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The Rock and Mr Ingram: An Insider's View.
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<p>I would also take issue with the notion that the first railroad through a certain area always took the best route, thus any second and third-comers would have to do with lesser routes of longer mileage and/or harsher profiles. I look at the Northern Pacific - first northern transcon, yet by consensus the worst alignment of the three northern tier lines. GN was second in, and had a better alignnment across Montana, yet it's Idaho and Washington divisions were initially worse than NP's. Milwaukee was last in, and probably had a better Montana route than NP but worse than GN's. Yet, Milwaukee managed the best crossing of the State of Washington.</p><p>So let's look at a Rock Island as the second southern transcon after SP. Across New Mexico and on into Arizona, it seems to be a wash - the EP&SW and EP&NE lines aren't all that different from the original SP route, with some higher elevations to cross and slightly longer mileate but sometimes gentler grades. Remember, RI was coming out of Chicago, so SP would've had to find another line to forward their Chicago traffic. So let's call it even for the two lines between Chicago and Tuscon.</p><p>Now, from Tuscon to the LA basin and the Central Valley - SP's route seems to be superior to the SF and UP lines over Cajon, and the only other shortline active at the time that could have been utilized via takeover for RI would've been the SD&AE. As S Hadid points out, no one in their right mind would have wanted to use that road as a transcon connection. So does that necessarily leave RI out of a decent route to get to LA/CV? Was there room for two railroads across San Gorgonio Pass? If RI had made it to LA, which route was available to get from there to the Central Valley and/or San Fransisco?</p>
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