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Gabe, 1. As tomtrain pointed out, the Milwaukee did run Montana coal to eastern South Dakota. It was this portion of the Milwaukee Pacific Coast Extension (from Terry MT acress South Dakota to Milbank) that was purchased by the state of South Dakota, and later sold to BNSF for continuation of this unit train activity. If you don't have a rail atlas, you can somewhat retrace the Milwaukee's route across South Dakota and Montana by following U.S. Highway 12 in your road atlas. The Milwaukee route near Roundup MT comes real close to the Bull Mountain Mine which BNSF recently helped reopen. As far as I know, the Milwaukee never built a branch line into the PRB coal fields. If they had, they might still be alive today assuming they could have stayed around past 1980. PRB coal might not have saved the line to the Puget Sound, but it would have kept the company independent until it's inevitable merger with UP or BNSF. 2., 3., 4., and 5. When the Milwaukee came into the Puget Sound area, they obtained trackage rights over an existing railroad (I can't find my copy of "Milwaukee Road West" otherwise I could tell you!) They followed the Cedar River valley into Renton WA. The line split at Renton, the north line into Seattle and the South line down to Tacoma. They shared this line and passenger facilities in Seattle with the Union Pacific, right across from GN's/MP's King Street Station. The lines were all contiguous. They had other trackage from Port Townsend to Port Angeles and a line from Bremerton (?) to the Canadian Border, both lines of which were reached by rail barge, and had obtained rights south as far as Longview WA. I'm not sure how much of this last line was Milwaukee trackage and how much was trackage rights. Someone else will have to fill us in.
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