The Great Northern Railroad

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VerMontanan

Member since
September 2003
From: NotIn, TX
617 posts

Posted by VerMontanan on Friday, September 16, 2005 3:23 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol
The Reader will note here that the "favorable" grade argument has been abandoned -- because the Bieber line has an unfavorable grade that Mr. Meyer has not heretofore listed in his lengthy comparisons. Wonder why? However, he clearly abandons the "grade" theory in favor of the "reality" that the line is used..

I never claimed that the Inside Gateway was favorable to any other (actually there is only one other) alternate route. The statement was merely a response to Mr. Sol's acquaintence who said " Look at the Bieber line. It should have never been built. It's ridiculous." Since the nearby UP (ex-SP) route is at capacity and that the BNSF route carries a heavy amount of traffic, it is obvious that the route is needed. A superior grade is not the only reason to keep a route in place. I agree with Mr. Sol that there are many factors that could make a route worthwhile. In the case of former Great Northern lines, it seems that many fit this category, and by route mileage remaining, a greater percentage than its competitors.

Mark Meyer

VerMontanan

Member since
September 2003
From: NotIn, TX
617 posts

Posted by VerMontanan on Friday, September 16, 2005 3:27 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

VerMontanan: Please don't turn this post into a flame-a-thon. I've read every post you've written in a long time. You seem to have quite a bit to add to this and other posts. All that turns to naught when the posts turn nasty. You're better than that. And don't start with "he started it" Move on
Thanks

You're absolutely right, and I apologize for previous post. When I received two Emails off list stating that I was getting as low as some of the others who post on this thread, that was a wake up call. Thanks for pointing it out.

Mark Meyer

VerMontanan

Member since
September 2003
From: NotIn, TX
617 posts

Posted by VerMontanan on Friday, September 16, 2005 3:34 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

This is a Great Northern thread. I read somewhere that your dad was a GN engineer? If so, where did he run? Along shot-was he based out of Breckenridge MN?

Thanks

No, my Dad was a telegrapher. He went to telegrapher's school in Superior, Wisconsin. Most of the work for all the railroads in that area were seasonal because things pretty much shut down when the lake froze over. So, he went where he could get a steady job: Montana.

Mark Meyer

VerMontanan

Member since
September 2003
From: NotIn, TX
617 posts

Posted by VerMontanan on Friday, September 16, 2005 3:46 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73

Mark-
Where was the highest point on the Great Northern ? Was it Elk Park Pass, and was this at 6,364' or 6,372' ?

I will have to research the exact highest point. The station at Woodville was 6,354 feet. This was atop Elk Park Pass, which was the highest point on the Great Northern. Interestingly, nearby Homestake (on the NP) and Pipestone (on the MILW) were the highest points on those railroads, too. Coincidentally, all three are out service (the GN and MILW abandoned, the NP track in place but in sad shape) today.

Mark Meyer

Isambard

Member since
January 2002
From: Canada, eh!
737 posts

Posted by Isambard on Friday, September 16, 2005 4:32 PM

[

OK ,I gotta ask. The Grizzly Bear Northern is the name of your HO rail line? I was reading your profile and taking it all in, when I noticed Isambard,Kingdom, and Brunel all in the same paragraph! [;)] Made me think about all the code words of D-Day that showed up in a British newspaper crossword puzzle, just before D-Day.

Ah shucks Murphy, you've gone and broken the code, and I thought all the Enigma machines were locked up in museums! [;)]
Or you were looking at this photo: http://www.railroadforums.com/photos/showphoto.php?photo=28171&cat=500&page=1
[:)]

Isambard

Grizzly Northern history, Tales from the Grizzly and news on line at isambard5935.blogspot.com

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 8:21 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by VerMontanan

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

VerMontanan: Please don't turn this post into a flame-a-thon. I've read every post you've written in a long time. You seem to have quite a bit to add to this and other posts. All that turns to naught when the posts turn nasty. You're better than that. And don't start with "he started it" Move on
Thanks

You're absolutely right, and I apologize for previous post. When I received two Emails off list stating that I was getting as low as some of the others who post on this thread, that was a wake up call. Thanks for pointing it out.

Thank You!

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 8:26 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Isambard

[

Ah shucks Murphy, you've gone and broken the code, and I thought all the Enigma machines were locked up in museums! [;)]
Or you were looking at this photo: http://www.railroadforums.com/photos/showphoto.php?photo=28171&cat=500&page=1
[:)]

You're too cool! Do you have one of those big stove-pipe hats, too?[:)]

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 8:45 PM

I'm reading a book that states something to the effect that "All the transcontinentals had to deal with rivers,mountains, and deserts" There really aren't any deserts on the GN,NP, or MWK lines are there? I've read that eastern Washington, east of the Cascades is "dry", but not that dry?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

bobwilcox

Member since
December 2001
From: Crozet, VA
1,049 posts

Posted by bobwilcox on Friday, September 16, 2005 9:15 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

I'm reading a book that states something to the effect that "All the transcontinentals had to deal with rivers,mountains, and deserts" There really aren't any deserts on the GN,NP, or MWK lines are there? I've read that eastern Washington, east of the Cascades is "dry", but not that dry?

In the Pacific Southwest the LA&SL(UP), ATSF and SP had to build huge distilation facilities to produce water suitable for steam locomoitve boilers. The UP did not have such facilites on other parts of their railroad. Did the Northern Lines need to invest money in these type of water treatment facilities?

Bob

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Friday, September 16, 2005 9:23 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

I'm reading a book that states something to the effect that "All the transcontinentals had to deal with rivers,mountains, and deserts" There really aren't any deserts on the GN,NP, or MWK lines are there? I've read that eastern Washington, east of the Cascades is "dry", but not that dry?

Wellll, the role of railroads in settling/destroying the West is one of the most controversial among transportation and settlement historians. West of the 100th Meridian, while perhaps not true desert, the Northern Plains had little enough moisture for agriculture. It is referred to, on maps predating 1860, as "The Great American Desert." After the Homestead Act, and the NP Land Grants, and the Government became interested in settlement, the maps began calling it "the Great Plains."

My Milwaukee Road notes for that era record as follows: "Professor Henry Sumner of the Smithsonian Institution had pronounced the northern Great Plains a near-desert, and even the Milwaukee Road's own surveyors had remarked that the country appeared unsuitable for agriculture.

"In the late 1870's, the United States Geological Survey's John Wesley Powell had looked over Montana and the northern Plains, compiled weather records, and analyzed the soil. He concluded that the northern Plains west of Pembina, North Dakota were unsuitable for cultivation: "many droughts will occur; many seasons in a long series will be fruitless. It may be doubted whether, on the whole, agriculture will prove remunerative."

"Powell addressed the constitutional conventions of North Dakota and Montana in 1889 pleading for development which accounted for very limited water resources. To the North Dakota assembly, he allowed that in the eastern part of that state, "there was sufficient rainfall, and in the western a permanent dependence on irrigation." The danger was in the transition between the regions. "Years of abundance will come and years will come of disaster, and between the two people will be prosperous and unprosperous, and the thing to do is to look the question squarely in the face ... There's almost enough rainfall for your purposes, but one year with another you need a little more than you get." [United States Geologic Survey Professional Paper 669, The Colorado River Region and John Wesley Powell (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969) p. 17.]

Encouraged by the Government, the railroads had powerful financial incentives to promote development. "The West," one railroad official remarked, "is purely a railroad enterprise. We started it in our publicity department... the West was inevitable but the railroad was the instrument of its fate." Ray Stannard Baker, "Destiny and the Western Railroad," Century Magazine, April, 1908, 75, pp. 892-94.

During their construction eras, the GN and MILW hit a wet cycle, and both companies made the best of it. MILW, in particular, generated stunning success in its homesteader efforts. NP was more cautious.

The number of acres under cultivation during that time period tripled. In 1909, 1,000,000 acres were claimed under the Homestead Act. In 1910, under the Enlarged Homestead Act -- which increased the allowable claim from 160 to 320 acres -- a record 4,750,000 acres were claimed. The total wheat crop in 1910 was four times greater than the Montana wheat crop produced in 1900. By 1915, the crop was five times the size of the 1910 crop. The years between 1910 and 1918 were boom years. During that time, 32 million acres of Montana land was taken up for homesteading, and the population surged to 550,000, much of this attributable to the Milwaukee Road's promotional efforts. The story was much the same throughout the northern Great Plains region of Montana and the Dakotas. Between 1900 and 1920, the population of the region grew from 194,000 to 620,000, and the acreage tilled increased in that time from a little over a million acres to 27.3 million acres. [Mary Hargreaves, Dry Farming in the Northern Great Plains, Years of Adjustment, 1920-1990.]

But when the desert cycle returned, it was utter catastrophe.

"In May of 1917, the usual rains did not come. And they did not come in June or July, either. It was such a remarkable and unexpected dry spell that the Havre Plaindealer remarked that 1917 had become a drought year that "is the worst in the history of the state." Grasshoppers came in clouds over the wilting and dying grain fields. Then wireworms and cutworms came to devour what was left. Rainfall had uniformly averaged over 16 1/2 inches annually since 1905, but fell well below that in 1917.

"In 1918, it was worse, and by 1919, farms that had previously yielded an average of 25 bushels of wheat to the plowed acre were averaging 2.4 bushels.

"Dust storms, born in part of deep plowing, darkened the skies at noon and piled up dirt and debris against solitary shacks and sheds on the treeless prairie. The ground cracked open and pleaded futilely for water, while the homesteader and his family looked in vain for anything green. {Henderson, Harley, and Small, Lawrence F., Montana Passage (Billings, Montana: Falcon Press Pub. Co., 1983)].

"Farm mortgage debt increased by over eight times in three years. In some counties, one out of every four farmers went bankrupt. In Stillwater County, Montana, 12 of the 13 commercial banks closed their doors. Choteau County saw 17 banks dwindle to 5. In eastern Montana, 194 out of 431 commercial banks failed.

"A district court judge told one reporter:

"'The other night there was a meeting at Chester (Hill County) of people in need of help. The general expression on the faces of these people was tragic .... Several gentlemen undertook to talk about organizing farm bureaus, government irrigation and road work. Many an inhabitant of that region will be an expert harpist before the Milk river reclamation project is complete. The audience was not interested in such subjects -- they wanted to know what they were going to have for breakfast!'" [Joseph Kinsey Howard, Montana High, Wide and Handsome, p. 198].
...
" The despairing trek of the bankrupt and destitute began all over Montana. The Salvation Army threw open its citadels to a new type of wanderer -- the stunned and helpless honyocker -- and provided free meals and beds. Upon the amazed merchants of the dryland towns there descended first one or two families, then dozens, with their belongings packed into rickety farm wagons; they asked the storekeepers for food or feed or gasoline to carry them east or west. They were hungry, bitter, and bewildered; few could admit, even now, their personal failure as farmers or the insufficiency of the land: it was the incomprehensible drouth which had beaten them, a malignant act of God which either destroyed their faith altogether or confirmed them in some graceless creed of inexorable doom. [Joseph Kinsey Howard]

Some Montana counties lost more than a third of their population. Twenty per cent of the state's farms were simply abandoned as they became, as Joseph Kinsey Howard wrote, “fenced deserts.” One scholar estimated that three-fourths of the homesteaders who arrived in Montana between 1909 and 1918 had left their homesteads by 1922. [Hargreaves, Mary W. M., p.4].

On the GN, Howard noted that Hill's homesteading efforts on Montana's High Line had resulted in "empty trains rattling through empty towns."

Writer Jonathan Raban did not spare the Milwaukee: "“Along the entire route of the Milwaukee Road, Albert Earling created as many ruins by accident as Tamburlane the great had done on purpose.” [Bad Land: An American Romance, p. 284]

Were there deserts?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Best regards, Michael Sol

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Friday, September 16, 2005 9:40 PM

Development in Eastern Washington from my notes:

Washington State, at least the eastern portion, was not promoted heavily for agricultural settlement during the initial years of the Pacific Extension. The great Columbia Plateau that the Milwaukee crossed between Tekoa and Beverly had a reputation as a desert. “The colonists in that region would need a Moses at every mile post to smite the black, ugly rocks with his rod and make the water gush over all the parched land.” The “Great Columbia Desert” was a “precise parallel in root and time with that of the ‘Great American Desert.’”

The Milwaukee did open up a new wheat frontier west of Lind, Washington, and tapped the rich Palouse Country, but, as the Milwaukee’s route through Washington was designed to be the shortest and fastest of the three transcontinentals, its location provided service across, rather than to, the region. In spite of this, the Milwaukee’s experience as a wheat hauler, and providing the short route over the Cascades to the Puget Sound, enabled the Milwaukee to “cut heavily” into the Northern Pacific’s markets for grain hauling and machinery deliveries.

By 1910, the Milwaukee and the Great Northern’s routes through the Cascades overcame the natural efficiencies and economies of “nature’s gravity route” down the Columbia River to Portland, delivering 20% more wheat to the Puget Sound and twice as much flour. [Meinig, D.W., The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography 1805-1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968)].

The desert nature of Eastern Washington was the primary reason that both the Milwaukee Road and the Great Northern provided support for efforts to create the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project.

Best regards, Michael Sol

bobwilcox

Member since
December 2001
From: Crozet, VA
1,049 posts

Posted by bobwilcox on Friday, September 16, 2005 9:43 PM

Our family has stories about my grand parents leaving Baker, MT for
Wenatchee, WA about 1919 after dry land farming collapsed but before the local oil field was discovered. Ironically my grandmother's father was a land agent on the GN in Chinook, MT.

Bob

PNWRMNM

Member since
May 2003
From: US
2,593 posts

Posted by PNWRMNM on Friday, September 16, 2005 10:18 PM

I grew up in Wenatchee. All of the orchards were and are irrigated. Without irrigation the country is very near, if not actually, a desert. It gets 8-12 inches of rain a year, most all in the winter and rain between April and November is very rare. 90 to 100 degree daily highs are not rare through the summer.

In the Columbia Basin and the Palouse dry land farming of wheat and barley is practical, but fields need to lie fallow every other year. In fact the NP, being the first railroad in the region imported experts to teach dry land farming in the 1880s and 1890s.

The basin "bloomed as a rose" with the construction of Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Project. Water from the project started to flow in the early 1950s. The towns of Quincy, Ephrata, Moses Lake, and Othello are still dominated in terms of numbers by structures from the 1950-1969 period. George Washington was founded in that era. It is still not much more than a couple of restaraunts along I-90 at the edge of the irrigated ground.

Mac

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 10:28 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

Our family has stories about my grand parents leaving Baker, MT for
Wenatchee, WA about 1919 after dry land farming collapsed but before the local oil field was discovered. Ironically my grandmother's father was a land agent on the GN in Chinook, MT.

My great-grand parents homesteaded south of Baker, near Ekalaka. They came there,no doubt on the Milwaukee Road.

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Friday, September 16, 2005 10:43 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

Our family has stories about my grand parents leaving Baker, MT for
Wenatchee, WA about 1919 after dry land farming collapsed but before the local oil field was discovered. Ironically my grandmother's father was a land agent on the GN in Chinook, MT.

My great-grand parents homesteaded south of Baker, near Ekalaka. They came there,no doubt.

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

I grew up in Wenatchee.

Good grief, this is either a very small world, or a very small list ....

Best regards, Michael Sol

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 11:00 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

I grew up in Wenatchee. All of the orchards were and are irrigated. Without irrigation the country is very near, if not actually, a desert. It gets 8-12 inches of rain a year, most all in the winter and rain between April and November is very rare. 90 to 100 degree daily highs are not rare through the summer.

In the Columbia Basin and the Palouse dry land farming of wheat and barley is practical, but fields need to lie fallow every other year. In fact the NP, being the first railroad in the region imported experts to teach dry land farming in the 1880s and 1890s.

The basin "bloomed as a rose" with the construction of Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Project. Water from the project started to flow in the early 1950s. The towns of Quincy, Ephrata, Moses Lake, and Othello are still dominated in terms of numbers by structures from the 1950-1969 period. George Washington was founded in that era. It is still not much more than a couple of restaraunts along I-90 at the edge of the irrigated ground.

Mac

Did the dry conditions cause any water supply problems for the railroads? Do you think the water issues influenced the GN to be early buyers of FT's, as the Santa Fe was?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Friday, September 16, 2005 11:08 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by MichaelSol

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

QUOTE: Originally posted by bobwilcox

Our family has stories about my grand parents leaving Baker, MT for
Wenatchee, WA about 1919 after dry land farming collapsed but before the local oil field was discovered. Ironically my grandmother's father was a land agent on the GN in Chinook, MT.

My great-grand parents homesteaded south of Baker, near Ekalaka. They came there,no doubt.

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

I grew up in Wenatchee.

Good grief, this is either a very small world, or a very small list ....

Best regards, Michael Sol

Are you from the same area?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Friday, September 16, 2005 11:10 PM

"Drought" and "Desert" had mixed meanings near the 100th Meridian and more so West of there.

"Moisture follows the plow" was the popular slogan, however, motivating the settlement of the new West. The railroads were willing participants in one climatological disaster when the Santa Fe and the Burlington promoted settlement of their lands in Kansas in the 1870's. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner had written that:

The occupation of western Kansas may illustrate the movement
which went on also in the west of Nebraska and the Dakotas. The
pioneer farmer tried to push into the region with the old methods
of settlement. Deceived by rainy seasons and the railroad advertisements,
and recklessly optimistic, hosts of settlers poured out into the plains
beyond the region of sufficient rainfall for successful agriculture without
irrigation. Dry seasons starved them back; but a repetition of good rainfalls
again aroused the determination to occupy the western plains. Boom
towns flourished like prairie weeds; Eastern capital struggled for a chance
to share in the venture, and the Kansas farmers eagerly mortgaged their
possessions to secure the capital so freely offered for their attack on the
arid lands. By 1887 the tide of the pioneer farmers had flowed across the
semi-arid plains to the western boundary of the State. But it was a hopeless
effort to conquer a new province by the forces that had won the prairies.
The wave of settlement dashed itself in vain against the conditions of the
Great Plains. The native American farmer had received his first defeat.

[Powell, J.W., "Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States", (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1879) ]

Best regards, Michael Sol

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Friday, September 16, 2005 11:16 PM

From my notes:

"The Milwaukee Road had developed quite an expertise in settlement in Iowa and the Dakotas. Although drought had brought disaster to the Milwaukee's agricultural settlements in the Dakotas, the agricultural experts and the railroads such as the Milwaukee that relied on them promised that the Dakota drought of 1886-1896 had taught valuable lessons about drought-resistant crops, plowing techniques, and strip farming methods. These techniques, combined with the increase in moisture for the two decades following 1896, seemed to prove them right.

"The Company had great initial success with its Dakota efforts. That this success had been severely and substantially mitigated by an agonizing drought from 1886 to 1896 was overlooked and forgotten. Although the Milwaukee had tried again with its Rapid City line, completed in 1907, to open and settle new areas, a drought there in 1910 had devastated the community of hopeful immigrants that the Milwaukee had brought to the area to develop its productive natural resources. But that drought had been on a small scale; the dryland soil scientists viewed it as an anomaly, not a harbinger. Times had changed, and lessons had been learned: Montana would be different and Montana appeared to open a new and perhaps even more rewarding territory for settlement."

So it was with the Western railroads.

Best regards, Michael Sol

Anonymous

Member since
April 2003
305,205 posts

Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:52 AM

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

In the Columbia Basin and the Palouse dry land farming of wheat and barley is practical, but fields need to lie fallow every other year. In fact the NP, being the first railroad in the region imported experts to teach dry land farming in the 1880s and 1890s.

It is true that growers in the more westerly portions of the Palouse must practice fallow techniques every other year, but growers in the eastern part of the Palouse have managed to grow crops anually. Our family land near Pullman hasn't been fallowed since the 1970's.

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PNWRMNM

Member since
May 2003
From: US
2,593 posts

Posted by PNWRMNM on Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:55 AM

Murphy,

I do not know about water issues across the Columbia Plateau. I have never seen anything that claims water was a problem. GN, NP, MILW, and UP all had lines across the plateau and all were steam powered as of 1940.

I suspect the reason the GN went for FT units is that they were power short in the runup to WWII. They did not buy much steam in the 1920's and 1930's, and while they did rebuild many locomotives upgrading their power in the process, rebuilding does not add numbers to the fleet, and I suspect a lot of small power was retired in the 1930's.

The NP was another FT customer. Again, not many locos bought since 1920 plus the constricted clearances in Stampede Tunnel. FT units were first asigned to the West End. If I remember correctly the first diesel shop on the NP was at Auburn Washington. I suspect first assignments were Auburn to Pasco or Auburn to Spokane. The FTs ran their last miles between Auburn and Sumas.

Mac

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Saturday, September 17, 2005 6:25 AM

If GN And NP didn'y buy much stam in the 20's and 30's, did that put them ahead of the curve in the coming diesel revolution?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

PNWRMNM

Member since
May 2003
From: US
2,593 posts

Posted by PNWRMNM on Saturday, September 17, 2005 8:21 AM

I would argue it did since they needed the power in the immediate prewar years. If you had plenty of good steam locos it would be hard to justify buying expensive diesels, and they were expensive. Think NKP and their Berkshires for example.

In one of the Northern Pacific power books there is a story about George Engstrom who was Supt. of Motive Power. He rode a test freight on the NP over one of their passes in Montana. They had a heavier train than the biggest steam locomotives handled and came over the top of the hill about 50% faster with the FT set than the steam loco would have. He concluded then and there that steam was dead on the NP. That was 1939 or 1940.

Mac

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:21 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

I would argue it did since they needed the power in the immediate prewar years. If you had plenty of good steam locos it would be hard to justify buying expensive diesels, and they were expensive. Think NKP and their Berkshires for example.

In one of the Northern Pacific power books there is a story about George Engstrom who was Supt. of Motive Power. He rode a test freight on the NP over one of their passes in Montana. They had a heavier train than the biggest steam locomotives handled and came over the top of the hill about 50% faster with the FT set than the steam loco would have. He concluded then and there that steam was dead on the NP. That was 1939 or 1940.

Mac

Now there's a fellow who seemed to be smarter than the average bear!

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

Anonymous

Member since
April 2003
305,205 posts

Posted by Anonymous on Saturday, September 17, 2005 12:55 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

If GN And NP didn'y buy much stam in the 20's and 30's, did that put them ahead of the curve in the coming diesel revolution?

Actually, NP bought plenty of steam locos right into the 1940's. They bought their last 18 Northern types and 26 Challenger types as late as 1943.

GN didn't buy much steam after the 1930's, but they built much of their own steam into the 1940's as well.

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MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Saturday, September 17, 2005 1:21 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

If GN And NP didn'y buy much stam in the 20's and 30's, did that put them ahead of the curve in the coming diesel revolution?

Actually, NP bought plenty of steam locos right into the 1940's. They bought their last 18 Northern types and 26 Challenger types as late as 1943.

GN didn't buy much steam after the 1930's, but they built much of their own steam into the 1940's as well.

And, GN and NP were the last to fully dieselize of the Northern Tier carriers.

Best regards, Michael Sol

randyaj

Member since
April 2003
From: US
225 posts

Posted by randyaj on Saturday, September 17, 2005 3:40 PM

Michael,
I have been observing something in this thread that I would like to gently point to if I could. As much as you have accused others of being obsessed with defending the Great Northern (and you seem to be correct about that), it would also appear to me that the only view that you can have of the GN is a negative view. I am wondering why this is?
Let me bring a couple of things into this disscussion, if I may?
1. As much as it pains me to say this, there are a lot more important things in life than which railroad had the "best" route or whatever. Katrina would bring that into stark reality.
2 Railroads are business that are not the bastions of moral ethics on any of their parts, especially in the late 1800's and early 1900's. One could point to any railroad and see unethical practices by today's standards.
3. At the end of the day this is supposed to be fun! If arguing and such is fun to you then more power to you I guess! When the dust settles whether it is the GN, NP, SP&S, Milwakee, CB&Q, Katy or many others; they are but ghosts of the past, memories of what was and should be remembered fondly sure, but always remembering to keep the big things the big things.
Thanks and I will step off my [soapbox]
Randy

MichaelSol

Member since
October 2004
3,190 posts

Posted by MichaelSol on Saturday, September 17, 2005 4:35 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by randyaj

Michael,
I have been observing something in this thread that I would like to gently point to if I could. As much as you have accused others of being obsessed with defending the Great Northern (and you seem to be correct about that), it would also appear to me that the only view that you can have of the GN is a negative view. I am wondering why this is?

That is a very interesting observation considering the nature of my last three posts:

QUOTE: by Michael Sol
During their construction eras, the GN and MILW hit a wet cycle, and both companies made the best of it. MILW, in particular, generated stunning success in its homesteader efforts. NP was more cautious.

QUOTE: by Michael Sol
By 1910, the Milwaukee and the Great Northern’s routes through the Cascades overcame the natural efficiencies and economies of “nature’s gravity route” down the Columbia River to Portland, delivering 20% more wheat to the Puget Sound and twice as much flour. [Meinig, D.W., The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography 1805-1910 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968)].

QUOTE: by Michael Sol
The desert nature of Eastern Washington was the primary reason that both the Milwaukee Road and the Great Northern provided support for efforts to create the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project.

QUOTE: by Michael Sol
On the GN, Howard noted that Hill's homesteading efforts on Montana's High Line had resulted in "empty trains rattling through empty towns."

Writer Jonathan Raban did not spare the Milwaukee:"“Along the entire route of the Milwaukee Road, Albert Earling created as many ruins by accident as Tamburlane the great had done on purpose.” [Bad Land: An American Romance, p. 284]

You will note that both the Milwaukee and GN lines were treated, in these remarks, as contributing superior marketing abilities for Palouse and Eastern Washington wheat growers over the River route during the time period noted. You will note that both roads were credited with supporting the Columbia Basin Irrigation project. You will note that both roads were critiqued for their settlement efforts and homesteading promotion campaigns which ultimately caused great suffering. The Milwaukee remark perhaps more caustic about that Company than the GN observation. NP is given some credit for being more cautious in its homesteader efforts than either GN or MILW.

A fairly balanced offering, all in all. Is there a reason that you are reading more than is there?

As to my remark:

QUOTE: And, GN and NP were the last to fully dieselize of the Northern Tier carriers.

It happens to be true, and I am not sure what to make of your comment in that regard. I gather you think it is a negative comment.

While I understand that you don't know me, and are probably unaware of a study I did many years ago regarding the fact that Milwaukee was first to be all diesel-electric or straight electric, that is, to have abandoned steam, the fact is that I concluded that Milwaukee was, from a financial perspective, too quick to fully dieselize for a variety of reasons -- including three major yard rebuilding projects at the same time -- but reasons that continued to haunt the Company well into the late 1970s.

Whether these reasons were applicable to the GN or NP at the same time, I do not know, nor do I suggest that their slower progress toward full dieselization was either positive or negative, because that is indeed a financial decision which has a variety of ramifications depending on specific circumstances.

British Rail, for instance, after a study of American dieselization results in 1960, concluded that the rapid dieselization of American railroads was operationally and economically unsound, and had contributed to the financial burden of American railways in an amount exceeding the operating cost savings of diesel operation over steam.

As a result of the study, British Rail opted for a very slow transition in Great Britain to full dieselization. [H.F. Brown, "Economic Results of Diesel Electric Motive Power on the Railways of the United States of America," Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (GB), 175:5 (1961)]. I consulted with Brown in 1974 on this specific point with regard to the Milwaukee Road's rapid abandonment of steam.

Accordingly, the fact that NP and GN dieselized more slowly than Milwaukee is neither a negative opinion nor a positive opinion, but rather, a simple fact, and I hope that you were not attempting to read either more or less into that than is warranted by the plain language of the remark.

Best regards, Michael Sol

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Sunday, September 18, 2005 10:30 PM

QUOTE: Originally posted by nanaimo73

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

nanaimo73: I got my care package from the library today: Main Lines and Merging Lines by Richard Saunders. About 450 pages each and NO PICTURES![:O]. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Being an analizer type, this looks like fun.[:D]. And to think that I laugh at the kids for reading Harry Potter! Thanks for the reccomendation.

I didn't say to get both at the same time !
I guess your three boys will miss you the next three weeks.

nanaimo73: I'm halfway through the first book. I didn't for the life of me expect the public library to get both books to in at the same time.[:0]. I wonder what the kids are up to?[(-D]

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

Murphy Siding

Member since
May 2005
From: S.E. South Dakota
13,569 posts

Posted by Murphy Siding on Monday, September 19, 2005 9:45 PM

Why did the "Hill Interests" build the Spokane,Portland & Seattle as a jointly owned venture? Couldn't either GN or NP have just made it an extension of their own line? Or maybe each could have extended their own lines to form what became SP&S? Had it been a joint effort for some tax advantage, why wasn't it split 3 ways- with CBQ a one third owner? Given it's ownership, I'm surprised to learn that SP&S was run quite independantly.

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.