rock island...

[Anonymous]

just a quick question. just before the rock island went belly up 25 years ago, the UP was trying to buy it or merge or what not....but they were struck down by the ICC. i was just curious as to what the stipulations were why they were denied....i live in the la salle-peru area and i think it'd be pretty neat to see 60+ trains sailing through the illinois valley every day...

[Anonymous]

The proposal, as modified, was to split the Rock Island between UP and SP, UP getting essentially everything north of Kansas City, and SP everything south. The ICC attached numerous trackage rights and traffic-solicitation conditions to the merger (which WAS approved) that were unacceptable to UP, and UP backed out of the merger.

The essential problem with the merger is that the UP connected with six Iowa roads at Council Bluffs -- Rock Island, Milwaukee, Illinois Central, Chicago Great Western, Chicago & North Western, and Burlington (plus Wabash coming up from the south). Whichever Iowa road UP merged with would of course end up starving the others, though the Burlington was sufficiently strong west of Omaha to do without UP interchange, CGW was merged out of existence, and Wabash was a non-player anyway. The ICC merger approval attempted to reconcile all this, but from UP's point of view, that would simply give them more expense without enough additional income. What would be the point of buying a line to Chicago if you had to give some of your traffic to competitors to your own line? None, really!

Ultimately, it was all sorted out anyway -- Burlington merged to become BN, Rock went bankrupt and the Iowa line became a regional, Milwaukee and Wabah to Omaha were abandoned, and IC to Omaha became a regional. C&NW became part of UP.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Ultimately, it was all sorted out anyway -- Burlington merged to become BN, Rock went bankrupt and the Iowa line became a regional, Milwaukee and Wabah to Omaha were abandoned, and IC to Omaha became a regional. C&NW became part of UP.

Railroad companies family trees are more complicated than mormons with the plural marriages.

[Anonymous]

A couple of corrections in the down fall of Rock Island.It was in Chapter
11 when Union Pacific made a offer of merger but the ICC was not quick in
there decision and trackage became so bad on the Rock Island that UP was
not wanting any part.as for Waba***hey were long gone into the N&W family
by this time.as for SP intrest who can say as wanted trackage..

Go safe with green lights

David Brown

[jeffhergert]

The Rock Island was not bankrupt when merger talks began with the UP. I believe the initial stockholder votes were in 1963. The Rock Island's last profitable year was 1965.
I myself think the Rock's downfall was a management that was brought in to merge the railroad with someone else. They focused so much on the premise that the Rock couldn't survive alone that they let the railroad fall apart. I think if early on they would have realized that the UP merger wasn't going to happen, steps could have been taken to save the company.
Eventually of course, it would have disappeared into another system, but through merger rather than liquadation.
P.S. The UP ended up with most of the surviving RI lines except for what they in the 60's wanted most, the Council Bluffs to Chicago route.

[Anonymous]

I miss the Rock. [:(!] [:(] [V]

Here in Arkansas some of the lines went to UP. Little Rock and Western took over a small part, and the part they didn't take over the rails were pulled up. Truly a very sad end to a once proud railroad. You have to blame management for not trying to save the Rock. The deferred maintenance killed the rails and equipment. Track speeds were restricked to a crawl--not a way to run a railroad but definately a way to "ruin" a railroad which is exactly what the Rock's management did. [:(!] [V] [:(] [V] [:(!]

[CBQ_Guy]

QUOTE: Originally posted by farmer03

just a quick question. just before the rock island went belly up 25 years ago, the UP was trying to buy it or merge or what not....but they were struck down by the ICC. i was just curious as to what the stipulations were why they were denied....i live in the la salle-peru area and i think it'd be pretty neat to see 60+ trains sailing through the illinois valley every day...

I agree, neighbor. I could walk down to the river a couple blocks from 3rd and Peoria Streets and failfan.

Now I have to wait for the rare sound of a whistle and if I'm able, get out to the car and try to catch a train now and then.

Too bad the Rock isn't still around and funning on this line. That would be the ultimate.

Take care,

[Anonymous]

Fraington managemet was tring to bring the rock back but by that time the had no money and all the wonderful ideas he had they coouldnt afford. LONG LIVE THE ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[jeffhergert]

John D. Farrington died in 1961. Jervis Langdon Jr was brought in has chairman and ceo in 1964. His main purpose was to merge the RI into the UP. They had it in there mind that the RI could not survive without the UP. They also seemed to have the attitude to defer maintenance, that the UP will fix things once they took over.
Had they operated under the attitude that merger with the UP would be good but not certain, and actually tried to better maintain the important lines, maybe a different outcome from liquadation would have happened.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Rock Island had been a marginal carrier at best and the comment about its geography has more than a little bit of truth to it. The merger fight over Rock Island was a long battle between UP/SP on one side and CNW/ATSF on the other side. It started in 1964 and was finally decided in 1973 in favor of UP but with a lot of strings attached as mentioned above. Rock Island filed for bankruptcy in 1975 but was already in pretty sad shape both financially and operationally for quite some time.

[Anonymous]

I was reading about the Big Train "57" that The Rock ran for Ford. I also remember reading , in the same article, about the connections that ROCK had with Eastern railroads including Penn Central.

My question is: Did the failure of the eastern roads play any part in Rocks failure?

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by talbanese

My question is: Did the failure of the eastern roads play any part in Rocks failure?

Not really any more than with anyone else. The RI was not in particularly good shape except maybe for a few years right after WWII, and even that's debatable. One of the biggest factors contributing to its demise was the SP's taking and running off with it's longest haul freight traffic by using the SSW and the Flatonia connection to run around it by connecting to the east at the Memphis and East St. Louis gateways. It didn't matter that the run was over 400 miles longer. By diverting the vast majority of the connecting transcontinental freight off the Golden State route they could get all the cookies. Word on the street was that SP would do anything to get the RI line all the way into CHI, including bankrupt them by starving them to death. Eventually, of course, they did just that. Keep in mind that on all the other RI lines that were actually set up for volume freight, they actually got short-hauled. The SP craved that line as much, if not more, than the UP craved the Council Bluffs line, but the SP could make a much bigger dent in RI's bottom line to get what they wanted.

Like a lot of the other grainger roads that extended into the Southwest, a protracted drought in the late '40's and early '50's hurt by significantly reducing grain loadings, as did the big drop in traffic at the end of the Korean War. It's not surprising that they, like several others, started to go on the skids in about 1953.

The sad part is that they had such a great connection at Blue Island.

It also didn't help that the RI never really got anywhere the direct way, or that they had been bankrupted in 1915, and again in 1933 (not getting out until 1948), or that management got so nearsighted that they deferred almost everything.

Deferrals went way back. When B-RI bought the Trinity & Brazos Valley between FTW and HOU (which is the shortest line, by the way, and includes the 30 mile Katy segment between DAL and Waxahatchie, where B-RI had rights) in 1931, the contract split the maintenance up on alternating 5-year cycles. You could always count on the track and equipment deteriorating when the Rock had the duties. The Zephyr 9901 fire in December 1944 (on RI's watch) was blamed on poor RI maintenance--the problems went back at least that far.

An old acquaintance of mine was one of the last RI roadmasters, and we wound up working on an easement reversion case together. I remember this well...the argument was that the RI had not abandoned a certain stretch of track (it had 6" trees growing up through it and large sections of rail missing!) and one of the attorneys involved asked him why he knew it had been abandoned. He replied "because I abandoned it". Incredulous, the attorney retorted that this track was usable, to which my friend pointed to a couple of straightrailed switches and an adjacent one on the main track missing about 3/4 of its pieces, looked him in the eye and said, "Son, see those switches. I pulled them out myself and put them in the yard so we could run a few trains. I did all the rest of 'em out here the same way. I abandoned it." Rob Peter to pay Paul and try to hang on another day. Such was the Rock.

Hope this info is useful.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by drephpe

QUOTE: Originally posted by talbanese

My question is: Did the failure of the eastern roads play any part in Rocks failure?

Not really any more than with anyone else. The RI was not in particularly good shape except maybe for a few years right after WWII, and even that's debatable. One of the biggest factors contributing to its demise was the SP's taking and running off with it's longest haul freight traffic by using the SSW and the Flatonia connection to run around it by connecting to the east at the Memphis and East St. Louis gateways. It didn't matter that the run was over 400 miles longer. By diverting the vast majority of the connecting transcontinental freight off the Golden State route they could get all the cookies. Word on the street was that SP would do anything to get the RI line all the way into CHI, including bankrupt them by starving them to death. Eventually, of course, they did just that. Keep in mind that on all the other RI lines that were actually set up for volume freight, they actually got short-hauled. The SP craved that line as much, if not more, than the UP craved the Council Bluffs line, but the SP could make a much bigger dent in RI's bottom line to get what they wanted.

Thanks for the good info.