Chicago & NorthWestern : The non-transcontinental

[Railway Man]

Plans were drafted and dropped, redrafted and reshelved, but so were similar plans at
many roads; in itself the mere existence of plans means little.  The North Western entertained notions of a line to Salt Lake City and projected myriad cursory surveys to San Francisco and Los Angeles as did the Burlington.  In the meantime it built to the cheapest of standards, occupying the route at the least possible cost.  The North Western management recognized it was building into extremely thin territory west of the dry line in eastern Nebraska with no local support (i.e., no local traffic) and in such cases a line may only come into value if completed through to some west coast port or center of articulation.  If the former it would parallel another road and necessarily share the traffic and engage in ruinous rate wars; if the latter it would have to reach a traffic sharing arrangement with some other western road willing to offer competitive through rates. 

And which western road would it work with?  By 1903 Harriman had combined the UP, SP, and through heavy stock purchases the Santa Fe into a community of interest with explicit traffic-sharing, trackage-sharing, and territory-sharing agreements, avoiding duplication and rate wars.  Along came W.A. Clark with an immense fortune and larger ego and began building the SPLA&SL, a road into yet more territory offering no local support and when complete a geographic link of meager value down to the present.  Clark nosed around at both North Western and Burlington, as well as with the Denver & Rio Grande and David Moffat, in search of a traffic arrangement that might generate some through traffic for his railroad, the Harriman roads having no interest in short-hauling themselves and only entertaining offers for feeder-line traffic from Clark's road.  Harriman, we can imagine with a heavy sigh and grinding of the teeth, thought it better to not encourage this fool's errand any further, calculating that while in the long run the truth would out but in the short run it would create confusion, disruption, and possible political attention, so went into 50-50 partnership with Clark, dashing hopes (thin as they were) at C&NW and CB&Q for a western outlet via a traffic sharing arrangement with Clark.  Moffat and George Gould went ahead on their own anyway, the former as a nuisance run at UP (a tactic Moffat had endlessly milked as a mining stock promoter) and the latter as a exercise in megalomania, to the sorrow of the few who were seduced into purchasing their equities.

In the long run all that matters is not which herald survives on a boxcar or paint scheme on a locomotive, but that the territory was built up, the economy enlarged, and the investors rewarded.  Had more western lines found more foolish Dutch or British investors to finance more transcontinentals the only result would have been more abandonment, more economic disruption, and more wealth destroyed.  The agricultural, mining, and forestry resources of the West found adequate transportation to reach market with what they had.  In the long run the West's economy could have functioned without the capacity of the Western Pacific, Milwaukee Road, Moffat Road, and LA&SL, these roads accessing almost no traffic-generating territory not already served nor providing any geographic connections the nation needed, and functioning only as spoilers of rates in an unregulated world and as leeches of investment capital and maintenance funds in a regulated world.  I almost hesitated to include the Moffat Road in this list as the Moffat 60 years after it was built suddenly came of value due to the coal reserves of the Yampa Basin, but had there been no railroad the result would have been mine-mouth power plants; the economic savings generated by the coincident existence of the railroad are not large.

It's true that the lack of a transcontinental route condemned the North Westerns, Friscos, and Katys to a secondary status, but the construction of such a route after the construction of the first set of transcons would have only hastened their demise.  I think the question presupposes a world of infinite expansive possibilities where in reality the natural resources  that support population and wealth have definite limits which railroads defy at their peril.  On the other hand some of the grangers that resisted the urge to dash themselves against the Rocky Mountains made their investors fabulously wealthy while the western transcons were almost unexcelled in their talent for destroying wealth in the 19th century.

Had there been no laws setting minimum rates and enforcing traffic sharing with weak roads, abandonment would have occurred much earlier and with much more local devastation.  It's hard to imagine how a Milwaukee Road, Western Pacific, or D&RGW could have survived as through routes a traffic war with the Harriman and Hill lines. 

RWM 

[Murphy Siding]

     CNW built a line in the late 1880's, presumeably as part of a westward expansion of it's market, into southwestern Wyoming.  And then......it stopped.  To be sure, the reason they probably stopped, was because of the Rocky Mountains looming in the distance.

     Was there ever a real plan to extend CNW to the West Coast?

     In the long run, did the lack of a transcontinental line cause the eventual demise of nearly all of the "also ran" western railroads? (As in west of Chicago/St. Louis/Memphis/New Orleans.)