UP and Milwaukee Road colour schemes the same? Was the MR a subsidiary of UP?

[Kozzie]

Maybe a question for Ed or Mudchicken...or a Milwaukee Road fan?

After looking at photos of the Milwaukee Road livery in Spring 04 edition of Classic Trains, it seems the same as the UP colour scheme....

Were the two roads connected? e.g. the MR a subsidiary of UP?? [%-)]

Dave
(Kozzie)

[dharmon]

Koz,

I don't believe MR was a subsidary of UP but they did have some joint passenger service I believe..I think one of the City trains, that was painted in UP colors. I could be, and am frequently wrong though.

[Kozzie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon

Koz,

I don't believe MR was a subsidary of UP but they did have some joint passenger service I believe..I think one of the City trains, that was painted in UP colors. I could be, and am frequently wrong though.

Thanks dharmon [:)] That might explain the picture in Classic Trains - a connection service maybe?

Sure looked the same, the armour yellow, red stripes, the grey roof, red lettering...except the red lettering along the length of the passenger cars has "The Milwaukee Road" instead of UP....also, ...i've just checked the article again...it also had pictures of passenger cars of the "Hiawatha" trains, and they were in that livery too.....maybe others will have a handle on it......[;)]

Dave
(Kozzie)

[daveklepper]

The story is this and perhaps Mr. Hemphill can correct or affirm. The CMStP&P for many years ran its own passenger trains, with its own color scheme, more pumkin orange than yellow. Some time in the late '50's, the Chicago and North Wester track had deteriorated and there were slow orders and congestion that affected the performanc of the crack "City" streamliners that were routed by the UUP over the Northwestern into Chicago. So the UP ended its partnership with the C&NW and entered into one with the Milwaukee Road. But the UP streamliners were almost always all UP-colors, even when some of the equipment was owned by the SP (the Challenger, the 49'er, and the City of San Francisco) and the Northwestern (nearly all). So the MIlwaukee agreed to paint its share of the through trains to UP colors and they did, and then, since after this change of UP streamliner routing, the majority of intercity passenger equipment on the Milwaukee was in through service with the UP anyway, they went ahead and repainted the rest or their passenger equipment. Dave Klepper

[M636C]

According to "Union Pacific Streamliners" by Ranks and Kratville, the contract for joint operation of the of the "Challengers" and the "Cities of, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, and Los Angeles" with Milwaukee Road dated from October 30 1955.

As a result of this, Milwaukee had to paint some cars to match the UP scheme. and must have decided to repaint all their streamlined passenger cars in Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Grey. They also repainted most of their passenger locomotives in a matching scheme, until their last passenger units, the FP45 model.

Peter

[dharmon]

I got one right ........ I got one right........first time for everything........whose da man?......I'm da man.........I got one right...........

Okay I'm good..calm....good....shouldn't have stopped for that capucino this morning..

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

As mentioned above, MILW passenger cars and passenger locomotives were painted in UP colors to fit into the passenger car pool for the UP Streamliners. The UP scheme eventually was applied to all passenger equipment except for a few head-end cars and suburban coaches. Prior to the takeover of the suburban service by the RTA (Metra), all suburban bi-level coaches were unpainted stainless steel.

All freight locomotives continued to wear the customary MILW colors of orange and black up to the merger into the Soo Line.

[AntonioFP45]

Here's a ringer for the mix.

I have a picture of smooth sided Norfolk and Western passenger cars painted in UP Colors also! Apparently the cars were also used on some joint or transfer type service.

[daveklepper]

A number of Southern railroads that had lots of passenger traffic in the winter but not much in the summer would borrow UP equipment in the winter and lend the Up their equipment in the summer. I think this included the N&W and I know it was true of both the Atlantic Coast Line and the Florida East Coast. It was not true of the Seabord Airline, who had modernized heavyweight equipment to put into service in the winter and to store during the summer. The merged Seabord Coast Line followed ACL practice, and most of the rebuilt heavyweights, except for the diners, were scrapped. This is all from memory, so someone might correct me or come up with more details. Dave Klepper

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

The N&W passenger cars in UP colors may have been ex-Wabash cars which were assigned to the "City of St Louis". One of these coaches, still in UP colors and Wabash lettering, was assigned to the "Blue Bird" before it was cut back to a Chicago-Decatur turn.

[Kozzie]

Thanks everyone for your help. So one could have trains with two distinctly different colour schemes but of the same RR on the layout. That sort of running is especially effective on exhibition layouts, showing the contrast. Get's people thinking...[:)]

[Kozzie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dharmon

I got one right ........ I got one right........first time for everything........whose da man?......I'm da man.........I got one right...........

Okay I'm good..calm....good....shouldn't have stopped for that capucino this morning..

Hey dharmon! [:)] Good for you! First cab off the taxi-rank!

Nah! [8D] Don't worry about the coffee...enjoy! [:D] I have a cappuccino first thing just before starting work - it's a great push start (jump start...head start...heart start..what ever [(-D]) [;)][;)]

As drephpe would say...keep the good stuff rolling! [:D]

Dave

[kenneo]

The UP painted NW cars were former WABASH. UP used the WABASH between Kansas City and St. Louis and part of the lease was for a certain amount of WABASH equipment operate in through service on the UP trains.

PRR had through cars with the UP interchanged at St. Louis. Some UP cars in Tuscan and some PRR cars in yellow/grey/red. And then, there was the occasional car in its original paint.

[Kozzie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kenneo

The UP painted NW cars were former WABASH. UP used the WABASH between Kansas City and St. Louis and part of the lease was for a certain amount of WABASH equipment operate in through service on the UP trains.

PRR had through cars with the UP interchanged at St. Louis. Some UP cars in Tuscan and some PRR cars in yellow/grey/red. And then, there was the occasional car in its original paint.

Hey Kenneo, [:)] sounds like some interesting looking trains with such a mix of RRs and colour schemes.

[daveklepper]

PRR also exchanged cars with the MP in St. Louis and occasionally an MP or even TP car in its color scheme (blue and grey?) would show up at Sunnyside Yard, NY. During WWII the Pennsy P70's showed up almost anywhere in the USA, even Canada on through services to Montreal and Toronto. A lot of interlining of passenger equipment during both WWII and Korea resulted from troop trains. When the NYC's 20th Century had coaches and then a slumbercoach added, the slumbercoach and some coaches remained stainless steel instread of the grey and white colors of the rest of the train. Also the NP's slumbercoaches were never painted into the green NP scheme but also remained stainless and were in a pool with the CB&Q slumbercoaches and sometimes an NP slumbercoach would show up on the all-stainless Denver Zephyr. The slumbercoach ran through from Denver to Colorado Springs on the "joint train", where practically every car was a different color or different color lettering. Dave

[Kozzie]

Hey Dave, re your comment:
The slumbercoach ran through from Denver to Colorado Springs on the "joint train", where practically every car was a different color or different color lettering.

That would make a very different looking train on a layout...can you tell us more about the connection service to Colarado?

(Also good to see plenty of Daves on the Forum heh heh[:D])

Dave
(Kozzie)

[Anonymous]

No Milwaukee Rail Road was own by the CMC company and the had nothing to do with the UP.

[daveklepper]

The real living expert on the D&RGW service during the time I rode the joint train, the CZ, the Prospector, and the MP's Colorado Eagle which was a D&RGW train Pueblo - Denver is Leonard Bernstein, and I plan to write him by regular air mail to try to get as much information as I can to post here. But from my memory, the joint train had both Sante Fe sleeper and a Sante Fe coach, both off the San Fransico Chief from San Fransisco at Raton, and both stainless steel. On the train I rode, the coach was Budd, but the sleeper was either ACF or Pullman with the fluiting applied, not structural. (The Budds had fluted roofs, and the ACF and Pullman smooth). The meal service, such as it was, was in a snack lounge under the dome of a D&RGW yellow and black (like the F Units) dome-coach lounge that came through from Salt Lake City, the Scenic Limited (or Royal Gorge?) combined Salt Lake City - Grand Junction or Glenwood Springs, then the Prospector going the direct route to Denver via the Moffat for a morning Denver arrival and the scenic running via Tennessee Pass and the Royal George and then on the joint train north from Pueblo. I think this car was from the Chessie order (C&O), the streamliner that never got launched with the equipment sold to the D&RGW and the D&H and others. In addition to the dome lounge-coach there was eiher another yellow and black D&RGW coach or a combine. There was the NP or CB&Q stainless steel slumbercoach Colorado Springs - Chicago for the Denver Zephyr, and probably a coach too, but I cannot be certain. Finally, the day I rode it there was a Rock Island 6 and 10 and a coach, the usual Rock Island stainless equipment, and I'm not sure if this was a rerout or regular, both for the Colorado Rocket. Only Colorado Springs - Denver. Note that the MP's Colorado Eagle kept itself together as a through train on the D&RGW joint line north of Pueblo, although it might have had D&RGW power. The joint train alternately had a D&RGW Alco PA or PA and PB, originally bought for the California Zephyr but soon replaced by F-7's (or FP-7's), and Sante Fe power, possibly also FA's and FB's but also possibly F7's.

Another point of interest. During the short time that the D&RGW ran its Rio Grande Zephyr north to Ogden to connect with the UP-SP service, later replaced by vans and taxis, the power was often an SP FP-7, not D&RGW for this stretch. The diner and obs never went to Ogden, and they were turned at Salt Lake City. Dave Klepper

[Anonymous]

Having just seen this thread (where was I?), I should add first that Milwaukee Road's reporting marks are/were MILW, never MR. That's a magazine for model railroaders.

Why the C&NW decided to drop the UP contract and MILW pick it up is an outgrowth of geography and economics, not service and track. I would not claim it was of C&NW's poor service and poor track -- MILW's could certainly have been no better. Rather, it's like this. There were six Iowa roads meeting the UP at Council Bluffs. The UP controlled the traffic in the gateway, and five of the six Iowa roads competed for the UP's favor. The only Iowa road that could afford to be standoffish was the Burlington, which could participate in transcontinental routes without the UP by virtue of its good connections with the D&RGW in Denver and the Hill Roads in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Not surprisingly, it was the only Iowa road with its own Omaha depot, while everyone else sucked up to UP in UP's Union Depot. The Rock Island to a lesser extent could afford to ignore the UP because it had a good connection in Denver with the D&RGW. But the C&NW, CGW, Milwaukee Road, and IC all dead-ended in Omaha (the C&NW west of there was a nothing), and could afford to make the UP unhappy only if they didn't want any of its transcontinental business (and by 1965, that WAS the business).

By 1965, when the UP service flipped from C&NW to Milwaukee Road, passenger service was a big loser, and everyone knew it. The UP, by virtue of its control of the freight business, dictated the terms on the passenger business and they were onerous. The C&NW decided it wasn't going to lose any more money making the UP happy. The Milwaukee Road, operating on hope, I guess, decided that maybe they could get a bigger share of the freight business by picking up the passenger contract. They didn't.

(One can imagine the UP shopping the business around the Chicago headquarters of the Iowa Roads when the C&NW told them they were dropping it. Kind of like a search for suckers.)

As to why the paint scheme was UP, that's because it was a UP service in a UP market and a UP marketing effort. The intrinsic passenger business between Chicago and Omaha was nothing to get excited about, and split six ways anyway! So if you're an Iowa Road, you're not losing your image by repainting into UP colors, you're GAINING image. Besides, by 1965, the Milwaukee Road didn't have much else going for it in the passenger business.

One last comment: by 1965 the UP-Rock Island merger is in the thick of battle. Biggest opponent: C&NW.

[bnsfkline]

I wonder if Mark will mentin any f these threads in in the magazine

[Anonymous]

Sorry, Mark, but Peter's right. Ths switchover was in 1955, not 1965.[#oops]

[Anonymous]

That's what I get for answering questions at 06:15 a.m. after four hours sleep last night. I was glancing upward at a previous post and thought I read 1965, and I copied that (when it really said 1955!). It sounded wrong at the time, but did I look it up? Nooooo. The little bell that rang in the back of my head? I turned it off.

Anyway, scratch the part about the UP-RI merger: it doesn't apply. But passenger service even by 1955 was clearly into permanent decline, that is, if you're a forward-thinking railroad. Not everyone was -- some railroads clung grimly to passenger service a decade after it was completely hopeless.

Jim: as for whether this will appear in the magazine -- not really. The magazine demands a rigor of thought and fact; it's regarded by many readers as a permanent record whereas an internet forum is ephemeral. What I wrote in 10 minutes at 0600 I would spend at least a half-day considering and researching for the magazine, and it would get five other people looking at, each at least twice, before we committed it to ink. I'd include lots of caveats just to avoid having to answer 20 argumentative letters from readers that wanted to debate each point.

That's one beauty of this forum; it allows us to all be a little more casual and general than we can be in print.

On the other hand, I see some interesting things in the forum that leads the magazine into places it may not otherwise have gone. And, I've had such an interesting time reading what some of the people in this forum have to say that you'll start to see some of them appearing in the magazine. There's already, I think, five people who regularly appear in this forum that are working on something for the magazine. From my point of view, this forum has paid off more than I ever thought it would.

(I've said it before, but it bears repeating. I look at ALL the railroad forums every day, but the people here are using this forum in a far better manner than the rest. There's very little of the one-upmanship and trolling that poisons most other railroad forums.)

[pmsteamman]

Hay yall I think we just got a attaboy [:D]

[Anonymous]

Nope.The MILW was just helping the UP get into Chicago.UP never had acess into the windy city and many RR's wanted to help the UP.Some of these were the SP,CNW,MILW,Wabash(later N&W),Nickel plate road(Also later N&W).ACL(later SCL),FEC,NYC(painted in a black and grey paint job with UNION PACIFIC on the sides),PRR(along with the NYC Later PC),C&O,B&O,and MP.