portland/Rivegate. BN could move this traffic to Portland with a ruling grade of 1% or less with one major hill (Marias Pass). Not only did the Milwaukee have four major grades between Montana and Tacoma, but then there was the prospect of the 3.6% grade out of Tacoma toward Portland. Obviously, this traffic would have all gravitated to BN and its flatter, straighter route. (As grain started moving west from Montana even when the Milwaukee was around, they often ended up giving it to the UP at Marengo due to their horrible route.) Anywhere to or from Portland could be handled with less cost via BN than the Milwaukee. Only reregulation and subsidy could have saved it.



Two decades is a long time to keep a railroad "just in case", especially a Milwaukee Road that would have needed major rehabilitation and even upgrading (very short sidings in Washington State, no lineside safety devices such as hot box detectors, almost no power switches, and not even continuously-protected with ABS) just to be usable....whenever. Yes, things were dire in the 1970s, but they weren't great in the 1980s, either. I recall the dearth of traffic much of the time. When things started to heat up "two decades later", BNSF reopened Stampede Pass and upgraded existing routes. The Milwaukee's profile was always fantastically inferior to the ex-GN/ex-SP&S route to/from the Pacific Northwest, and that's what you do to efficiently add capacity: Add it to the most-efficient routes, not the least-efficient, aka the Milwaukee. And in that interim "two decades" until the Milwaukee might have been used, who would be responsible for its upkeep, paying its taxes, and paying its operations personnel to be available "just in case?" It's interesting: Whenever there there is a boom in traffic be it the 1990s or the 2010s Bakken Boom, someone always defaults to "we should have kept the Milwaukee Road" while failing to comprehend the expense of not only upgrading it, but maintaining it through the 1980s, the Great Recession, the Bakken Bust, and the pandemic.

The performance of the Pioneer is meaningless. BN as well as UP saw an upsurge in traffic, but the Empire Builder fared much better than the Pioneer with timekeeping. BN's perspective on its Amtrak trains was simply different than that of the UP. Be it the Pioneer or Texas Eagle, nowhere was UP known for its stellar handling of Amtrak, regardless of the route or amount of traffic. And, since we know that freight railroads are not reimbursed for the full cost of operating Amtrak trains with the required priority, UP simply determined that other customers' trains merited priority handling.

Of course the North Bank line is superior to anything. What interested the State of Oregon - not me personally - was the Milwaukee Road's cooked up through north-south service with the SP.

I appreciate you being honest about the UP's malingering with the Pioneer. That wasn't the party line from Omaha. Nor was it the conclusion of the 2008/9 Pioneer Restoration study.

 

[Willbridge]

Of course the North Bank line is superior to anything parallel. We learned that in 3rd grade when we studied the Port of Portland. What interested the State of Oregon - not me personally - was the Milwaukee Road's cooked up through north-south service with the SP.

I appreciate you being honest about the UP's malingering with the Pioneer. That wasn't the party line from Omaha. Nor was it the conclusion of the 2008/9 Pioneer Restoration study.

 

[railiner]

I think had the Rock Island been able to shed at least 60 percent of their Granger Era roots and eliminate most of those branch lines across the midwest they might have been able to survive. There is a reason most of their routes have survived to this day. The real shining examples of this being the Spine line south from St. Paul, MN to Texas, and the Golden State route from Kansas City, MO to Tucumcari, NM. Iowa Interstate has done a tremendous job transforming that property from the weeds they acquired into the modern right of way it is today. Even in the 1970s the Rock Island was operating a few time freights a day off the Union Pacific who routed them that way because of a disagreement with the Chicago, & Northwestern, and Milwaukee Road. The Rock Island route honestly is the premier passenger route from Chicago to Omaha hitting the Quad Cities, Iowa City, and Des Moines whilst the Burlington hits relatively small towns. If the right of way could be upgraded to 79 mph you could make the argument for rerouting the California Zephyr off her home rails onto the route of the Rocky Mountain Rocket.

Agree with this. That is why they built I-80 on that route, and not along one of the many alternatives.
As for The Rock...the Union Pacific was actively pursuing the purchase of the entire railroad, dating back to the early sixties. The Interstate Commerce Commission kept denying it, until the point that the Rock Island went bankrupt, and was on the verge of liquidation. At that point, the UP no longer wanted that line, and ironically got to purchase the North Western instead for its entry to Chicago. Had the merger with The Rock been allowed, the Rock would be the premier route between Omaha and Chicago, and the North Western might have been the one to become a short line RR.

 

[Mark Meyer]

What interested the State of Oregon - not me personally - was the Milwaukee Road's cooked up through north-south service with the SP.

Glad you were wise enough not be interested in Milwaukee Road/SP interchange. It went OK for awhile, but mostly because SP was retaliating against BN for shifting some of its California traffic away from the SP at Portland to the Inside Gateway via the WP and ATSF. One of the main shipments to divert to the Milwaukee at Portland were copper concentrates from Arizona going to the smelter in Anaconda, Montana. SP&S/NP later BN took the cars on a route to interchange with the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific on a route that never exceeded a 1% grade. The Milwaukee route was further, and had helper grades at Snoqualmie (1.74%), the Saddle Mountains (1.6%), and St. Paul Pass (1.7%), but of course got the same cut of the rate that the BN did. Pretty typical of the traffic in and out of Portland with the cars to Portland having to endure the 3.6% grade of Tacoma Hill.

Same for service between Portland and Sumas, which the Milwaukee actually advertised in the Official Guide. The idea was that the Milwaukee was an alternative to BN as an intermediary between the SP at Portland and the Canadian Railroads at the border. While the BN route was direct with a maximum grade of 1% each way, the Milwaukee's was a hodgepodge of former logging railroads, branch lines, and trackage rights over the BN with a 2% grade northbound and 3.6% southbound. From Portland, the Milwaukee operated over BN to Chehalis, then over a Milwaukee branch to Tacoma, then the Milwaukee "main line" to Black River where it got new trackage rights over the ex-NP to Snohomish, and then ex-GN to Everett. From Everett, it got trackage rights on the ex-GN main line to Vancouver (instead of haulage rights where GN trains had handled Milwaukee traffic) as far as Bellingham. At Bellingham, it accessed actual Milwaukee Road track for the short jaunt to Sumas (and a 2% grade) to interchange with Canadian Pacific via a branch line from Mission. Interchange with Canadian National required first using short line British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority. BN's ex-GN main line to Vancouver had direct access to CP and CN interchange (and as a matter of fact, CN had to use GN/BN to get to Vancouver; this was also the route that accessed CN's bridge over the Second Narrows to North Vancouver and the Pacific Great Eastern; in other words, a direct route for GN/BN interchange to PGE). Because the "new" route crossed GN/BN trackage just north of the border, BN received access to the Roberts Bank superport, used today by BNSF coal trains. In summary, GN/BN had ready access to much of Vancouver's port facilities and interchanges, whereas the Milwaukee needed another carrier from Sumas. In the mid-1970s, the Milwaukee petitioned to be granted trackage rights on BN between Bellingham and Vancouver BC and the right to serve customers on existing route from Black River to Everett via Woodinville. It also requested trackage rights on BN from Chehalis to Tacoma to avoid Tacoma Hill. None of this came to pass.

The Milwaukee was able to abandon its branch between Cedar Falls and Monroe (then via BN to Everett) when it received trackage rights between Black River and Everett via Snohomish. It could be argued that the additional trackage accessed by the Milwaukee as a result of the BN merger in the area was far from the optimum route, and that could be correct. But it really was a microcosm of the west end of the Milwaukee as a whole. To be sufficiently competitive with the BN, the Milwaukee would have needed to receive trackage rights over the enter BN system west of Miles City, abandoning most of its own lines, giving us pretty much what we have today.

 

[neroden]

Highways are also not beholden to stockholders like freight railroads are. Hating railroads has been popular since the turn of the 20th Century. But doing so also ignores that governments provide the infrastructure for the competition. This is the problem. We have no national transportation policy nor do we invest in our railroads like we invest in highways, airports, and waterways.

So, we agree. Much of the Milwaukee Road route should have been kept by a nationalized operation. I have said that a proper "USRA" operation would have combined the NP and Milwaukee to get the best bits of each, and scrapped the GN.

I'll make a point you may not appreciate because of your myopic focus on for-profit freight operation: when passenger routes are designed, grades are much less of a worry. Curves are much more of a worry, of course. The same is true with light freight, which again, you weren't thinking about in the 1980s because you'd lost all the business to trucks.

The primary worry for a passenger route, however, is actual access to cities. And for most freight routes, this is also the primary issue.

The NP route and the Milwaukee Road route both have pros and cons in different places, with the NP route arguably being better. (The NP route, of course, was downgraded and mothballed in parts.) They both actually stop in cities on the way, though.

The GN route has no intermediate points. (OK, fine. Grand Forks.) It's fundamentally a "flyover" route. And that makes it fundamentally a *bad route*. (Yes, it probably has the best Rockies pass. This is why NP's Rockies pass was abandoned. But that's a small part of the route.)

This is the same underlying problem as the Erie route in the East, which was scrapped for worthlessness and which basically nobody misses. (The Lackawanna route was weak, and exceptionally curve-filled, but there are cities along the way which still want service back. Not so much on the Erie.)

The survival of the GN route is a *historical accident*, due to short-term thinking and very specific oddities in the business environment at the time the Milwaukee was being scrapped and the NP downgraded -- specifically, the fact that nearly all business had been steered to trucks by government policy, and railroads were taking the scraps of the heaviest and slowest traffic, and were also abandoning most of the short hauls even on that traffic -- and the company which owned it made it their priority because it was the route the management had started out on -- BN management was GN management.

It's not a route which actually supports anything much in the states it passes through, though. It's left BNSF in a funny position, begging governments for handouts to upgrade a route which doesn't provide much local service. It usually gets the handouts.

The GN route in Washington will be removed or seriously altered within my lifetime, though, because the flooding, mudslide-covered beach section is fundamentally non-viable. Pity GN/BN/BNSF ripped out all the parallel routes from Seattle north. I wonder what the reroute will end up being; it's impossible to afford the old dismantled parallel routes now that they're highly expensive urban Seattle real estate. Beach routes are an attractive short-term choice which never works out well in the long run.

The survival of the GN route through North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington is just as much an accident as the survival of the BNSF route across Iowa, where the Iowa Interstate route (ex-Rock Island) is clearly the better route, but was just owned by the wrong company at the wrong time.


So regarding the Pacific Extension: The financials, once they were unearthed in bankruptcy court, showed that the Pacific Extension was the only profitable part of the Milwaukee Road. Hilariously, the worthless money-losing granger lines and the line east of Terry, MT, which have the underlying problem of *not actually having any cities en route*, were mostly picked up by other companies after the final bankruptcy, because they hadn't been scrapped. The conclusion is that the profitable line would also have been picked up by someone if they hadn't been lying about the accounting, mismanaging it, and eventually scrapping it.

Mark, you may never have been an investor; it does scare investors off when management presents books claiming that a business is losing lots of money, *even if it isn't true* (as in the case of the Pacific Extension).

Mark, the facts don't support you, even on the narrow question of whether the Milwaukee management's behavior was short-term sensible. It wasn't. There's no world in which abandoning the only profitable part of your railroad while retaining the unprofitable part makes the slightest bit of sense on the planet, even if the profitable part is less profitable than your competitors. Give it up.

The Milwaukee Road is an example of the fact that sufficiently incompetent management can wreck pretty much anything. There are numerous other examples.

They were in a bad position for some of the same larger reasons the Rock Island and eastern railroads were in a bad position: passenger-centric, online-traffic-centric railroads were all in trouble at the time due to aggressive government subsidization of roads and trucks; routes with curves and grades always have some disadvantage -- but the Milwaukee Road was not suffering from the larger problems as badly as the eastern roads or the Rock Island, and managed to inflict an astounding amount of their own problems on themselves. Their own management was their worst enemy. You may want to give them some slack for not seeing the future (the oil crises), but they couldn't even see the present (with their inaccurate accounting books).

It is interesting to think about why the Milwaukee wasn't included in the GN/NP monopolist merger, and it probably should have been; the answer is clearly merely historical accident. BNSF ended up buying up the line east of Terry. If the Pacific Extension had been intact, they probably would have bought it too. It could effectively be used to form an extra track on the NP route from Three Forks to St. Regis. Using Snoqualmie and Stampede tunnels directionally would have many advantages; the Milwaukee route from Ellensburg to Lind would be a shortcut with far fewer curves than the river-following NP route, though missing Yakima and Pasco. The St. Paul Pass route would probably still have been abandoned, certainly (the very nearby NP route was also abandoned), but the rest of the route? No way.

 

[Mark Meyer]

Agree with this. That is why they built I-80 on that route, and not along one of the many alternatives.
As for The Rock...the Union Pacific was actively pursuing the purchase of the entire railroad, dating back to the early sixties. The Interstate Commerce Commission kept denying it, until the point that the Rock Island went bankrupt, and was on the verge of liquidation. At that point, the UP no longer wanted that line, and ironically got to purchase the North Western instead for its entry to Chicago. Had the merger with The Rock been allowed, the Rock would be the premier route between Omaha and Chicago, and the North Western might have been the one to become a short line RR.

The ICC kept putting off the merger because there was so much opposition from other carriers, not surprisingly. Whether the UP really wanted to merge with the Rock Island is debatable (some at the UP didn't want it). The condition of the merger was that the Rock Island would be split up with the UP getting the railroad north of Kansas City and the St. Louis branch and the SP getting the railroad south of Kansas City (Kansas City to Topeka on UP, then the line to Herington, and the lines southwest and south from Herington).

I have trouble believing that the UP would have actually upgraded the Rock Island line to St. Louis, as it was by far the worst between Missouri's largest cities: hilly, curvy, and didn't serve any towns of note (kind of like the Milwaukee Pacific Extension!). Beyond that, the Rock Island had problems. It was not in good shape, and was mostly single-track across Iowa, and had street running in the Quad Cities. It would take a lot to upgrade, and some at the UP were not convinced that the Rock's other routes were of benefit. On the other hand, its access to Chicago from the Southwest allowed much better interchange access to Eastern Railroads than did the C&NW and other railroads. But the C&NW was still considered the best route. It had the most double track, was the flattest, served a fair number of good-sized communities like Cedar Rapids and Marshalltown, and it had the one thing that the Milwaukee, the Wabash, and the Rock Island didn't: Its own crossing of the Missouri River. (The IC did have its own Missouri River crossing, but its route was longer with no double track and was dark territory from Fort Dodge/Tara to Omaha). All those other railroads had to use the UP's bridge between Council Bluffs and Omaha, whereas the C&NW had its own route from their main line at Missouri Valley, IA to Fremont, NE. Today, this route is used somewhat directionally with eastward trains operating via the ex-UP through Omaha, and westward trains running via the ex-C&NW through Blair. The UP acquisition of the C&NW keeps a lot of transcontinental traffic out of the busy Omaha-Council Bluffs terminal.

And no discussion of railroads between Chicago and Omaha would be complete without mention of another of the Milwaukee's huge mistakes: Spending millions to upgrade their Chicago-Omaha route in 1955 to wrest UP's "Cities" trains away from the C&NW (actually it wasn't much of a "wrest", the C&NW didn't want them anymore) in the mistaken hope that freight traffic would follow. This never could have happened as traffic was pretty much evenly distributed by agreement or shipper preference. The Milwaukee spent a lot of money to handle five extra passenger trains per day each way that was down to two in a couple of years (and eventually one in the years just before Amtrak). Another example of the Milwaukee's delusion of adequacy; that is, thinking it could compete with railroads that had decent routes across Iowa. All that money and attention to a route that became the only trans-Iowa route mostly abandoned! (The CGW merged with the C&NW before it was largely abandoned, and the Wabash didn't cross the entire state west-east).

 

[Seaboard92]

In reality Iowa was one of the most overbuilt states in the United States as far as railroads specifically east-west. Whereas the north south was not nearly as dense for mainlines. Branch lines that entire state is a mess. Here is a glimpse of passenger service in Iowa in 1952. The basic key seeing my interactive map has the ownership information on the actual line is this. Red Is the the Milwaukee Road, Pink is the Rock Island, Green is the Chicago & Northwestern, Orange is the Illinois Central, Gray is the Burlington, Light Purple is the Minneapolis & St. Louis, Dark Purple is the Chicago & Great Western, Blue is the Wabash, and any other color is a shortline. Blue dots indicate a train station. This project took me over two years to complete by gathering data from the 1952 Official Guide, typing it in the station info, and then highlighting the route. Finding abandoned rail lines was a real challenge but a fun one.

Another overbuilt state is Ohio in my opinion.

For those that want the link to the map. https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1jkHbsLBcg4kh-n7s0DYXjNGnLdHz5J8l&usp=sharing

 

[Mark Meyer]

Wow. Yes, "back in the day" it was said you couldn't go 12 miles in any direction in Iowa without crossing a railroad track. Not the case now, obviously.

 

[neroden]

Yeah, Iowa was very overbuilt.

Ohio went from overbuilt to underbuilt -- another example of where a rational nationalized transportation policy would have left us with a reasonable network, but instead we were left with too few lines in some areas and too many in others due to the vagaries of individual management decisions.

 

[fredmcain]

This could be true to a certain extent. I think a national transportation policy - especially for present and future passenger routes - would be beneficial. Examples are the Big Four Route from Kankakee to Indianapolis and the ex-SAL route from Petersburg, VA to Norlina, NC. But beyond that, it gets complex, especially considering that the government provides all the infrastructure for the railroads' competition, and that most of the freight railroads' infrastructure is privately-owned. <snip>

Mark,

Well, well ! Will wonders ever cease! You have finally made a statement here that I can agree with!

Regards,
Fred M. Cain

 

[fredmcain]

Group,

I’d like to explain one more thing about the Milwaukee Road debacle that seems to be little discussed in railfan circles. I’m certain that Mr. Meyer will sharply disagree with me and that’s fine, it is what it is, I guess.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the railroading world of the 1970s was a nightmare. The future looked so bleak that railroads found it nearly impossible to raise badly needed funds from investors. About the only hope of luring investment dollars would be if they could somehow show that they were profitable. Who would want to invest in an unprofitable company? Especially in an unprofitable RAILROAD company?

One way they did this was by taking money out of maintenance to put toward the bottom line so they could show that the roads were profitable when actually they really weren’t. This helped send roads like the Penn Central, the Rock Island and the Milwaukee into a death spiral. (Those three roads come to mind but probably there were others with this issue).

However, at the Milwaukee, this issue was really severe due to a feature in the clause following a previous reorganization.

In order to help refinance the earlier reorganization, the Milwaukee issued a bunch of preferred shares that guaranteed dividends. It was guaranteed that if the Company failed to pay a dividend on those shares for two or more consecutive quarters, the preferred shareholders had the right to call a meeting and oust the board including the president.

So, management bent over backwards to pay those dividends regardless as to where the money came from.

In the book The Nation Pays Again, Thomas Ploss explains this better than I can since I am typing this at work without the book in front of me.

I have always been of the opinion that during that reorganization, the board and managers should have NEVER agreed to a deal like that in the first place. Why they did I can’t imagine. Maybe they had their reasons but it proved to be one of the Achilles heels that helped lead to the Company’s undoing.

 

[jis]

The impression that I have from reading many books on the subject, Penn Central indulged in some straight old fashioned lying and cooking the books, until they reached a point where they could not overcome the incredulity problem, and that is when they threw in the towel and held everyone hostage instead of just themselves. Of course the regulatory environment did play a significant role in causing that eventuality to unfold, as the guardians of the environment continued to be wilful participants in the deception even after it was quite obvious to anyone that was paying attention as to what was going on. But for them political expediencey was more important than finding solutions.

 

[sttom]

One thing I don't really understand is why a Rock Island/Milwaukee Road merger would have made sense or even been seen as viable by either companies management. Both companies wanted to merge with a larger system and even though the Rock Island *might* have been in a better position than the Milwaukee in the early 60s, it probably wouldn't have been see as a good match when compared to UP. But a UP/Milwaukee Road merger would have had the same issues as the Rock Island/UP merger since it would give the UP a direct link to Chicago which would hurt the other 3 railroads that would be left out of the merger. Add about 10 years to this and both railroads would have been in the toilet financially speaking. Merging the Rock Island and Milwaukee Road wouldn't have helped at that point.

As to whether or not the Milwaukee Road was worth keeping and who would have done it, I frankly don't see who would have wanted them if BN wasn't interested in them and merging with the UP would have started a legal firestorm and the other granger lines didn't want them, then who? The only other railroad that they interacted with (that I know of) would have been the Southern Pacific. But, why would they have wanted them either? If the Rock Island had merged with the Southern Pacific instead of spending a decade pursuing the Union Pacific, then I could see this alternate history SP maybe considering taking a bet on the Milwaukee Road, or at least the transcontinental connection assuming the SP got to keep the BN trackage rights.

The SP had experience with railroading in rough country, Donner Pass is one, the entire Northwestern Pacific was a pain. The ground literally got wet and melted out from under the tracks. I doubt anywhere along the Milwaukee Road was that bad. The main thing that seemed to effect the history of the railroads in the upper Midwest (to me at least) was not only that Iowa and some of the other states had more rail miles than they needed, but that the region's rail business after the BN merger was that the companies were just waiting until they could get gobbled up by the UP or BN or wait for their inevitable demise. Prior to that it seemed that the Rock Island, CNW and Milwaukee Road were all vying to be the road to the UP's future and the CBQ was being the eastern go between for the NP and GN. History would have been different if there was a third player in the mix. And with how the railroad industry was going in the early 60s, I would expect the SP to the most likely partner that wouldn't have been a merger within the region.

The other option I could see happening is the Milwaukee Road getting bought by one of the predecessors of the Seaboard System and CSX maybe being a truly transcontinental system. The Milwaukee Road did dip into Indiana and got close to Cincinnati where the L & N ran, not to mention they both met in St Louis. I'm not familiar with the L & N or its history so I wouldn't know how viable that would be.

Also, a side note, freight taking some extra time to get somewhere (especially grain or rocks) isn't that big of a deal. So long as the freight shows up when its supposed to, things will be fine. The problem with a railway in decline is that reliability becomes an issue, which will hurt business a lot. Add skimping maintenance to the pile of problems they were facing. Getting absorbed into a bigger railroad would have helped with some of those problems. Even if their transcontinental line was barely profitable, being a part of a much larger system would make taking low margins on a train from the Pacific Northwest to somewhere outside of the Milwaukee Road's system potentially worth it. Its not just the amount that could have been made hauling a train over the Pacific Extension, but whether or not having it added to another railroad. And the thing is, it didn't seem like any other railroad thought that of the Milwaukee.