Miningman The Pacific Coast Extension was a tremendous asset .. How about a mega merger of Milwaukee with The Pennsy, Southern Pacific and Rock Island! An iron lariat on top of and through the West with some serious long haul to Eastern markets. Tell everyone to just stuff it and do it.
The Pacific Coast Extension was a tremendous asset .. How about a mega merger of Milwaukee with The Pennsy, Southern Pacific and Rock Island! An iron lariat on top of and through the West with some serious long haul to Eastern markets. Tell everyone to just stuff it and do it.
I agree that an end-to-end merger could have been very beneficial to the MILW. However, I would have advocated an EL - MILW combination (and possibly throwing in Grand Trunk as well as they're the one who SHOULD have been able to acquire the MILW "core" system). That would have meshed both road's strength in intermodal traffic and it could have been an intermodal powerhouse.
PRR should have been put with both UP & CNW (aka the U.S. Highway 30 merger).
CMStPnP Well in my view, the Pacific Coast Extension was a wise move but unlike the NP and GN. Milwaukee seemed to take a "spare no expense" approach to construction. That is instead of first putting in sharp curves and steep grades to fix later, Milwaukee opted to do everything right from the beginning
Well in my view, the Pacific Coast Extension was a wise move but unlike the NP and GN. Milwaukee seemed to take a "spare no expense" approach to construction. That is instead of first putting in sharp curves and steep grades to fix later, Milwaukee opted to do everything right from the beginning
Not necessarily the reason. Construction techniques and equipment and technology improve over the years. The Milwaukee Road Pacific Extention was completed 26 years after the NP and 16 after the GN. The Milwaukee had access to better engineering resources a generation later than when the NP was built. The Milwaukee benefited greatly by shipping materials for its construction on the already-built NP. And while the GN and NP did invest and rebuild most sections of their original main line route, the Milwaukee did little. They did change the 2 percent westward grade at Bruno, MT to 1.4, but not a lot else. They never put in ABS on their main line between Sorrento (Plummer) and Marengo nor did they have failed equipment detectors on their Pacific Extension right up to the time of its demise. And CTC with power switches? Almost none.
CMStPnP In my view, after the last reorganization they could have kept and should have kept the Pacific Coast Extension and shed the Electrification, shed the duplicitous branch lines everywhere and if I were the Trustee I would have given it one more chance at survival as a Chicago to Seattle/Tacoma system. I believe they had some sort of rights into Portland, OR even to connect to SP as a condition of the BN merger.
In my view, after the last reorganization they could have kept and should have kept the Pacific Coast Extension and shed the Electrification, shed the duplicitous branch lines everywhere and if I were the Trustee I would have given it one more chance at survival as a Chicago to Seattle/Tacoma system. I believe they had some sort of rights into Portland, OR even to connect to SP as a condition of the BN merger.
The did obtain trackage rights to Portland on BN from Chehalis, WA as a condition of the BN merger. But this route was circuitous and featured a grade (between Tacoma and Chehalis on a Milwaukee Road branch line) of over 3 percent for trains going to Portland.
Even without the branch lines (which often produced more online traffic than the main line), the Pacific Extension was the high-cost route between the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, hence the reason for its demise:
http://www.trainweb.org/milwaukeemyths/
Mark Meyer
Los Angeles Rams Guy- "agree that an end-to-end merger could have been very beneficial to the MILW. However, I would have advocated an EL - MILW combination (and possibly throwing in Grand Trunk as well as they're the one who SHOULD have been able to acquire the MILW "core" system). That would have meshed both road's strength in intermodal traffic and it could have been an intermodal powerhouse"
"PRR should have been put with both UP & CNW (aka the U.S. Highway 30 merger)"
Those are great ideas as well. GT/ MIlw definitely should have been.
UP/ C&NW/PRR -Absolutely. Can you imagine. It could end up something like that in the end yet.
schlimmShould we assume you meant to say duplicated or redundant branch lines, rather than lines that are deceitful?
Yeah thats what I meant.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.