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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol [quote]QUOTE: I do not know if Milwaukee officials over the years had planned or hoped for any realignments of their original route.[/quote] The Snoqualmie Tunnel is a line re-alignment from the original Laconia route. There were a number. Like most of the railroads, there were ongoing projects, grade lowering in Central Montana in 1956, work here and there. The biggest wish list project was a tunnel between Bryson and Adair, replacing Tunnel #19, St. Paul Tunnel (#20), Tunnels #21, #22, #23, #24, #25 #26, #27, #28, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, and #34, four high steel bridges, about 1,000 degrees of curvature, ten miles of line, and lowering the grade to about .6% at 3500 feet. It would have been an extremely useful and productive improvement. Best regards, Michael Sol [/quote] I'm glad I have a copy of Stanley W. Johnson's The Milwaukee Road In Idaho, otherwise I would have had no idea where Adair was. I take it then that Bryson lies on the southernmost apex of the big curve between Saltese and Taft. Given your description, the new grade (west to east) would have started at Stetson following the lower valley of the North Fork of the St Joe River and the Loop Creek Valley (down in the flats of these valleys) to just below Adair, then tunnel roughly 4 1/2 miles to below(?) Bryson, then along the flats of the St Regis River parallel to the NP Wallace line (and below the original grade) to Haugen(?), or just to Drexel (which I have not been able to locate on my atlas, but I understand that's where the westbound grade shifted from 0.8% to the 1.7%). However, didn't the 1.7% eastbound start at Avery proper, and if not, what was the grade from Avery to Stetson? I agree that would have been a very productive project (I had always assumed that any such wish list tunnel between the St Regis and St Joe watersheds would have run from Falcon to Taft, so at leat that assumption wasn't to far off the mark!), but wouldn't then the Milwaukee have suffered the same constraints as GN per the Cascade and Flathead tunnels' trains per day limitations? The other point to ponder in this scenario takes into consideration the later revelations of the hotter intermodals being able to tackle 3% grades, aka BNSF's study of a Flathead Tunnel 3% flyby for the lighter faster trains. It would have been just as concievable to have a set of 3% fly-bys on both the Montana side and the Idaho side of the St Paul Pass tunnel, which would have also reduced the overall mileage by 10 or more miles, without the constraints and expense of the new longer tunnel. Given Milwaukee's superiority in hauling autos and containers, this idea would have been a much better fit for them than for the BN.
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