Mergers-Just for fun!!

[mnwestern]

Taking my CNW/Milw. merger further, perhaps CNW would then never have taken over first M&StL and later Chicago Great Western. Maybe they would have merged, creating a strong Midwest granger railroad that perhaps would have been attractive to someone line the Soo Line as a way to K.C., Iowa, etc.
Then, taking the dominoes even further, what if a CNW/Milw. merger eliminated CNW's later sale of its Rapid City line to DM&E, or retention Milw.'s line to Rapid City and instead of DM&E proposing to build into the Powder River Basin coal fields, CNW/Milw. extended their Rapid City lines there instead, thus never having to partner with UP on coal movements. Maybe that merged railroad never gets eaten by UP and still today tries to provide a western alternative to UP/BNSF.
Wow, now we are really dreaming, right?

[Anonymous]

Never gets eaten up by the UP? (izzn't that the ultimate fate of all North American RR's? =)..Yeah I think you are dreaming...but that's what this thread is all about...

I never realized what a cool RR CNW was until perusing the recent mentions of it in Trains magazine, having only seen their boxcars for years with the odd little canted logo.

But there is something compelling about the paintjobs they put on their motive power, can't quite put my finger on it, it's relatibely plain, yet has uncommon appeal..

The "mix" you mention sounds interesting, another might be the old Milwaukee combined with Erie-Lackawanna, call it the "throw away" transcon.

But, it seems like I read SOMEWHERE that the Milwaukee main to "points far west" was built on the excessive cheap (anyone with details to confirm or deny, feel free to pipe right in) and the roadbed was not all it should have been, ties laid right into the dirt, etc, that made the decision to pull up the rails less a regrettable one than it seems today, in retrospect.

That's the opinion I seem to have absorbed from some source anyway, could be entirely wrong, not sure.

(make an interesting theme for a "classic trains" huh? "Fallen right of whys-what are they NOW?"..=) ~and here we have a trailbike park in Montana, 8 feet wide X 374 miles long~ etc?