I had a relative who worked at the MILW shops in Milwaukee in its last final years. (1976-1979ish) I asked about it at a family reunion and we had a long talk about it. The shops were an absolute disaster, parts laying everywhere, dirty and disgusting working conditions, and more. The Milwaukee Road was so desperate for motive power that the shops sent out engines that were practically held together by duct tape and string. He said it was hell working there as his first job. He transferred to CNW, then WC, and finally CN. He retired in 2011.
When I was a kid in the '60s my Dad had friends working at the shops under the 35th Street viaduct and I practically lived there. Dirty? Yup. Messy? You bet. Smelly? Count on it. Trade it for anything? Hell no! There were days when the patrols would skulk back into town on Friday afternoon with up to 20 dead engines pulled off diivision sidings. By '77 the main through 'Tosa was so bad you knew the railroad couldn't last much longer. It didn't.
Please elaborate on "held together by duct tape and string" I'm interested, like how bad did they run? or did they even make full power as they intended when new?
@@AmmyWulf What I meant was the engines were at the bare minimum operable. The cabs were dirty, some of the parts didn't match, and sometimes they exchanged parts from different locomotive models. In one case, he told me, a U25B actually got a replacement throttle/control stand from an E9. The Milwaukee Road really was "America's Resourceful Railroad."
It legitimately makes me sad just how terminally stupid the Milwaukee Road's management was. They had so many things that they could have used to their advantage. They should have electrified more of their system. It would have saved them millions on diesel fuel prices. If they had done that, they actually might have been able to hold their own against competitors. Not to mention, I think their orange and black paint scheme is really nice. It is one of my favorite fallen paint schemes.
This is very true, the reason why we don't have the MKE Road Atlantic's for the famous Hiawatha is because the mayor of Milwaukee, during that era, pulled out the "It looks like a diesels, no one will find it interesting" Admittedly, not a lot of people realized it didn't have a whistle, it had an air horn hidden under the streamlining grill, that really didn't help
@@sebastianschroeder6459 MILW management at that time was almost as bad as Perlaman or Heineman when I came to steam preservation. Supposedly they only "reluctantly" agreed to donate the 261 to the Green Bay museum!
@@michigandon Nice lie Perlman was one of the Best, he rebuilt the NYC and the WP, the MILW was hope less and a very high cost rail road. Did any one At the MILW ever build of rebuild 7 hump yards Replaces or rebuild over 10k miles of rail road replace a lot of rail replace a lot of ties build of rebuild new new Signal systems Have over 10k miles of CTC, I can tell you are very young
@@dknowles60 "Very young?" lol I'll be 55 this fall! I actually agree with you about him making the NYC a well-run, efficient railroad Still doesn't change the FACT that he didn't give a Rodents Derriere about history, though.
@@michigandon I an a lot older and saw a lot of the NYC rebuilding was around for the Selkirk Hump yard rebuilding the over180 MPH run at Bryon Ohio Watch the Ypsilanti BrancH get torned Watch new Block Signals get up up, He could not Afford to save history Any one Could have brought a Steam Locomotive ,f you Paid higher then the Scrap Price, Most rail roads Did not Give Away their Steam Locomotives for Free
Lease backs are the worst move a company can make. Lease backs are one of the significant reason of retail failure over the past 30 years. You never sell an asset you own just to lease it back.
It depends on the reason for the lease backs. Lease backs to raise money to fund growth is a workable strategy in certain circumstances. Its a way to sometimes raise money on better terms than one can obtain on the open market. Where lease-backs fail is when they are used to either provide a short-term boost to earnings, money given to shareholders or to otherwise fund the operations of the business. Those sorts of lease-backs have been common in retail failures.
You are correct and had they chose to merge with Erie Lackwanna railroad you can run a Little Joe from Avery Idaho to Hoboken terminal once the missing electrification Harlowton Montana to Dover NJ is completed. That means Little Joe's are used on St Paul's Pass Pipestone Pass and Summit to Newark Broad St due to the climb over the Watchung Mountains. When it comes to the Parallel interstate highway 78 between Summit and Newark it decends the Watchung Mountains via a steep bridge at Exit 48 Eastbound and Exit 29 westbound
I watched the decline of the Milwaukee Rd first hand in its home city. Deferred maintenance on the rails and the motive power was brutal. In addition to the derailment stats, the railroad would intentionally over power their trains because it was highly likely there would be power failures on the road, but there would hopefully be enough remaining power to limp to their destination. The Milwaukee road was maybe the equivalent of the Pennsy for innovation and creative problem solving but as is speculated, there was a sinister dark plan to run It into the ground for personal or corporate stockholder profit. Much the same way Paul Kalmonovitz took down several major breweries like Falstaff and Pabst.
Do you have any evidence of this dark plan, or speculation on the specifics? I'm not being sarcastic; I kinda wonder if there's something to the conspiracy theories surrounding the MLW, especially with them double-entering their expenses on Lines West. Like, I have seen some claims online (which I don't have enough time to look up right now) that Quinn or another higher-up was in bed with BN. That said though, I think their all-around financial ineptness in their last 30 years of existence also played a part in their demise, and that the Pacific Extension was probably a questionable decision in the end, as good as it was to have a Hill Lines monopoly-breaker in Puget Sound.
@@andyjay729 It was documented in litigation. The Ploss book, The Nation Pays Again, is a good read. The Milwaukee had everything going for it and it should have survived. Bad management, either with ulterior motives or simple idiocy, destroyed the company.
It sounds like upper management was merely trying to extract as much value out of the railroad, without reinvestment. Sorta similar to corporate raiding.
Sears wasn't incompetence. It was a carefully planned looting of the assets of a public company for the benefit of a handful of people. They were bad people and they knew exactly what they were doing.
I read an article in Trains in the early 90s that mentioned that it was later discovered that a HUGE accounting error had occurred where expenses were effectively registered twice, so the Pacific line appeared significantly losing money- but it was only due to being doubled.. and the electrified route was in fact discovered to not be losing money at all... but it was too late.
@@dknowles60 No--- the western lines generated far more profit, than the eastern lines did. If the true expenses were shown, MILW should have gotten rid of more of the Eastern part of the system.
Amazingly, when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, both the New York (Penn)Central and Milwaukee ran on tracks a mile apart near my folks house in East Central Illinois. Both lines ran into Chicago and by the early 80's they were both abandoned. A local short line, KB&S, owns both lines and has been very successful hauling mostly grain to Tate & Lyle in Lafayette IN.
The Milwaukee road is one of my favorite railroads But I do not deny the issues with it It was definitely mismanaged There were lot of issues But you know one thing it had? Electric locomotives
The Milwaukee Road could have linked the 2 segments of their electric operations by closing the gap if they truly & really wanted to, but didn’t because their management had SFB. Milwaukee Roads management makes the Penn Centrals screwing management look like professionals & the most intelligent professors from Oxford & Cambridge.
As a Brit and a supporter of electric traction who hates American Monopolist politics which was spawned from British Aristocratic Monopolism. I am a big fan of Henry George who understood what is what!
I like how they thought that they'd actually be able to profit off of a spike in copper prices, as if those prices would just stay elevated for a long time and that it is no long process to remove tons of overhead wire. Sounds to me like management was just really dumb.
None of these companies ever even look so much as five minutes ahead! All they ever do is think in the now. I saw the exact same thing during my brief tenure with the Great Lakes shipping industry.
Most of the milwaukee's board members were also on the great northern board. They wanted that railroad out of the north west to capitalize on frieght revenues and monopolize the BN by putting the competition out of business by making it seem like poor management. When in reality it was the same board making the decisions with the puppet out front. If it wasn't for the resourceful employees it would have went under long before the mid eighties.
I made sales calls to the Milwaukee maintenance director, pitching several methods to save money on locomotive upkeep. He shot me down with accounts of how trying a portion of each method had ended poorly. Of course, he was not interested in the whole package, since a small part of the whole system had been mismanaged. I wondered how he got to the position he was in.
Nice video! It’s always sad to see successful railroads like this die. If you need another railroad-related topic to look at, might I recommend the New York, Ontario & Western Railway? It was a class 1 railroad that had serious financial troubles throughout it’s entire lifespan yet somehow managed to last for 73 years before becoming the first railroad in the US to have it’s entire mainline abandoned. Looking forward to your future videos, man, keep up the good work!
Ooooooooo! I just finished watching your fantastic episode on the Penn Central and was hoping you were going to do the same on the Milwaukee Road. I had no idea you had already done it so I’m super happy now.
I had a transportation professor at the University of Texas in 1963 named Hampton K. Snell, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Montana in 1950 on the folly of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension. He conclusively demonstrated that the project was doomed to failure from the outset because relatively small Seattle was already served by three relatively strong railroads... Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Union Pacific. "Pappy" Snell loved the Milwaukee and was fascinated by the PCE, and it's pioneering electrification, but knew the truth and shared it unemotionally with persons in the academic community interested in the economics of rail transportation.
Well, Seattle wasn't "already" served by three strong roads. The NP had just come out, barely, from its second Bankruptcy, and the Union Pacific arrived in Seattle on trackage rights over the Milwaukee Road. GN? See: "NP and Milwaukee Support Seattle, Great Northern Does Not," Freight: the Shipper's Forum, May, 1911.
@@dknowles60 The notion that there were "already" three strong railroads there is simply false. NP was just struggling out its second bankruptcy. The Union Pacific did, in fact, beg for trackage rights over the Milwaukee Road to even get into Seattle at all. That agreement was signed in 1909, and Milwaukee Road was the senior railroad on the "joint line" through to the end. GN had originally terminated in Everett, after a tortuous crossing of the Cascades, with 2.2% grades and 10 degree curves in both directions. Oops, Everett turned out to be a poor choice and so GN had to then build what was in essence a long detour to get into Seattle from Everett and, even at that, was forced to locate its Seattle yard facilities at Interbay, which was not the primary waterfront shipping point. Recall, Milwaukee purchased its key location in Seattle, Pier 6, ahead of just about everybody: in 1877, while Washington was still a territory. And that is why Pier 6 was so centrally located and dominant. Even near the "end," Milwaukee dominated Seattle and Tacoma traffic with nearly 76% of the long haul traffic into and out of the two key ports. For the rapidly growing container traffic, Milwaukee had 50%, Union Pacific 35%, and Burlington Northern just 15%.
Ah, possibly one of the greatest railways of all time, and yet, the unluckiest, in terms of management. The "Little Joes'" are a story in themselves. BTW, can you do "Engines that look really weird - but were definitely successful". My example is the Pearson 4-2-4T express tanks for the Bristol and Exeter Railway. The first batch were constructed in 1853, and had a huge driving wheel that looked ungainly even by the standards of the time. But they were fast. And reliable. And fairly economic. So much so, that a variant of the class was built 15(!) years later in 1868 with only small detail changes. They survived quite a long time, and were loved by (most) drivers and passengers alike.
I was aware that Milwaukee built (and then pulled down) an impressive electric network but I had no idea things were so bad behind the scenes! Certainly gives Penn Central a run for their (limited) money. Thank you for putting this together, it was great to watch.
By '77 electrification on the Pacific extension was irrelevant. The division was suffering as many as 3 major derailments a week do to bad track. The main reason the wire was pulled was that all of the generating stations were breaking down and the MILW didn't have money to build new ones. And yeah, the mismanagement was epic.
Still, the wire would've helped, as the main point isn't that the MILW took down the wires, but WHEN they did it. They took down electrification at the WORST. TIME. POSSIBLE. It STILL would've been cheaper to re-build the electrification, even if it would've only been in service for less than a decade. Plus, GE offered to finance the project, so there would've been no downside, since the MILW wouldn't have needed to spend a penny on the initial installation. (It's debatable whether or not that would've made a difference, but STILL, taking down electrification during an oil embargo is ludicrous)
@@dknowles60 Again, diesels during the oil crisis were TWICE AS EXPENSIVE TO OPERATE as electrics, and again, the Milwaukee road would've spent $0 as GE would've paid for it. I don't get what's so hard to understand about why the MILW ripping down electric lines during an OIL CRISIS was a BAD IDEA. It's common sense that when oil is violently expensive, you want to use as little of it as possible. Also, what you just said was ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to my point, so... Yeah....
@@AutismTakesOn would have done no good, Power stations were wore out and failing Electrics dont work to good with bad track and the Electric locomotives were wore out and t the end of their lifes and only apx 660 miles out of 2000 miles was Electric and there were apx at best 4 trains a day s Electric was not going to save that much, its bridges were wore out and needed replacing and could not handle heavy trains and the OPEC oil prices were over in less then a year and the price of diesel fuel fell. i know what it is like to lose a rail road you like, i lost apx 300 miles of the Erie lackwana across ohio and In, as much as i love the El it as over when its steel mills closed in youngstown Oh
@dknowles60 My guy... It still would've softened the blow, and, again, GE, NOT MILW, would've financed it. As for the Erie Lackawanna... Its demise was for reasons beyond its control. (*cough* Penn Central *cough*) The Milwaukee Road, though... They had options to help them either stay afloat or prolong their life. While electrification wasn't a silver bullet, it still would've somewhat helped, even if just a little bit. Now, the MILW also did many OTHER questionable decisions as well that made them go under, and I believe which were dumber than not electrifying, like not even TRYING to cut their branch lines, double entering expenses for the Pacific Extension to make their most profitable route seem like a money pit, leasing out cars and leasing them back without said cars leaving their property, not reporting that their real estate company was propping up the railroad, etc. You using the Erie Lackawanna to compare against the MILW is comparing apples and oranges. EL did everything in its power to stay afloat before they had to throw in the towel. MILW, though... They threw in the towel before doing anything to TRY and help their situation other than to try and merge their problems away before trying to fix said problems by themselves before doing so.
Alot of the Pacific Extention through Montana, Idaho and Washington is now an off roader rail trail with many, many tunnels and bridges still in place. Theres also alot of telegraph lines still up along the ROW in western Montana along I 90 and theres still some evidence of the electricfication of the line as well.
Biggest failure of all that ultimately doomed the Pacific Extension was the idiot who double entered the losses, and erased the fact that the line was still turning a profit. The most poorly managed railroad in history. (unless you include the Penn Central merger)
@@dknowles60 That is false. With Electrification, the power requirements for trains reduced the actual cost of operation to the cost of less than One per cent grades. And, at the end, when the Electrification was terminated, "Chicago" was shocked to find the costs of operating the Rocky Mountain Division had, thereafter, soared! Stuttering and stammering, they demanded an explanation. The Engineering Office in Deer Lodge, Charley Chambers, looked over the records and found that EVERYTHING on the RMD was under the fixed rate Power Contracts. The Division Engineer had discovered that the savings had been so great, the Electrification was, in essence, operated for free. And that is what he specifically told me when I asked him about that.
"Charley Chambers received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1969. Charley has gained engineering skills and practical knowledge from his time spent with the Montana Rail Link and Milwaukee Road organizations. While working for railroad related construction firms he gained experience as track superintendent, project engineer, and senior estimator. Charley joined Hanson Professional Services in 1997 as Senior Railroad Engineer working in the Bellevue, Washington office on projects involving railroad engineering, and construction engineering management. He retired from Hanson as Regional Vice President in 2017. Charley has been a member of AREMA Committee 24 Education and Training for over 48 years and is a past chairman. The AREMA Practical Guide to Railway Engineering was developed while he was the chairman of the committee. He also has served as a member of AREMA’s Board of Directors." We can, here, suggest that Charley Chambers "probably" knew more about it all than "@dknowles60." Just, "probably."
The Milwaukee Road was Presision Schedule Railroading before it was cool. It walked, then crashed and burned spectacularly orange fireball so the all modern Railroad company's could fly... head first into the same trap as they did, but now in super slow motion.
Their electrics are well-represented as well. There are three surviving boxcabs (a married pair in Duluth MN and a single unit in Montana), a Bi-polar AND a Little Joe.
I wanna say thank you for this series and this particular video. I’ve always never been a fan of electric rail history but this video alone sparked an interest in mountain electric main line running and your channel has actually got me into the east coast railroads as I’ve always found them super overdone mainly in the model railroad community
Worthington Smith came to the Milwaukee Road from the Burlington Northern and seemed more interested in helping his former railroad than his current one. The trustee for the Milwaukee Road's final bankruptcy was former Illinois governor Richard Ogilvie who is forever hated in Illinois for instituting the state income tax.
You should've mentioned how a huge portion of the right of way, from Washington to Montana is abandoned and the tracks got pulled up (except for some spots in Idaho) but you can easily follow the trackbed throughout the whole pacific extension. Either way, this video was great. It would be cool if you can drop a video about the Sacramento Northern railroad when it ran from Oakland to Chico.
Wow, how dumb can a railway be that they were making money but wouldn't invest in maintenance or sending additional Frieght cars in an area that needed it!
Actually the SOO did not absorb the Milwaukee Road. They purchased 95% of the rail properties from the receiver, but left behind the company itself and all it's agreements, contracts and other baggage. The Milwaukee also built that brand new high bridge over the Des Moines River just a few years before abandoning that line. Just a few years ago the UP dismantled and salvaged that bridge.
Bill Quinn was such a loser. I worked in management from 1972 to 1977 and Bill blocked so many things. George Kronberg in the 1970's functioned like it was 1940.
Corporate raiding, in essence. Management extracted as much value out of the company as they could (tearing down electric wiring, keeping routes open to look bigger than they were, etc.) while trying to pawn off the railroad to anyone who would buy it.
Worked at the St. Paul roundhouse from 1974-1979. Was it really bad management or a planned corporate bankruptcy. Either way it allowed me to spend 34 years with Burlington Northern.
Same thing with Penn-Central, Stanley Crane and Ronnie Reagans downsizing mastermind…….I worked through it all and never layed off, thank the good lord for buyouts…….ms~~~ 40 years retired……
Thanks for mentioning Michael Sol and his analysis. I used to chat with him on a old internet bulletin board probably 20 years ago about the Milwaukee Road.
The old freight cars were mainly financed through Continental Illinois Bank and Trust and look at their later failures. Today in Milwaukee with the decline of heavy industry we are down to 2 rebuilt GP9s and about 3 crews cover all remaining traffic and the CP recently lost the biggest shipper a malt plant that was good for 25 to 40 cars a day. Had 2 family members who worked there for 50 years but both recommended I pick a different career. Most bizarre thing I recall was circa 1978 when the board of directors were coming to Milwaukee to assess the situation they gathered up about 90 wrecked and cars awaiting scrapping and took them into Upper Michigan to hide them. In later days The Southwestern Line was a nightmare to operate. The track became pulverized by unit coal trains and all the sidings were filled with non-operable Freight cars making it very difficult for trains to pass. As we sometimes called it America's Remorseful Railroad. RIP EHL & RHB
There is some argument to be made that the double reporting was done in order to force the value of the railroad down in the hopes that another railroad would see it as an inexpensive purchase and buy it at a depreciated value.
The final years of the Milwaukee Road was run far worse than the Penn Central railroad when it went bankrupt in 1970-Penn Central, Milwaukee Road-Far worse management than the Penn Central.
A lot of this sounds a lot more like malice than incompetence... Honestly kinda sounds like the management just didn't like running a railroad so they sucked the assets dry and ran off with the money that could've been used to save the railroad.
The Problems began with NOT having a good feeder system. The Milwaukee Road should have taken over the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific, the Spokane International, and the Pacific Coast Railroad (instead of the GN taking over their Maple Valley-Seattle route!). They should have also have also built branches to Yakima and Wenatchee, Washington (proposed as the Pacific Extension was under construction), and the Chehalis, Cowlitz & Cowlitz extension to Yakima (1928 proposal). Further, they should have bridged the Gap between Othello and Avery, instead of purchasing the SD40-2 locos! Another example Milwaukee Road incompetency: The Milwaukee's abandoning of the Olympian Hiawatha in 1961 because of the Seattle World's Fair (The Century 21 Exposition), the following year, because of the perceived Artifical boost in Tourist Traffic. That was a mess! My late-Grandfather worked for the Milwaukee for a time in 1952, and left because they were a damn mess! I love them, but the Milwaukee was a damn mess!
The Milwaukee Road had a line going west through southern Minnesota. One of the many small towns was Grand Meadow. The line went one block north of the house my family had along with a farm. I learned to count up to about 67 watching the train go by. We moved 5 miles north in 1973 to a larger dairy farm which was 3 miles west of the CGW going through Racine Minnesota. In the 1980’s as the bankruptcy of The Milwaukee Road continued, people working for the Federal Government on the bankruptcy were saying that they didn’t want The CNW to get The Milwaukee Road because they thought that The CNW would abandon and scrap every inch of the line. Too bad the Pacific extension wasn’t saved for Amtrak which would have eased up congestion on BN lines from Minneapolis to the PNW.
Good research, I was never able to understand it, but there's the... "anomaly" that no one dares to mention. So, it was possible to save the shortest route to the Pacific, and GE offered to fund it. Too Bad. The Route of the Hiawatha's - most distinguished train name ever: The Olympian Hiawatha
So basically if that route had been maintained, track speeds were raised as much as possible and a proper decision was made on being electrified or not (even if divided east/west) the route would of been a profitable east/west speedway to this day.
The major problem with the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railway was that it was a late Comer to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It couldn't compete on a one on one basis with the J.J. Hill roads of the Chicago,Burlington and Quincy, Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and Spokane Portland & Seattle combined interests whom already operated in much of the same region as the Milwaukee Road. Also when going to the Pacific Coast region of the Western Carriers District the Milwaukee should have taken advantage of building a line to Coo's Bay, Oregon where as Marvin Huett of the rival Chicago & Northwestern refused less than a decade later on the advice given to him by William Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan a mere eight years earlier in a conference in Chicago. In 1955 the Union Pacific rerouted their famous City passenger trains from Northwestern Station to the Milwaukee Road routing out of Chicago's Union Station to Omaha. Since Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and the Oregon Trunk Line were affiliated Harriman lines and years prior Harriman put in a bid to purchase the Northern Pacific Railway from the J.P. Morgan interests and lost out in a bidding war with James J. Hill. The Milwaukee Road would have been a better choice of accusation over the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific. This in turn would have given the Milwaukee Road access to Portland and Seattle via a connection with the SP Shasta Route from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle via quasi umbrella protection of the Harriman interests; That's if the United States Railway Administration would have allowed for the merger of Union Pacific to the Milwaukee Road the same year as the UP passenger train rerouting in Chicago occurred; I am sure the entirety of the Milwaukee Road would have remained intact for the exception of a few Western branch lines. By this merger this would have not only given the Union Pacific unaltered access to the Chicago market share and a connection with Eastern Trunk line traffic but would have given the Union Pacific access to iron ore mining in Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota but access to a Northern link with the Soo Line Railway a then United States subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Rock Island would have been better off being absorbed into the Southern Pacific system giving SP also access to the Chicago market share and a more direct Eastern Trunk Line connection with the New York Central Railroad and a access to LaSalle Street Station. But one cannot rewrite history or provide any form of common sense advice to the United States Government when it concerns common sense reasoning concerning mergers or routing proposals. Afterall this is the same government whom shared a lions share of blame for the forced shotgun wedding of Pennsylvania Railway and New York Central forming the ill fated Penn Central transportation company in the dead of winter in 1967.
Honestly, I think one of the worst things if not _the_ worst thing the ICC did to railroads... was give trucking and air freight a free ride on taxes. This gave an artificial boost in attractiveness, especially to trucking. It didn't help that the automotive industry favoritism also infected the post office, leading to the end of the mail contracts that had kept passenger rail profitable even when passenger numbers were at a low ebb. And of course, during the Reagan era and onward the ICC allowed too _much_ combining of railroads, leading to the consolidated shittiness we have today. The "Short-term growth at all costs, loot and pillar-rob rather than build, tax-dodge/liability-dodge at every turn even if it's actually _less_ efficient, share prices more important than actual product/service, rob Peter to pay Paul" mentality has *always* been one of the problems with capitalism, especially corporate capitalism centered around big stock markets. It's part of how we got the friggin' Great Depression, so it's definitely not new. But I feel like the disease started spreading more aggressively in the '60s or even the late '50s, and William John Quinn seems like he had it.
The Milwaukee Road had the longest mainline in America, Portland, Oregon to Louisville, KY. As a senior VP at Milwaukee, Marty Garelick, noted: "Milwaukee Road had what other railroads wanted. High revenue, long haul freight." But as VP Paul Cruikshank told me (yes, me!!), with the slow downs, by 1978 we were short $69 million in freight car revenue because we didn't have enough cars to carry the freight." Demand was an all time high. But, as Bill Brodsky noted, the "railroad fell out from under the traffic."
In 1962, GN's fastest freight (via CBQ), Chicago to Seattle, was 94 hours. NP could do it in 97 hours, notwithstanding the burdens of grades and mileage. 328 ICC 474. NP's bigger problem for the high value auto traffic was that it couldn't haul the triple level auto racks coming into service. Note the "ICC" reference. Milwaukee Road's fast freight in 1962, #263, ran its schedule at 77 hours -- which already beat GN's fast freight by 17 hours. NP and GN had testified in 1963 that one of the merger benefits of the Northern Lines merger of a "single line haul" would have been their ability to run an 84 hour "fast freight." 328 ICC 328. This, they claimed, was a compelling benefit of the merger -- they would finally be able to offer "comparable" schedules with Milwaukee's profitable premium service out West. They could almost match #263 and the ability to do this and to offer it was an important marketing tool, they felt, for a key class of shippers. So, the Milwaukee's XL Special, the new #261, at 55 hours in October, 1963 was just incredible by existing standards. Look at it from GN's perspective -- this was a 2200 mile run at almost half the running time of GN's premium service -- or nearly twice as fast. And that still included #263, which was kept to its original schedule running 17 hours faster than GN's hotshot. MILW had a hotshot and a slow hotshot both outrunning GN's flagship freight. And of course, as it became popular, #261 became #261C and #261TC, which in addition to #263 was offering daily service bracketing a variety of departure and arrival times -- it was Sprint service, except across the Continent.
MILW handled more Import TOFC/COFC biz from the PNW to the Midwest than either BN or UP. The Milwaukee Road, Port of Seattle officials told the ICC, represented "an irreplaceable source of competition for the Burlington Northern and Union Pacific," pointing out that the Milwaukee and the Port of Seattle had always had a special relationship. The Port's ability to compete with ports in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles was predominantly dependent on competitive freight rates into the Puget Sound area. Because the UP served both the Pacific Northwest and the California ports, it was viewed as a "me-too" railroad and not as a source of rate competition to the BN. Indeed, when Seattle began investing heavily in container facilities in the 1960's, only the Milwaukee had been willing to work closely with the Port to provide a rate structure that made the Port facilities competitive. Seattle Port authorities found it ironic that the Trustee was proposing a shutdown of the Milwaukee's transcontinental line: "For the first time since the Milwaukee inaugurated service ... in 1909, the railroad could probably make money on a long-term basis if transcontinental service were maintained." The Port of Tacoma thought that the Milwaukee's services were more important to the country as a whole than Chrysler Corporation's, and asked, if the government could advance a billion dollars to Chrysler, why it could not make similar commitments to the Milwaukee.
Did you know? The MILW engineers loved loved running electric locomotives in the cold mountains because as you might know, electric powered things always run better in the cold.
The trackage in Montana that was west of Billings, MT mostly got tore out and removed. It paralleled the Northern Pacific for much of that route and the BNSF currently operates that section now (formerly the Montana Rail Link). The section of ROW at the Idaho/Montana state line is now the Route of the Hiawatha bike trail, part of the rails to trails system.
I was glad that you finally got around to the truth about the Pacific Extension. During the 1950's the expenses from the eastern lines were being hidden in the lines west. This was done to make the road look more profitable and help to close the merger with Chicago Northwestern. That dragged on for many years before the government killed it. The management changed after the merger failed and the new management was not aware of the lies hidden in the books and decided to kill the line west. Only after several years of this did they start to understand that they were cutting their own throats. The line into Indiana was firstly to connect to coal mines on south west Indiana and later an attempt to offer a connection to Chicago for the Southern. They did carry through traffic for Southern in the 1970's but by that time the ROW was so bad the plan had to be given up. To quote others, 'the Mil wake Road was so broke it couldn't pull its self out of it's own mud to save its life.' A correction is in order about the electrification as the wires came down a year before the Arab oil embargo. There was no thought about the price of oil going through the roof until the electricity had been shut down. If it had remained in place and running another year it likely would have remained. All very bad timing.
The new management after the failure of the merger knew exactly what had been going on with the books. After the merger failed, they made William John Quinn Chairman of the railroad. Quinn had been directly responsible in the mid-1960s for the strategy that led to the lies in the books.
@@Jim-Tuner I've heard commentary that indicated the bookkeeping games had gone on since the late 50's and that the directors had painted themselves into a corner when Chicago and NW merger was nixed. The bookkeeping continued post merger because no one was willing to admit the truth and cost cutting measures did not yield the expected results as most of the cutting was done on the Pacific Extension which spoiled business on that line, reducing revenue without reducing expenses. Only a number of years later did the truth become excepted and those years of delay just made a bad situation worse. The whole region was over built with grange lines from Chicago to Minnesota to Kansas to Missouri. That was the way it was presented to me but of course I wasn't there. Along with the story of the end of the Erie two of the more interesting stories of railroad failures and the questionable business practices involved. Some how there are always at least two versions of the story.
Hey Darkness; do you think you could do a video on the downfall of the MKT RR? I live and work next to the Katy Trail; or what use to be MKT right of way here in Missouri.
The man most responsible for the collapse of the Milwaukee Road was a politically connected crook named Leo Crowley. In the 1920s, Crowley had embezzled money from banks he owned. But it was all covered up politically by his friends and against all logic, he somehow became the head of the FDIC in 1934 and ran it until 1945. He was forced out of politics in 1945 (after the war) because he was seen as hostile to the Soviet Union. And Harry Truman himself said that. He then (with no real qualifications) was made Chairman of the Milwaukee Road. It was Crowley in the 1960s who made the decision that the railroad would be sold by 1970. It was Crowley's plan to increase the earnings of the railroad by cutting maintainence and doing lease-backs. His plans all went wrong. The merger that the railroad was counting on to survive didn't happen in 1970 and he died in 1972.
I would have loved to seen a merger in the late 60s between The Milwaukee Road and New York Central with Alfred E. Perlman as the CEO. I feel like he wouldn't have made the same questionable decisions that the Milwaukee leaders made. My only concern is how and when they would improve the aging trackage. Otherwise, you would have had a coast to coast line with lots of service in the midwest. With electrified lines at both ends, who knows? perhaps a fully electrified, transcontinental railroad could have happened. The New York Road could have been good.
DUDE!!!!! I've thought of the same thing!!! The efficiency of one carrier over the whole continent! The USA would be so different! and both the NYC and MILW were known for speed too! I just tottally agree! But the name... more like "The New York Milwaukee & Pacific" or "New York Central and Pacific"
@@dknowles60 I'm not sure what being a good man has to do with not wanting The Milwaukee Road. Cornelius Vanderbilt wanted the NYC to keep expanding west but his children didn't have his vision or leadership skills. Merging with the Milwaukee would have helped realize his grand vision.
Really enjoying your channel. RUclips brought you across my path about two weeks ago. I, too, am a railfan. I need to start uploading train vids. I like how you explore the history of the failures of these companies, including the ones not relating to railroads. It fills a niche that most other railfanning vids don't.
That buy leaseback deal was common with brick & mortar businesses. Safeway, for example, was the first large company to use this method to increase its number of stores and even to expand into other areas.
Leasebacks work when they fund growth as subway did. Leasebacks designed to provide a short-term boost to earnings in a company with no growth (The Milwaukee Road Strategy) almost never works and mostly leads to bankruptcy.
@@Jim-Tuner I think their proposal was approved by the bankruptcy judge to pay off creditors. Safeway already owned the stores, sold them to a wholly owned subsidiary and leased them back. You're right, how do you do that with tracks. But they did own various tracts of land and had space in train stations used for retail. Plus, they had massive, owned warehouse space which could have been rented out.
In 2013 Wisconsin Southern was, fully absorbed into Union Pacific and still have a few Wisconsin Southern trains and now uses local Wisconsin Contractors following the Stoughton natual gas explosion disaster.
Where are u getting your information? Union pacific has NOTHING to do with the Wisconsin Southern! UP does not own the WSOR, it is a Watco company. Union Pacific interchanges cars to them at Janesville and Granville.
The really sad thing is for the Line West part of the route, it had a far better surveyed route over the Cascades than anyone the than the SP&S and UP (which each snagged one side of the Columbia River) and when the tracks were yanked up around 1987, nobody seriously looked into buying the Milwaukee Road's Snoqualmie Pass route. That tunnel was tall enough for double stacks, unlike either the Stevens or Stampede Pass tunnels. Sadly, I live within sight of the line out to Gray's Harbor, which is not even a gravel trail anymore and can't even be seen in several front yards
@@dknowles60 The BN did purchase the MILW crossing over Snoqualmie Pass. The unfortunate merger with the "Frisco" derailed turning the MILW route into BN's primary route into Seattle/Tacoma.
@@icland100 wrong the MILW was a bad route, the Bn had 3 very good routes in to Seattle /tacoma, the Big reason's Bn did not want Snoqualmie pass was the saddle Mountins the bitter root Mountins other mountins, the only tough graid the Bn has was marries pass and the MIlw was very close to the Ex Np most of the wat to terry Mt
@@dknowles60 Odd, then, that the BN did, in fact, purchase the Milwaukee route over Snoqualmie Pass. Is there anything that you actually DO know? Or do you "make everything up?"" Why?
That's insane about Thier repair costs and leases. Sounds like they deliberately wanted to run the company under. Seen the leasing issue before with trucks, then they buy them back later on.
I wonder, (if you get a chance) could please do a video on the amazing but extinct Milwaukee ALCO built, streamlined Hiawatha steam locomotives, the 1935/7 - A class 4-4-2s and their bigger brothers, the F7 4-6-4s?
The lines in Indiana were bought primarily to supply the railroad with coal, and also give the MILW additional eastern and southeastern connections. This was commonly referred to as the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern (CTH&SE) and they served a number of coal mines.
One detail that’s important is why the copper prices increased and decreased so violently. This all occurred during Chile’s Salvador Allende’s nationalization of all foreign copper firms including Anaconda which drive up prices. By the time the wire got ripped down Pinochet had launched his US backed coup and prices stabilized.
I lived in Cle Elum Washington and St. Maries Idaho in the 1970s and 80s. My father worked for the Northern Pacific/Burlington Northern as a forester and plant manager. At Cle Elum the two lines ran close together. The difference of track quality was clear to any causal observer. Trains on the NP/BN could be seen to run at much higher speeds than the Milwaukee Road. The Milwaukee mainline went through St. Maries Idaho. We knew many of the people who worked for the railroad. Driving up the St. Joe River Road that ran on the opposite side of river, seeing the results of derailments was common. It seemed the entire line through there was constantly on slow orders, some areas down to as slow as 10 MPH. It was no surprise to anyone in the area when the line was shut down. I remember hearing from my father that BN surveyed the abandoned line to see if it would be worth purchasing, but rejected the idea because of how much it would cost to revitalize it. The section from St. Maries to Plummer Idaho is still in use by the St. Maries River Railroad. This short line is owned by the Potlatch Corporation and is used to haul timber products from the mill at St. Maries to a link up with a Union Pacific branch at Plummer. A good part of the old railroad right of way up the St. Joe River is now the highway between St. Maries and Avery. The former route to the east of Avery is an interesting bicycle/hiking trail that goes over trestles and through tunnels. The Milwaukee was terribly managed and as noted here, its Pacific Extension bypassed numerous large cities such as Spokane WA. It did have potential, but mismanagement killed it.
I love your take on rail history, but I'd love to hear you expound on the Anthracite Roads - The Reading, Lehigh Valley, the Central of New Jersey, Delaware Lackawanna and Western, Lehigh & New England, and the Lehigh & Hudson river. Their history and the history of anthracite is fascinating
It's so interesting that when it comes to railroads, a bunch of them are destroyed by government regulations. While it seems that that's where it ends, when you look into it the government regulations were 100% justified during the time, but never adapted further when railroads lost their iron fist of power.
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a major problem. They would not allow creative rates from the Dakotas to Red Wing and Wabasha because it offended the Minneapolis Board of Trade. The Board of Trade was an unethical organization in the 1970's and they would do anything not to be bypassed. Bad people
This video comes as personel to me because my home town of Brodhead Wisconsin was actually on the Milwaukee Road andchas an old engine permanently on display next to the Brodhead Depot Museum. Brodhead is 30 miles west of Janesville Wisconsin and about 20 miles east of Monroe Wisconsin which is infinitely famous for Cheese Days worldwide. We also have railtrails that are State Trails and in very Rough shape due to lack of funding through the WI DNR being cut under our Former Governor Walker. Up in Exeter Township in Northern Green County sits the olf Stewert Tunnel on the Badger State Trail which is closed off and has been since the August 2020 derachio. It will take some serious amount of money and a Railroad Restoration Expert. Heavy logging equipment to clear out years of overgrowth and everything else neded for The Non-profit organization The Friends Of The Badger And Sugar River State Trails to geet things going again.
I was working for the Chicago & North Western Railway in 1985 when the word came out that the Soo Line Railroad was allowed to purchase most of the Milwaukee Road even though they had bid lower for the Milwaukee than the C&NW. It was a big shock to many North Western employees who anticipated the purchase would easily go through for the railway. Years later a higher up in the North Western told me that he didn't think the company could afford the Milwaukee Road for what they bid in 1985 and that it was probably best that the C&NW wasn't given the nod, or they could have been next to declare bankruptcy.
YUPPPPP I love this railroad, but hate how the suits at the top killed it like the Extension West was a good thing! and the Electrification was a good thing! (I so with they would've let GE pay to close the gap and update rolling stock!!!) I have a crazy what if. It would have never happen, but if it did! I had a dream if Milwaukee Road was bought/ merged with New York Central thus you out competent leadership and a railroad that would have the efficiency of transcontinental routes! the ICC would've probably never allowed it but it would have made rail roads today more competitive with Roads and Highways!
The Milwaukee Road was the greatest railroad. It should have been saved. A small subsidy would have saved thousands of jobs, and saved the economies of many communities. Very short sighted.
I had a relative who worked at the MILW shops in Milwaukee in its last final years. (1976-1979ish) I asked about it at a family reunion and we had a long talk about it. The shops were an absolute disaster, parts laying everywhere, dirty and disgusting working conditions, and more. The Milwaukee Road was so desperate for motive power that the shops sent out engines that were practically held together by duct tape and string. He said it was hell working there as his first job. He transferred to CNW, then WC, and finally CN. He retired in 2011.
When I was a kid in the '60s my Dad had friends working at the shops under the 35th Street viaduct and I practically lived there. Dirty? Yup. Messy? You bet. Smelly? Count on it. Trade it for anything? Hell no! There were days when the patrols would skulk back into town on Friday afternoon with up to 20 dead engines pulled off diivision sidings. By '77 the main through 'Tosa was so bad you knew the railroad couldn't last much longer. It didn't.
That sounds like the type of relative I'd love to sit down with and just listen to the stories
Please elaborate on "held together by duct tape and string" I'm interested, like how bad did they run? or did they even make full power as they intended when new?
@@AmmyWulf What I meant was the engines were at the bare minimum operable. The cabs were dirty, some of the parts didn't match, and sometimes they exchanged parts from different locomotive models. In one case, he told me, a U25B actually got a replacement throttle/control stand from an E9. The Milwaukee Road really was "America's Resourceful Railroad."
It legitimately makes me sad just how terminally stupid the Milwaukee Road's management was. They had so many things that they could have used to their advantage. They should have electrified more of their system. It would have saved them millions on diesel fuel prices. If they had done that, they actually might have been able to hold their own against competitors. Not to mention, I think their orange and black paint scheme is really nice. It is one of my favorite fallen paint schemes.
This is very true, the reason why we don't have the MKE Road Atlantic's for the famous Hiawatha is because the mayor of Milwaukee, during that era, pulled out the "It looks like a diesels, no one will find it interesting" Admittedly, not a lot of people realized it didn't have a whistle, it had an air horn hidden under the streamlining grill, that really didn't help
@@sebastianschroeder6459 MILW management at that time was almost as bad as Perlaman or Heineman when I came to steam preservation. Supposedly they only "reluctantly" agreed to donate the 261 to the Green Bay museum!
@@michigandon Nice lie Perlman was one of the Best, he rebuilt the NYC and the WP, the MILW was hope less and a very high cost rail road. Did any one At the MILW ever build of rebuild 7 hump yards Replaces or rebuild over 10k miles of rail road replace a lot of rail replace a lot of ties build of rebuild new new Signal systems Have over 10k miles of CTC, I can tell you are very young
@@dknowles60 "Very young?" lol I'll be 55 this fall! I actually agree with you about him making the NYC a well-run, efficient railroad Still doesn't change the FACT that he didn't give a Rodents Derriere about history, though.
@@michigandon I an a lot older and saw a lot of the NYC rebuilding was around for the Selkirk Hump yard rebuilding the over180 MPH run at Bryon Ohio Watch the Ypsilanti BrancH get torned Watch new Block Signals get up up, He could not Afford to save history Any one Could have brought a Steam Locomotive ,f you Paid higher then the Scrap Price, Most rail roads Did not Give Away their Steam Locomotives for Free
For some of the railroad execs, it seems like the preferred railroad is one which runs 0 trains across 0 miles of track
PSR be like:
And with zero on board crew too. That makes PSR. Pretty Shitty Railroading.
And with zero passengers or goods
Lease backs are the worst move a company can make. Lease backs are one of the significant reason of retail failure over the past 30 years. You never sell an asset you own just to lease it back.
It depends on the reason for the lease backs. Lease backs to raise money to fund growth is a workable strategy in certain circumstances. Its a way to sometimes raise money on better terms than one can obtain on the open market.
Where lease-backs fail is when they are used to either provide a short-term boost to earnings, money given to shareholders or to otherwise fund the operations of the business. Those sorts of lease-backs have been common in retail failures.
this corporate mismanagement.... was a sign of things to come in corporate america!!!
Very well made video! Moral of the story: don't tear down the wires, especially during an oil embargo.
If we had an electrified transcontinental rail line today, we could finally have higher speed passenger service...
You are correct and had they chose to merge with Erie Lackwanna railroad you can run a Little Joe from Avery Idaho to Hoboken terminal once the missing electrification Harlowton Montana to Dover NJ is completed. That means Little Joe's are used on St Paul's Pass Pipestone Pass and Summit to Newark Broad St due to the climb over the Watchung Mountains. When it comes to the Parallel interstate highway 78 between Summit and Newark it decends the Watchung Mountains via a steep bridge at Exit 48 Eastbound and Exit 29 westbound
I watched the decline of the Milwaukee Rd first hand in its home city. Deferred maintenance on the rails and the motive power was brutal. In addition to the derailment stats, the railroad would intentionally over power their trains because it was highly likely there would be power failures on the road, but there would hopefully be enough remaining power to limp to their destination.
The Milwaukee road was maybe the equivalent of the Pennsy for innovation and creative problem solving but as is speculated, there was a sinister dark plan to run It into the ground for personal or corporate stockholder profit. Much the same way Paul Kalmonovitz took down several major breweries like Falstaff and Pabst.
Do you have any evidence of this dark plan, or speculation on the specifics?
I'm not being sarcastic; I kinda wonder if there's something to the conspiracy theories surrounding the MLW, especially with them double-entering their expenses on Lines West. Like, I have seen some claims online (which I don't have enough time to look up right now) that Quinn or another higher-up was in bed with BN. That said though, I think their all-around financial ineptness in their last 30 years of existence also played a part in their demise, and that the Pacific Extension was probably a questionable decision in the end, as good as it was to have a Hill Lines monopoly-breaker in Puget Sound.
@@andyjay729 It was documented in litigation. The Ploss book, The Nation Pays Again, is a good read. The Milwaukee had everything going for it and it should have survived. Bad management, either with ulterior motives or simple idiocy, destroyed the company.
@@toddinde was never going to Survived. very bad route and very bad track
It sounds like upper management was merely trying to extract as much value out of the railroad, without reinvestment. Sorta similar to corporate raiding.
Bet you’re a trumper too.
The incompetence of the Milwaukee Rd management was more recently repeated by the guy who ran Sears into the ground.
Sears wasn't incompetence. It was a carefully planned looting of the assets of a public company for the benefit of a handful of people. They were bad people and they knew exactly what they were doing.
What's Sears
@@fanofeverything30465 exactly
@@SudrianTales What do you mean exactly 💯
@@fanofeverything30465it was a store
This video was Number 1 in my “Other Videos your audience watched” statistic and I can see why. Phenomenal job!
I read an article in Trains in the early 90s that mentioned that it was later discovered that a HUGE accounting error had occurred where expenses were effectively registered twice, so the Pacific line appeared significantly losing money- but it was only due to being doubled.. and the electrified route was in fact discovered to not be losing money at all... but it was too late.
at best it would have been luckly to break even
@@dknowles60 No--- the western lines generated far more profit, than the eastern lines did. If the true expenses were shown, MILW should have gotten rid of more of the Eastern part of the system.
@@dknowles60YOU really should see a proctologist, about possible brain damage.
Crack. Meth. Stupidity. How more company execs don’t end up strung up from lamp posts by shareholders is truely amazing.
Amazingly, when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, both the New York (Penn)Central and Milwaukee ran on tracks a mile apart near my folks house in East Central Illinois. Both lines ran into Chicago and by the early 80's they were both abandoned. A local short line, KB&S, owns both lines and has been very successful hauling mostly grain to Tate & Lyle in Lafayette IN.
The Milwaukee road is one of my favorite railroads
But I do not deny the issues with it
It was definitely mismanaged
There were lot of issues
But you know one thing it had?
Electric locomotives
The Milwaukee Road could have linked the 2 segments of their electric operations by closing the gap if they truly & really wanted to, but didn’t because their management had SFB. Milwaukee Roads management makes the Penn Centrals screwing management look like professionals & the most intelligent professors from Oxford & Cambridge.
As a Brit and a supporter of electric traction who hates American Monopolist politics which was spawned from British Aristocratic Monopolism. I am a big fan of Henry George who understood what is what!
I like how they thought that they'd actually be able to profit off of a spike in copper prices, as if those prices would just stay elevated for a long time and that it is no long process to remove tons of overhead wire. Sounds to me like management was just really dumb.
None of these companies ever even look so much as five minutes ahead! All they ever do is think in the now. I saw the exact same thing during my brief tenure with the Great Lakes shipping industry.
I mean...it worked with Ea-Nasir.
Most of the milwaukee's board members were also on the great northern board. They wanted that railroad out of the north west to capitalize on frieght revenues and monopolize the BN by putting the competition out of business by making it seem like poor management. When in reality it was the same board making the decisions with the puppet out front. If it wasn't for the resourceful employees it would have went under long before the mid eighties.
nice lie the Bn has its hands full rebuilding for power River coal and could have Care less about the North west
I made sales calls to the Milwaukee maintenance director, pitching several methods to save money on locomotive upkeep. He shot me down with accounts of how trying a portion of each method had ended poorly. Of course, he was not interested in the whole package, since a small part of the whole system had been mismanaged. I wondered how he got to the position he was in.
I live right next to the old double main between Chicago and St. Paul. Wish they were still here.
Nice video! It’s always sad to see successful railroads like this die. If you need another railroad-related topic to look at, might I recommend the New York, Ontario & Western Railway? It was a class 1 railroad that had serious financial troubles throughout it’s entire lifespan yet somehow managed to last for 73 years before becoming the first railroad in the US to have it’s entire mainline abandoned. Looking forward to your future videos, man, keep up the good work!
Ooooooooo! I just finished watching your fantastic episode on the Penn Central and was hoping you were going to do the same on the Milwaukee Road. I had no idea you had already done it so I’m super happy now.
Hope you enjoyed it!
My mothers little hometown in Minnesota went into serious decline when the Milwaukee Road through town was torn out.
I had a transportation professor at the University of Texas in 1963 named Hampton K. Snell, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Montana in 1950 on the folly of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension. He conclusively demonstrated that the project was doomed to failure from the outset because relatively small Seattle was already served by three relatively strong railroads... Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Union Pacific. "Pappy" Snell loved the Milwaukee and was fascinated by the PCE, and it's pioneering electrification, but knew the truth and shared it unemotionally with persons in the academic community interested in the economics of rail transportation.
Well, Seattle wasn't "already" served by three strong roads. The NP had just come out, barely, from its second Bankruptcy, and the Union Pacific arrived in Seattle on trackage rights over the Milwaukee Road. GN? See: "NP and Milwaukee Support Seattle, Great Northern Does Not," Freight: the Shipper's Forum, May, 1911.
@@icland100 wrong facts
@@dknowles60 The notion that there were "already" three strong railroads there is simply false. NP was just struggling out its second bankruptcy. The Union Pacific did, in fact, beg for trackage rights over the Milwaukee Road to even get into Seattle at all. That agreement was signed in 1909, and Milwaukee Road was the senior railroad on the "joint line" through to the end. GN had originally terminated in Everett, after a tortuous crossing of the Cascades, with 2.2% grades and 10 degree curves in both directions. Oops, Everett turned out to be a poor choice and so GN had to then build what was in essence a long detour to get into Seattle from Everett and, even at that, was forced to locate its Seattle yard facilities at Interbay, which was not the primary waterfront shipping point. Recall, Milwaukee purchased its key location in Seattle, Pier 6, ahead of just about everybody: in 1877, while Washington was still a territory. And that is why Pier 6 was so centrally located and dominant. Even near the "end," Milwaukee dominated Seattle and Tacoma traffic with nearly 76% of the long haul traffic into and out of the two key ports. For the rapidly growing container traffic, Milwaukee had 50%, Union Pacific 35%, and Burlington Northern just 15%.
"Joint Line Agreement," St. Paul and the Oregon and Washington RR Co (Union Pacific)., January 1, 1909.
@@icland100 wrong. it is very easy to get 50% of nothing the Big action was in the ports of south Ca
Ah, possibly one of the greatest railways of all time, and yet, the unluckiest, in terms of management. The "Little Joes'" are a story in themselves.
BTW, can you do "Engines that look really weird - but were definitely successful". My example is the Pearson 4-2-4T express tanks for the Bristol and Exeter Railway. The first batch were constructed in 1853, and had a huge driving wheel that looked ungainly even by the standards of the time. But they were fast. And reliable. And fairly economic. So much so, that a variant of the class was built 15(!) years later in 1868 with only small detail changes. They survived quite a long time, and were loved by (most) drivers and passengers alike.
Milwaukee Road: "One derailment per day."
Penn Central: "Hold my beer."
Railroads now too! lol
My Grandpop remembers growing up in the 60s and seeing Penn Central locomotives derail sitting still
per mile the Milwaukee had more derailments per day. how young are you
@@dknowles60 27. What does this have to do with anything? History is history.
@@Cnw8701 a lot it the Milw had the most derailments per mile in the Us
Ohh that “word from our sponsor” is sooo good!!! Also, great merchandise. *I* *DON’T* know which one I like the most!!!
I was aware that Milwaukee built (and then pulled down) an impressive electric network but I had no idea things were so bad behind the scenes! Certainly gives Penn Central a run for their (limited) money.
Thank you for putting this together, it was great to watch.
By '77 electrification on the Pacific extension was irrelevant. The division was suffering as many as 3 major derailments a week do to bad track. The main reason the wire was pulled was that all of the generating stations were breaking down and the MILW didn't have money to build new ones. And yeah, the mismanagement was epic.
Still, the wire would've helped, as the main point isn't that the MILW took down the wires, but WHEN they did it. They took down electrification at the WORST. TIME. POSSIBLE. It STILL would've been cheaper to re-build the electrification, even if it would've only been in service for less than a decade. Plus, GE offered to finance the project, so there would've been no downside, since the MILW wouldn't have needed to spend a penny on the initial installation. (It's debatable whether or not that would've made a difference, but STILL, taking down electrification during an oil embargo is ludicrous)
@@AutismTakesOn Rebuild it for what 2 to 6 trains a day, Even the Up rr with a lot of money desided not to Buy the MIL:W PCE or any or the MILW
@@dknowles60 Again, diesels during the oil crisis were TWICE AS EXPENSIVE TO OPERATE as electrics, and again, the Milwaukee road would've spent $0 as GE would've paid for it.
I don't get what's so hard to understand about why the MILW ripping down electric lines during an OIL CRISIS was a BAD IDEA.
It's common sense that when oil is violently expensive, you want to use as little of it as possible.
Also, what you just said was ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to my point, so... Yeah....
@@AutismTakesOn would have done no good, Power stations were wore out and failing Electrics dont work to good with bad track and the Electric locomotives were wore out and t the end of their lifes and only apx 660 miles out of 2000 miles was Electric and there were apx at best 4 trains a day s Electric was not going to save that much, its bridges were wore out and needed replacing and could not handle heavy trains and the OPEC oil prices were over in less then a year and the price of diesel fuel fell. i know what it is like to lose a rail road you like, i lost apx 300 miles of the Erie lackwana across ohio and In, as much as i love the El it as over when its steel mills closed in youngstown Oh
@dknowles60 My guy... It still would've softened the blow, and, again, GE, NOT MILW, would've financed it.
As for the Erie Lackawanna... Its demise was for reasons beyond its control. (*cough* Penn Central *cough*)
The Milwaukee Road, though... They had options to help them either stay afloat or prolong their life. While electrification wasn't a silver bullet, it still would've somewhat helped, even if just a little bit.
Now, the MILW also did many OTHER questionable decisions as well that made them go under, and I believe which were dumber than not electrifying, like not even TRYING to cut their branch lines, double entering expenses for the Pacific Extension to make their most profitable route seem like a money pit, leasing out cars and leasing them back without said cars leaving their property, not reporting that their real estate company was propping up the railroad, etc.
You using the Erie Lackawanna to compare against the MILW is comparing apples and oranges. EL did everything in its power to stay afloat before they had to throw in the towel. MILW, though... They threw in the towel before doing anything to TRY and help their situation other than to try and merge their problems away before trying to fix said problems by themselves before doing so.
honestly. I would have loved to see an F7 Hiawatha in Preservation. there's just something about it that just really appeals to me.
Alot of the Pacific Extention through Montana, Idaho and Washington is now an off roader rail trail with many, many tunnels and bridges still in place. Theres also alot of telegraph lines still up along the ROW in western Montana along I 90 and theres still some evidence of the electricfication of the line as well.
The Olympian Hiawatha. What a magnificent train.
Biggest failure of all that ultimately doomed the Pacific Extension was the idiot who double entered the losses, and erased the fact that the line was still turning a profit. The most poorly managed railroad in history. (unless you include the Penn Central merger)
Not by mistake.
wrong. it was a very costly route to run
@@dknowles60 That is false. With Electrification, the power requirements for trains reduced the actual cost of operation to the cost of less than One per cent grades. And, at the end, when the Electrification was terminated, "Chicago" was shocked to find the costs of operating the Rocky Mountain Division had, thereafter, soared! Stuttering and stammering, they demanded an explanation. The Engineering Office in Deer Lodge, Charley Chambers, looked over the records and found that EVERYTHING on the RMD was under the fixed rate Power Contracts. The Division Engineer had discovered that the savings had been so great, the Electrification was, in essence, operated for free. And that is what he specifically told me when I asked him about that.
"Charley Chambers received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1969. Charley has gained engineering skills and practical knowledge from his time spent with the Montana Rail Link and Milwaukee Road organizations. While working for railroad related construction firms he gained experience as track superintendent, project engineer, and senior estimator. Charley joined Hanson Professional Services in 1997 as Senior Railroad Engineer working in the Bellevue, Washington office on projects involving railroad engineering, and construction engineering management. He retired from Hanson as Regional Vice President in 2017. Charley has been a member of AREMA Committee 24 Education and Training for over 48 years and is a past chairman. The AREMA Practical Guide to Railway Engineering was developed while he was the chairman of the committee. He also has served as a member of AREMA’s Board of Directors."
We can, here, suggest that Charley Chambers "probably" knew more about it all than "@dknowles60."
Just, "probably."
@@icland100 still very costly route
The Milwaukee Road was Presision Schedule Railroading before it was cool.
It walked, then crashed and burned spectacularly orange fireball so the all modern Railroad company's could fly... head first into the same trap as they did, but now in super slow motion.
At least we got Milwaukee Road 261 in excursion service
Their electrics are well-represented as well. There are three surviving boxcabs (a married pair in Duluth MN and a single unit in Montana), a Bi-polar AND a Little Joe.
I wanna say thank you for this series and this particular video. I’ve always never been a fan of electric rail history but this video alone sparked an interest in mountain electric main line running and your channel has actually got me into the east coast railroads as I’ve always found them super overdone mainly in the model railroad community
Worthington Smith came to the Milwaukee Road from the Burlington Northern and seemed more interested in helping his former railroad than his current one. The trustee for the Milwaukee Road's final bankruptcy was former Illinois governor Richard Ogilvie who is forever hated in Illinois for instituting the state income tax.
You should've mentioned how a huge portion of the right of way, from Washington to Montana is abandoned and the tracks got pulled up (except for some spots in Idaho) but you can easily follow the trackbed throughout the whole pacific extension. Either way, this video was great. It would be cool if you can drop a video about the Sacramento Northern railroad when it ran from Oakland to Chico.
I've seen some photos (in "Trains"?) of some of those. A "rails to trails" kind of thing. Some beautiful views.
Go out to those states and you'll still find plenty of stations, target signals, bridge parts, embankment, & substations
Wow, how dumb can a railway be that they were making money but wouldn't invest in maintenance or sending additional Frieght cars in an area that needed it!
yea
Actually the SOO did not absorb the Milwaukee Road. They purchased 95% of the rail properties from the receiver, but left behind the company itself and all it's agreements, contracts and other baggage.
The Milwaukee also built that brand new high bridge over the Des Moines River just a few years before abandoning that line. Just a few years ago the UP dismantled and salvaged that bridge.
I LOVED that “sponsorship”!
It should be noted that Quinn left for the Burlington, and came back. Worth Smith came from Great Northern. Great video!
Look into double billing of aar accts on lines west . Don't forget Pinkiepank.
Worth Smith was a great man (I worked for him), but Quinn was a snob and a greedy human being.
Mismanagement abound... Grew up counting Milwaukee road trains all the time
If Milwaukee Raod never removed the electrified, Amtrak could have used those lines(assuming Milwaukee road sold all of it off to Amtrak).
I bet that the people who ran the railroad into the ground never lost a penny and more than likely made a fortune out of ruining it. 🤬
Bill Quinn was such a loser. I worked in management from 1972 to 1977 and Bill blocked so many things. George Kronberg in the 1970's functioned like it was 1940.
Corporate raiding, in essence. Management extracted as much value out of the company as they could (tearing down electric wiring, keeping routes open to look bigger than they were, etc.) while trying to pawn off the railroad to anyone who would buy it.
Well done my American friend it is sad to see a company screw itself over like that
Worked at the St. Paul roundhouse from 1974-1979. Was it really bad management or a planned corporate bankruptcy. Either way it allowed me to spend 34 years with Burlington Northern.
Same thing with Penn-Central, Stanley Crane and Ronnie Reagans downsizing mastermind…….I worked through it all and never layed off, thank the good lord for buyouts…….ms~~~ 40 years retired……
Love to see a video on the Milwaukee Road. It is my favorite fallen flag. Once one of the greatest in the world, but unlucky in their management.
Thanks for mentioning Michael Sol and his analysis. I used to chat with him on a old internet bulletin board probably 20 years ago about the Milwaukee Road.
How many totally viable companies and good jobs have been killed by utterly incompetent management.
Far Too Many!
You so need to document the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific ("The Rock"). Very similar story, just without the electrification...
Someone already done it: ruclips.net/video/bLrHDdZpza0/видео.html
... and the mountains to cross.
The old freight cars were mainly financed through Continental Illinois Bank and Trust and look at their later failures. Today in Milwaukee with the decline of heavy industry we are down to 2 rebuilt GP9s and about 3 crews cover all remaining traffic and the CP recently lost the biggest shipper a malt plant that was good for 25 to 40 cars a day. Had 2 family members who worked there for 50 years but both recommended I pick a different career. Most bizarre thing I recall was circa 1978 when the board of directors were coming to Milwaukee to assess the situation they gathered up about 90 wrecked and cars awaiting scrapping and took them into Upper Michigan to hide them. In later days
The Southwestern Line was a nightmare to operate. The track became pulverized by unit coal trains and all the sidings were filled with non-operable Freight cars making it very difficult for trains to pass. As we sometimes called it America's Remorseful Railroad. RIP EHL & RHB
Fascinating story! Thanks for your excellent telling of this railroad's history!
There is some argument to be made that the double reporting was done in order to force the value of the railroad down in the hopes that another railroad would see it as an inexpensive purchase and buy it at a depreciated value.
Very informative and very well done video. Looking forward to other RR's you may cover like this
The final years of the Milwaukee Road was run far worse than the Penn Central railroad when it went bankrupt in 1970-Penn Central, Milwaukee Road-Far worse management than the Penn Central.
another great document about a railways downfall or bankruptcy,
A lot of this sounds a lot more like malice than incompetence... Honestly kinda sounds like the management just didn't like running a railroad so they sucked the assets dry and ran off with the money that could've been used to save the railroad.
The Problems began with NOT having a good feeder system. The Milwaukee Road should have taken over the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific, the Spokane International, and the Pacific Coast Railroad (instead of the GN taking over their Maple Valley-Seattle route!). They should have also have also built branches to Yakima and Wenatchee, Washington (proposed as the Pacific Extension was under construction), and the Chehalis, Cowlitz & Cowlitz extension to Yakima (1928 proposal). Further, they should have bridged the Gap between Othello and Avery, instead of purchasing the SD40-2 locos!
Another example Milwaukee Road incompetency: The Milwaukee's abandoning of the Olympian Hiawatha in 1961 because of the Seattle World's Fair (The Century 21 Exposition), the following year, because of the perceived Artifical boost in Tourist Traffic. That was a mess!
My late-Grandfather worked for the Milwaukee for a time in 1952, and left because they were a damn mess! I love them, but the Milwaukee was a damn mess!
The Milwaukee Road had a line going west through southern Minnesota. One of the many small towns was Grand Meadow. The line went one block north of the house my family had along with a farm. I learned to count up to about 67 watching the train go by. We moved 5 miles north in 1973 to a larger dairy farm which was 3 miles west of the CGW going through Racine Minnesota. In the 1980’s as the bankruptcy of The Milwaukee Road continued, people working for the Federal Government on the bankruptcy were saying that they didn’t want The CNW to get The Milwaukee Road because they thought that The CNW would abandon and scrap every inch of the line. Too bad the Pacific extension wasn’t saved for Amtrak which would have eased up congestion on BN lines from Minneapolis to the PNW.
Good research, I was never able to understand it, but there's the... "anomaly" that no one dares to mention. So, it was possible to save the shortest route to the Pacific, and GE offered to fund it. Too Bad. The Route of the Hiawatha's - most distinguished train name ever: The Olympian Hiawatha
So basically if that route had been maintained, track speeds were raised as much as possible and a proper decision was made on being electrified or not (even if divided east/west) the route would of been a profitable east/west speedway to this day.
not. it was a very costly route
@@dknowles60Says. You!! What have you got against Milw-- yet you seem to kiss NYC's. butt????????
The major problem with the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railway was that it was a late Comer to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It couldn't compete on a one on one basis with the J.J. Hill roads of the Chicago,Burlington and Quincy, Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and Spokane Portland & Seattle combined interests whom already operated in much of the same region as the Milwaukee Road. Also when going to the Pacific Coast region of the Western Carriers District the Milwaukee should have taken advantage of building a line to Coo's Bay, Oregon where as Marvin Huett of the rival Chicago & Northwestern refused less than a decade later on the advice given to him by William Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan a mere eight years earlier in a conference in Chicago. In 1955 the Union Pacific rerouted their famous City passenger trains from Northwestern Station to the Milwaukee Road routing out of Chicago's Union Station to Omaha. Since Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and the Oregon Trunk Line were affiliated Harriman lines and years prior Harriman put in a bid to purchase the Northern Pacific Railway from the J.P. Morgan interests and lost out in a bidding war with James J. Hill. The Milwaukee Road would have been a better choice of accusation over the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific. This in turn would have given the Milwaukee Road access to Portland and Seattle via a connection with the SP Shasta Route from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle via quasi umbrella protection of the Harriman interests; That's if the United States Railway Administration would have allowed for the merger of Union Pacific to the Milwaukee Road the same year as the UP passenger train rerouting in Chicago occurred; I am sure the entirety of the Milwaukee Road would have remained intact for the exception of a few Western branch lines. By this merger this would have not only given the Union Pacific unaltered access to the Chicago market share and a connection with Eastern Trunk line traffic but would have given the Union Pacific access to iron ore mining in Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota but access to a Northern link with the Soo Line Railway a then United States subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Rock Island would have been better off being absorbed into the Southern Pacific system giving SP also access to the Chicago market share and a more direct Eastern Trunk Line connection with the New York Central Railroad and a access to LaSalle Street Station. But one cannot rewrite history or provide any form of common sense advice to the United States Government when it concerns common sense reasoning concerning mergers or routing proposals. Afterall this is the same government whom shared a lions share of blame for the forced shotgun wedding of Pennsylvania Railway and New York Central forming the ill fated Penn Central transportation company in the dead of winter in 1967.
wrong. the Up look in to buying most of the Milwaukee under John kenerwick
This’ll be a *painful* topic to cover
You should talk about the Rock Island and their attempt to merge with the UP that ended up in a lawsuit
I agree. That was an absolute debacle of railroading, and the Milwaukee Road was a part of the reason why it turned into a debacle.
The Milwaukee & Rock Island should've merged...
This was a crazy railway; even the locomotives were bipolar
Honestly, I think one of the worst things if not _the_ worst thing the ICC did to railroads... was give trucking and air freight a free ride on taxes. This gave an artificial boost in attractiveness, especially to trucking. It didn't help that the automotive industry favoritism also infected the post office, leading to the end of the mail contracts that had kept passenger rail profitable even when passenger numbers were at a low ebb.
And of course, during the Reagan era and onward the ICC allowed too _much_ combining of railroads, leading to the consolidated shittiness we have today.
The "Short-term growth at all costs, loot and pillar-rob rather than build, tax-dodge/liability-dodge at every turn even if it's actually _less_ efficient, share prices more important than actual product/service, rob Peter to pay Paul" mentality has *always* been one of the problems with capitalism, especially corporate capitalism centered around big stock markets. It's part of how we got the friggin' Great Depression, so it's definitely not new. But I feel like the disease started spreading more aggressively in the '60s or even the late '50s, and William John Quinn seems like he had it.
Fun fact: If the Milwaukee Road route through the Northwest was still in use today, it would be the most profitable line in the US
not
The Milwaukee Road had the longest mainline in America, Portland, Oregon to Louisville, KY. As a senior VP at Milwaukee, Marty Garelick, noted: "Milwaukee Road had what other railroads wanted. High revenue, long haul freight." But as VP Paul Cruikshank told me (yes, me!!), with the slow downs, by 1978 we were short $69 million in freight car revenue because we didn't have enough cars to carry the freight." Demand was an all time high. But, as Bill Brodsky noted, the "railroad fell out from under the traffic."
In 1962, GN's fastest freight (via CBQ), Chicago to Seattle, was 94 hours. NP could do it in 97 hours, notwithstanding the burdens of grades and mileage. 328 ICC 474. NP's bigger problem for the high value auto traffic was that it couldn't haul the triple level auto racks coming into service. Note the "ICC" reference. Milwaukee Road's fast freight in 1962, #263, ran its schedule at 77 hours -- which already beat GN's fast freight by 17 hours.
NP and GN had testified in 1963 that one of the merger benefits of the Northern Lines merger of a "single line haul" would have been their ability to run an 84 hour "fast freight." 328 ICC 328. This, they claimed, was a compelling benefit of the merger -- they would finally be able to offer "comparable" schedules with Milwaukee's profitable premium service out West. They could almost match #263 and the ability to do this and to offer it was an important marketing tool, they felt, for a key class of shippers.
So, the Milwaukee's XL Special, the new #261, at 55 hours in October, 1963 was just incredible by existing standards. Look at it from GN's perspective -- this was a 2200 mile run at almost half the running time of GN's premium service -- or nearly twice as fast. And that still included #263, which was kept to its original schedule running 17 hours faster than GN's hotshot. MILW had a hotshot and a slow hotshot both outrunning GN's flagship freight. And of course, as it became popular, #261 became #261C and #261TC, which in addition to #263 was offering daily service bracketing a variety of departure and arrival times -- it was Sprint service, except across the Continent.
@@icland100 if tyhat were the Case the Uprr would have brought it
MILW handled more Import TOFC/COFC biz from the PNW to the Midwest than either BN or UP.
The Milwaukee Road, Port of Seattle officials told the ICC, represented "an irreplaceable source of competition for the Burlington Northern and Union Pacific," pointing out that the Milwaukee and the Port of Seattle had always had a special relationship. The Port's ability to compete with ports in San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles was predominantly dependent on competitive freight rates into the Puget Sound area. Because the UP served both the Pacific Northwest and the California ports, it was viewed as a "me-too" railroad and not as a source of rate competition to the BN. Indeed, when Seattle began investing heavily in container facilities in the 1960's, only the Milwaukee had been willing to work closely with the Port to provide a rate structure that made the Port facilities competitive.
Seattle Port authorities found it ironic that the Trustee was proposing a shutdown of the Milwaukee's transcontinental line: "For the first time since the Milwaukee inaugurated service ... in 1909, the railroad could probably make money on a long-term basis if transcontinental service were maintained."
The Port of Tacoma thought that the Milwaukee's services were more important to the country as a whole than Chrysler Corporation's, and asked, if the government could advance a billion dollars to Chrysler, why it could not make similar commitments to the Milwaukee.
Did you know? The MILW engineers loved loved running electric locomotives in the cold mountains because as you might know, electric powered things always run better in the cold.
The trackage in Montana that was west of Billings, MT mostly got tore out and removed. It paralleled the Northern Pacific for much of that route and the BNSF currently operates that section now (formerly the Montana Rail Link). The section of ROW at the Idaho/Montana state line is now the Route of the Hiawatha bike trail, part of the rails to trails system.
I was glad that you finally got around to the truth about the Pacific Extension. During the 1950's the expenses from the eastern lines were being hidden in the lines west. This was done to make the road look more profitable and help to close the merger with Chicago Northwestern. That dragged on for many years before the government killed it. The management changed after the merger failed and the new management was not aware of the lies hidden in the books and decided to kill the line west. Only after several years of this did they start to understand that they were cutting their own throats.
The line into Indiana was firstly to connect to coal mines on south west Indiana and later an attempt to offer a connection to Chicago for the Southern. They did carry through traffic for Southern in the 1970's but by that time the ROW was so bad the plan had to be given up. To quote others, 'the Mil wake Road was so broke it couldn't pull its self out of it's own mud to save its life.'
A correction is in order about the electrification as the wires came down a year before the Arab oil embargo. There was no thought about the price of oil going through the roof until the electricity had been shut down. If it had remained in place and running another year it likely would have remained. All very bad timing.
The new management after the failure of the merger knew exactly what had been going on with the books. After the merger failed, they made William John Quinn Chairman of the railroad. Quinn had been directly responsible in the mid-1960s for the strategy that led to the lies in the books.
@@Jim-Tuner I've heard commentary that indicated the bookkeeping games had gone on since the late 50's and that the directors had painted themselves into a corner when Chicago and NW merger was nixed. The bookkeeping continued post merger because no one was willing to admit the truth and cost cutting measures did not yield the expected results as most of the cutting was done on the Pacific Extension which spoiled business on that line, reducing revenue without reducing expenses. Only a number of years later did the truth become excepted and those years of delay just made a bad situation worse. The whole region was over built with grange lines from Chicago to Minnesota to Kansas to Missouri.
That was the way it was presented to me but of course I wasn't there. Along with the story of the end of the Erie two of the more interesting stories of railroad failures and the questionable business practices involved. Some how there are always at least two versions of the story.
no it would not , the Up rr turn down the chance to buy the PCE for pennys on the dollar
You’re right. Deferred maintenance killed the Road.
Along with stupid management.
A major lesson on how not to run a railroad
Hey Darkness; do you think you could do a video on the downfall of the MKT RR? I live and work next to the Katy Trail; or what use to be MKT right of way here in Missouri.
The man most responsible for the collapse of the Milwaukee Road was a politically connected crook named Leo Crowley. In the 1920s, Crowley had embezzled money from banks he owned. But it was all covered up politically by his friends and against all logic, he somehow became the head of the FDIC in 1934 and ran it until 1945.
He was forced out of politics in 1945 (after the war) because he was seen as hostile to the Soviet Union. And Harry Truman himself said that.
He then (with no real qualifications) was made Chairman of the Milwaukee Road. It was Crowley in the 1960s who made the decision that the railroad would be sold by 1970. It was Crowley's plan to increase the earnings of the railroad by cutting maintainence and doing lease-backs.
His plans all went wrong. The merger that the railroad was counting on to survive didn't happen in 1970 and he died in 1972.
Criminally negligent Executives. Unfortunately that trend continues today.
I would have loved to seen a merger in the late 60s between The Milwaukee Road and New York Central with Alfred E. Perlman as the CEO. I feel like he wouldn't have made the same questionable decisions that the Milwaukee leaders made. My only concern is how and when they would improve the aging trackage.
Otherwise, you would have had a coast to coast line with lots of service in the midwest. With electrified lines at both ends, who knows? perhaps a fully electrified, transcontinental railroad could have happened. The New York Road could have been good.
DUDE!!!!! I've thought of the same thing!!! The efficiency of one carrier over the whole continent! The USA would be so different! and both the NYC and MILW were known for speed too! I just tottally agree!
But the name... more like "The New York Milwaukee & Pacific" or "New York Central and Pacific"
Perlman was a very Good Man And CEO, He did not want the Milwaukee
@@dknowles60 I'm not sure what being a good man has to do with not wanting The Milwaukee Road. Cornelius Vanderbilt wanted the NYC to keep expanding west but his children didn't have his vision or leadership skills. Merging with the Milwaukee would have helped realize his grand vision.
@@P0w2you the MiLW was never known for speed
@@91_C4_FL the NYC di go west to Saint louis
My grandfather worked for the MR. I was too young at the time to ask questions and learn some of the history he knew.
Really enjoying your channel. RUclips brought you across my path about two weeks ago. I, too, am a railfan. I need to start uploading train vids.
I like how you explore the history of the failures of these companies, including the ones not relating to railroads. It fills a niche that most other railfanning vids don't.
That buy leaseback deal was common with brick & mortar businesses. Safeway, for example, was the first large company to use this method to increase its number of stores and even to expand into other areas.
Leasebacks work when they fund growth as subway did. Leasebacks designed to provide a short-term boost to earnings in a company with no growth (The Milwaukee Road Strategy) almost never works and mostly leads to bankruptcy.
@@Jim-Tuner I think their proposal was approved by the bankruptcy judge to pay off creditors. Safeway already owned the stores, sold them to a wholly owned subsidiary and leased them back. You're right, how do you do that with tracks. But they did own various tracts of land and had space in train stations used for retail. Plus, they had massive, owned warehouse space which could have been rented out.
The Indiana RRs were an attempt to make it to Cincinnati, which the MLW almost made it to.
In 2013 Wisconsin Southern was, fully absorbed into Union Pacific and still have a few Wisconsin Southern trains and now uses local Wisconsin Contractors following the Stoughton natual gas explosion disaster.
Where are u getting your information?
Union pacific has NOTHING to do with the Wisconsin Southern! UP does not own the WSOR, it is a Watco company. Union Pacific interchanges cars to them at Janesville and Granville.
Never knew railways could be funny. Well done. X
The really sad thing is for the Line West part of the route, it had a far better surveyed route over the Cascades than anyone the than the SP&S and UP (which each snagged one side of the Columbia River) and when the tracks were yanked up around 1987, nobody seriously looked into buying the Milwaukee Road's Snoqualmie Pass route. That tunnel was tall enough for double stacks, unlike either the Stevens or Stampede Pass tunnels. Sadly, I live within sight of the line out to Gray's Harbor, which is not even a gravel trail anymore and can't even be seen in several front yards
wrong
Wrong the Up did look at buying the PCE Stevens pass handles Double Stacks
@@dknowles60 The BN did purchase the MILW crossing over Snoqualmie Pass. The unfortunate merger with the "Frisco" derailed turning the MILW route into BN's primary route into Seattle/Tacoma.
@@icland100 wrong the MILW was a bad route, the Bn had 3 very good routes in to Seattle /tacoma, the Big reason's Bn did not want Snoqualmie pass was the saddle Mountins the bitter root Mountins other mountins, the only tough graid the Bn has was marries pass and the MIlw was very close to the Ex Np most of the wat to terry Mt
@@dknowles60 Odd, then, that the BN did, in fact, purchase the Milwaukee route over Snoqualmie Pass. Is there anything that you actually DO know? Or do you "make everything up?"" Why?
That's insane about Thier repair costs and leases. Sounds like they deliberately wanted to run the company under. Seen the leasing issue before with trucks, then they buy them back later on.
Knew some of this, but not all. Sounds more criminal than mismanaged. thanks
261.......she survived pain
I wonder, (if you get a chance) could please do a video on the amazing but extinct Milwaukee ALCO built, streamlined Hiawatha steam locomotives, the 1935/7 - A class 4-4-2s and their bigger brothers, the F7 4-6-4s?
Thanks!
The lines in Indiana were bought primarily to supply the railroad with coal, and also give the MILW additional eastern and southeastern connections. This was commonly referred to as the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern (CTH&SE) and they served a number of coal mines.
not going to lie the story of the Milwaukee sounds like modern PSR rn
One detail that’s important is why the copper prices increased and decreased so violently. This all occurred during Chile’s Salvador Allende’s nationalization of all foreign copper firms including Anaconda which drive up prices. By the time the wire got ripped down Pinochet had launched his US backed coup and prices stabilized.
I lived in Cle Elum Washington and St. Maries Idaho in the 1970s and 80s. My father worked for the Northern Pacific/Burlington Northern as a forester and plant manager.
At Cle Elum the two lines ran close together. The difference of track quality was clear to any causal observer. Trains on the NP/BN could be seen to run at much higher speeds than the Milwaukee Road.
The Milwaukee mainline went through St. Maries Idaho. We knew many of the people who worked for the railroad. Driving up the St. Joe River Road that ran on the opposite side of river, seeing the results of derailments was common. It seemed the entire line through there was constantly on slow orders, some areas down to as slow as 10 MPH.
It was no surprise to anyone in the area when the line was shut down. I remember hearing from my father that BN surveyed the abandoned line to see if it would be worth purchasing, but rejected the idea because of how much it would cost to revitalize it.
The section from St. Maries to Plummer Idaho is still in use by the St. Maries River Railroad. This short line is owned by the Potlatch Corporation and is used to haul timber products from the mill at St. Maries to a link up with a Union Pacific branch at Plummer.
A good part of the old railroad right of way up the St. Joe River is now the highway between St. Maries and Avery. The former route to the east of Avery is an interesting bicycle/hiking trail that goes over trestles and through tunnels.
The Milwaukee was terribly managed and as noted here, its Pacific Extension bypassed numerous large cities such as Spokane WA. It did have potential, but mismanagement killed it.
I love your take on rail history, but I'd love to hear you expound on the Anthracite Roads - The Reading, Lehigh Valley, the Central of New Jersey, Delaware Lackawanna and Western, Lehigh & New England, and the Lehigh & Hudson river. Their history and the history of anthracite is fascinating
Same because they were important supply route to New York and Philadelphia in the golden age of railroading
It's so interesting that when it comes to railroads, a bunch of them are destroyed by government regulations.
While it seems that that's where it ends, when you look into it the government regulations were 100% justified during the time, but never adapted further when railroads lost their iron fist of power.
The Interstate Commerce Commission was a major problem. They would not allow creative rates from the Dakotas to Red Wing and Wabasha because it offended the Minneapolis Board of Trade. The Board of Trade was an unethical organization in the 1970's and they would do anything not to be bypassed. Bad people
This video comes as personel to me because my home town of Brodhead Wisconsin was actually on the Milwaukee Road andchas an old engine permanently on display next to the Brodhead Depot Museum. Brodhead is 30 miles west of Janesville Wisconsin and about 20 miles east of Monroe Wisconsin which is infinitely famous for Cheese Days worldwide. We also have railtrails that are State Trails and in very Rough shape due to lack of funding through the WI DNR being cut under our Former Governor Walker. Up in Exeter Township in Northern Green County sits the olf Stewert Tunnel on the Badger State Trail which is closed off and has been since the August 2020 derachio. It will take some serious amount of money and a Railroad Restoration Expert. Heavy logging equipment to clear out years of overgrowth and everything else neded for The Non-profit organization The Friends Of The Badger And Sugar River State Trails to geet things going again.
My new favorite channel, thanks
What did David Bevin go work for the Milwaukee road after the bankruptcy of Penn central sounds awfully familiar 😂😂
NYC sponsoring the show… I WANT. THAT. CONCEPT!
I don’t know what a diesel is
I was working for the Chicago & North Western Railway in 1985 when the word came out that the Soo Line Railroad was allowed to purchase most of the Milwaukee Road even though they had bid lower for the Milwaukee than the C&NW. It was a big shock to many North Western employees who anticipated the purchase would easily go through for the railway. Years later a higher up in the North Western told me that he didn't think the company could afford the Milwaukee Road for what they bid in 1985 and that it was probably best that the C&NW wasn't given the nod, or they could have been next to declare bankruptcy.
YUPPPPP I love this railroad, but hate how the suits at the top killed it like the Extension West was a good thing! and the Electrification was a good thing! (I so with they would've let GE pay to close the gap and update rolling stock!!!)
I have a crazy what if. It would have never happen, but if it did! I had a dream if Milwaukee Road was bought/ merged with New York Central thus you out competent leadership and a railroad that would have the efficiency of transcontinental routes! the ICC would've probably never allowed it but it would have made rail roads today more competitive with Roads and Highways!
The Milwaukee Road was the greatest railroad. It should have been saved. A small subsidy would have saved thousands of jobs, and saved the economies of many communities. Very short sighted.
it was hopeless and a very cost rail road to run, the Uprr turned down the Chance to buy the PCE for pennys on the dollar
@@dknowles60WRONG!!
I still love their official RUclips channel