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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol Of course, Milwaukee Road was not in a position to be the "second" transcon for that kind of freight. It already dominated the field. By the mid-1970's, Milwaukee Road had in excess of 60% of the Port of Seattle freight, and over 50% of the intermodal freight. Port of Seatle testified as to their "special relationship" with Milwaukee Road, dating back half a century. Milwaukee had the TOFC/COFC traffic, it had the Southern Pacific traffic; it had the British Columbia Ry traffic, it had the forest products, enormous grain tonnage, it had the westbound domestic auto traffic. All the kinds of traffic that railroads wanted to build on, Milwaukee had, and BN did not. During the 1978-79 traffic studies, 62% of shippers on Lines West interviewed said that the one thing that Milwaukee Road exceeded all of its competitors on was "customer service." This was one reason that, in spite of the Trustee's best efforts to downgrade operations and discourage shippers in 1978, most of the large shippers increased use of Milwaukee Road in 1978 over 1977 on Lines West., some (Cargill) as much as doubling their Milwaukee PNW carloadings. Intermodal was Milwaukee's specialty in the Northwest, it had all the relationships in place and this was Milwaukee's fastest growing traffic segment after coal. It was virtually all transcontinental. Of course, as was predicted at the time, this traffic has continued to grow, even now including a significant export market of ag crops in containers, reversing the troublesome import of revenue containers, and nothing going the other way. This was something the Planning Department was discussing at the time; what was an ideal operating configuration for Milwaukee transcontinental trains: many short, fast trains, or fewer long, heavy trains. The argument seemed to come down in favor of the short, fast trains, by which Milwaukee Road could distinguish its service given its historically faster route. I don''t think Milwaukee would have been looking at 13,000 ton trains, but probably 3-4,000 ton trains, at least by way of that particular vision. Best regards, Michael Sol [/quote]If the Milwaukee road had the amount of traffic stated, why didn't the railroad's PCE last longer than it did? Did BN contribute to this?
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