Milwaukee Road


The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, better known as the Milwaukee Road, was a Class I railroad that operated in the Midwest and Northwest of the United States from 1847 until 1986.
The company experienced financial difficulty through the 1970s and 1980s, including bankruptcy in 1977. In 1980, it abandoned its Pacific Extension, which included track in the states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington. The remaining system was merged into the Soo Line Railroad, a subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Railway, on January 1, 1986. Much of its historical trackage remains in use by other railroads. The company brand is commemorated by buildings like the historic Milwaukee Road Depot in Minneapolis and preserved locomotives such as Milwaukee Road 261 which operates excursion trains.

History

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Minneapolis Railroad

The railroad that became the Milwaukee Road began as the Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad in Wisconsin, whose goal was to link the developing Lake Michigan port City of Milwaukee with the Mississippi River. The company incorporated in 1847, but changed its name to the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad in 1850 before construction began. Its first line, long, opened between Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, on November 20, 1850. Extensions followed to Waukesha in February 1851, Madison, and finally the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien in 1857.
As a result of the financial panic of 1857, the M&M went into receivership in 1859 and was purchased by the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien Railroad in 1861. In 1867, Alexander Mitchell combined the M&PdC with the Milwaukee and St. Paul under the name Milwaukee and St. Paul. Critical to the development and financing of the railroad was the acquisition of significant land grants. Prominent individual investors in the line included Alexander Mitchell, Russell Sage, Jeremiah Milbank, and William Rockefeller.
In 1874, the name was changed to Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway Company after constructing an extension to Chicago in 1872. The company absorbed the Chicago and Pacific Railroad Company in 1879, the railroad that built the Bloomingdale Line and what became the Milwaukee District West Line as part of the 36-mile Elgin Subdivision from Halsted Street in Chicago to the suburb of Elgin, Illinois. In 1890, the company purchased the Milwaukee and Northern Railroad; by now, the railroad had lines running through Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The corporate headquarters were moved from Milwaukee to the Rand McNally Building in Chicago, America's first all-steel framed skyscraper, in 1889 and 1890, with the car and locomotive shops staying in Milwaukee. The company's general offices were later located in Chicago's Railway Exchange building until 1924, at which time they moved to Chicago Union Station.

Pacific Extension

In the 1890s, the company's directors felt they had to extend the railroad to the Pacific to remain competitive with other railroads. A survey in 1901 estimated costs to build to the Pacific Northwest as $45 million. In 1905, the board approved the Pacific Extension, now estimated at $60 million. The contract for the western part of the route was awarded to Horace Chapin Henry of Seattle. The subsidiary Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Railway Company was chartered in 1905 to build from the Missouri River to Seattle and Tacoma.
Construction began in 1906 and was completed three years later. The route chosen was shorter than the next shortest competitors, as well as better grades than some, but it was an expensive route, since Milwaukee Road received few land grants and had to buy most of the land or acquire smaller railroads.
The two main mountain ranges that had to be crossed, the Rockies and the Cascades, required major civil engineering works and additional locomotive power. The completion of of railroad through some of the most varied topography in the nation in only three years was a major feat. Original company maps denote five mountain crossings: Belts, Rockies, Bitterroots, Saddles, and Cascades. These are slight misnomers as the Belt mountains and Bitterroots are part of the Rockies. The route did not cross over the Little Belts or Big Belts, but over the Lenep-Loweth Ridge between the Castle Mountains and the Crazy Mountains.
Some historians question the choice of route, since it bypassed some population centers and passed through areas with limited local traffic potential. Much of the line paralleled the Northern Pacific Railway. Trains magazine called the building of the extension, primarily a long-haul route, "egregious" and a "disaster". George H. Drury listed the Pacific Extension as one of several "wrong decisions" made by the Milwaukee Road's management which contributed to the company's eventual failure.
Beginning in 1909, several smaller railroads were acquired and expanded to form branch lines along the Pacific Extension.
File:The Olympian in Montana 1925.JPG|thumb|263x263px|alt=Boxcab electric locomotive pulling a passenger train in a canyon|An EF-1 boxcab hauling the Olympian through Montana Canyon in 1925
Operating conditions in the mountain regions of the Pacific Extension proved difficult. Winter temperatures of in Montana made it challenging for steam locomotives to generate sufficient steam. The line snaked through mountainous areas, resulting in "long steep grades and sharp curves". Electrification provided an answer, especially with abundant hydroelectric power in the mountains, and a ready source of copper in Anaconda, Montana. Between 1914 and 1916, the Milwaukee Road implemented a 3,000 volt direct current overhead system between Harlowton, Montana, and Avery, Idaho, a distance of. Pleased with the result, the Milwaukee electrified its route in Washington between Othello and Tacoma, a further, between 1917 and 1920. This section traversed the Cascades through the Snoqualmie Tunnel, just south of Snoqualmie Pass and over lower in elevation. The single-track tunnel's east portal at Hyak included an adjacent company-owned ski area.
Together, the of main-line electrification represented the largest such project in the world up to that time and would not be exceeded in the US until the Pennsylvania Railroad's efforts in the 1930s. The two separate electrified districts were never unified, as the Idaho Division was comparatively flat down the St. Joe River to St. Maries and through eastern Washington, and posed few challenges for steam operation. Electrification cost $27 million, but resulted in savings of over $1 million per year from improved operational efficiency.

Bankruptcies

The Chicago, Milwaukee, and Puget Sound Railway was absorbed by the parent company on January 1, 1913. The Pacific Extension, including subsequent electrification, cost the Milwaukee Road $257 million, over four times the original estimate of $60 million. To meet this cost, the Milwaukee Road sold bonds, which began coming due in the 1920s. Traffic never met projections, and by the early 1920s, the Milwaukee Road was in serious financial condition. This state was exacerbated by the railroad's purchase of several heavily indebted railroads in Indiana. The company declared bankruptcy in 1925 and reorganized as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1928. In 1927, the railroad launched its second edition of the Olympian as a premier luxury limited passenger train and opened its first railroad-owned tourist hotel, the Gallatin Gateway Inn in Montana, southwest of Bozeman, via a spur from Three Forks. In 1929, its total mileage stood at.
The reorganized company scarcely had a chance for success before the Great Depression hit. Despite innovations such as the famous Hiawatha high-speed trains that exceeded, the railroad again filed for bankruptcy in 1935. The Milwaukee Road operated under trusteeship until December 1, 1945.
During World War II, the CMStP&P sponsored one of the U.S. Army's MRS units, the 757th Railroad Shop Battalion.

Postwar

The Milwaukee Road enjoyed temporary success after World War II. Out of bankruptcy and with the wartime ban on new passenger service lifted, the company upgraded its trains. The Olympian Hiawatha began running between Chicago and the Puget Sound over the Pacific Extension in 1947, and the Twin Cities Hiawatha received new equipment in 1948. Dieselisation accelerated and was complete by 1957. In 1955, the Milwaukee Road took over from the Chicago and North Western's handling of Union Pacific's streamliner trains between Chicago and Omaha.File:Skytop_Hiawatha_trains_Chicago_Milwaukee_and_St_Paul_Railroad.jpg|thumb|right| Two Skytop Lounges in their fourth Milwaukee Road paint scheme, matching Union Pacific colorsThe whole railroad industry found itself in decline in the late 1950s and the 1960s, but the Milwaukee Road was hit particularly hard. The Midwest was overbuilt with a plethora of competing railroads, while the competition on the transcontinental routes to the Pacific was tough. The premier transcontinental streamliner, the Olympian Hiawatha, despite innovative scenic observation cars, was mothballed in 1961, becoming the first visible casualty. The resignation of President John P. Kiley in 1957 and his replacement with the fairly inexperienced William John Quinn was a pivotal moment. From that point onward, the road's management was fixated on merger with another railroad as the solution to the Milwaukee's problems.
Railroad mergers had to be approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission, and in 1969 the ICC effectively blocked the merger with the Chicago and North Western Railway that the Milwaukee Road had counted on and had been planning for since 1964. The ICC asked for terms that the C&NW was not willing to agree to. The merger of the "Hill Lines" was approved at around the same time, and the merged Burlington Northern came into being.