Chapter 1: The 1970s
Devvy
Donor
Chapter 1: The 1970s
A Milwaukee Road freight operates in the west.
By 1970, the Milwaukee Road was struggling to make ends meet with the railroad teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and financial insolvency. High up on the agenda was a drive to increase revenue, improve productivity and efficiency on the railroad, across the entire network - but especially noting the rise of traffic across it's Pacific Extension. A re-evaluation of assets and operations revealed the profit generation of the Pacific Extension, and hence a new "rail rehabilitation programme" to replace the ties and repair the tracks began to take place. At the same time, an inspection of the overhead electrification took place, noting how well it is holding up in general apart from the support trolley poles, for which many needed replacement after several years of deferred maintenance. An accompanying project to make a final decision over the future of the Milwaukee electrification took place in collaboration with General Electric, producing a final report advocating modernisation of the route. This scheme would push not just for retention, but that the "missing gap" between Avery and Othello should be filled in, with construction costs minimised due to the more friendly terrain in this area - a position later ratified by the board of the Milwaukee Road. The scheme, underwritten by General Electric Credit was seemingly a baffling decision for a supplier to make, but the act of doing this, and the low amount of electric locomotive manufacturers in North America meant that they were in effect securing a long term customer and would also serve as a test case for widespread electrification in the United States.
The modernisation would allow electric operation over a longer distance from Seattle & Tacoma all the way to Harlowton, reducing shipment costs, reducing operational costs and speeding up transit time, whilst providing significantly better operational efficiency with the entire route west of Harlowton electrified and thus requiring only a single change en route. Meanwhile, this would also allow diesel locomotives to be reallocated eastwards and providing a net saving there. Contracts were signed with General Electric to extend and modernise the system, despite continuing to use the 3kV DC system instead of the newer 25kV AC. It would also allow new rectifier substations and transformers (and fewer of them), with less manual maintenance and operation required, with some existing substations on the present electrified areas receiving newer rectifier equipment to increase available power, with existing motor-generator sets moved to other existing substations in mountainous areas where additional power was also required whilst the motor-generator sets also allowed easy regenerative power to be fed back in to the grid. New long term contracts with the local power companies (principally Montana Power and Washington Water Power) were also signed for the power - the existing contracts expiring around 1976, although part of the contract involved selling the Milwaukee's 115kV distribution line to the energy companies to offset costs. The line, which supplied power to all the Milwaukee substations, was also heavily used by the utilities to distribute power; but as long as power came to the Milwaukee substations, then the Milwaukee Road was not in the business of power distribution anyway, and the sale helped provide funds for the overall electrification project.
The speed of the hotshot freight expresses from Seattle/Tacoma to the Twin Cities or Chicago began to gently improve, as worn out rail was slowly replaced as finances allowed. A large upswing in traffic now began on the Milwaukee Road, largely due to the interchange points on the newly merged Burlington Northern as well as access to Portland. In previous years, these services - primarily the "XL Special" and "Thunderhawk" services - were operated by diesel all the way, even under the electric wires as the time to change from diesel to electric, back to diesel, and then back to electric again was not worthwhile. However, with the electric gap removed, and price of oil rocketing due to global events, the trains would briefly halt at Harlowton for a snap locomotive change. The time spent at Harlowton was reduced over time, as crews got used to the quick change, and the two hotstop expresses continued to be extremely popular with customers, and were marketed with the slogan "Two and a half day timetable!" due to their speed, which was almost a day quicker than the competition.
The Burlington Northern railroad merged in 1970, creating a new "mega railroad" in the north, and this spurred other mergers. With the Milwaukee Road / Chicago & North Western merger planned during the 1960s falling through, the only other option was the Rock Island - but this railroad was firmly falling apart at the seams financially. It lasted until 1975, before folding in bankruptcy court and being wound up, with the Southern Pacific taking up several of the former Rock Island's southern routes; the Milwaukee Road also made serious efforts to close some of the numerous small branch lines in an effort to save money and reduce expenditure to avoid the same fate, whilst spending funds on rehabilitating other routes. One in particular was the "Southeastern" route towards Louisville, Kentucky, where an interchange existed with the Southern Railway who willingly interchanged with the Milwaukee and proved to be a successful partner, whilst the bankruptcy of the Rock Island reduced competition in several Midwestern areas where the countryside was well over saturated by rail. Southern Pacific also continued to be a critical partner, exchanging traffic not only in the Pacific Northwest, but also for Chicago.
Fluctuating oil prices through the decades.
Mergers continued through the 1970s; the Union Pacific eventually took over the Chicago & North Western railroad, in order to obtain it's own access to Chicago, but the most important was the continued failure of the Erie Lackawanna to be rescued. Firstly Norfolk & Western declined to take it over, and then the failure to complete the take over by the Chessie, led to problems in what to do with the route. Conrail, the result of the bankrupt Penn Central railroad, was looking to be a dominant entity in the north-east United States, and regulators were loathe to hand over more routes to Conrail when there was little competition as it was. This led to a speculative offer by the Milwaukee to take it over and thus create a true transcontinental railroad. The idea was loathed by Conrail - but they were a government-owned company who would otherwise have no real competition, whilst several other railroads lodged objections. However, the ICC didn't want to add to market domination by any of the large western railroads, Conrail would be monopolistic, whilst Norfolk & Western and Chessie had both failed to take it over. Lack of options, therefore, meant the ICC approved it given the significantly smaller size of the Milwaukee Road compared to the larger western railroads such as Burlington North or Union Pacific, whilst the Santa Fe were promised continued trackage rights along the express route between the Midwest and New Jersey/New York area. Despite teething issues on some washed out areas - with federal loans helping rehabilitate the route to operational status, the merger would eventually be a significant shot in the arm for the Milwaukee Road, allowing freight to seamlessly travel between the Pacific ports at Seattle & Tacoma, the Midwest (chiefly Chicago and the Twin Cities), and the Atlantic ports at New Jersey and the wider New York area. It also turned out to guarantee the independence of the Milwaukee Road for better or worse, as the ICC would not contemplate a truly transcontinental route for any of the larger railroads.
By 1976, the electrification between Avery and Othello and thus the wider Seattle/Tacoma to Harlowton was complete - and just in time, for the price of oil by 1976 was just shy of triple what it was at the start of the decade (Jan 1970: approx $23 per barrel, vs Dec 1976: $63). The cost saving of electric operations between Seattle/Tacoma and Harlowton was now approximately $1 million annually - and increasing if & when the price of oil increased further, rapidly paying off the investment in the electrification given the uninterrupted circa 870 miles of electric route. The 30 newer General Electric locomotives, named E65, was a C-C design, with a significant tractive effort of 86,000lbf and 6,000hp (4.5MW) power based on 6 x 750kW motors, whilst to save on costs, the same chassis/super structure was used as the new GE E60 locomotives. The locomotives were single-cabbed (ie. a driving cab at only one end of the locomotive), but were full width and more comfortable for train crew then previous locomotives, and would usually be operated in pairs back-to-back to simplify operations with no need to turn them. The remaining 12 "Little Joe" locomotives could now be seen along the full stretch too, often as an extra helper locomotive on the more challenging and steep subdivisions of the main line.
Electric operation advertising over the years.
Passenger train wise, the Milwaukee Road had been an early adopter of strategies to reduce train operation. The Olympian Hiawatha was cut back early, and the many of the Milwaukee Road's historic passenger services were cut before Amtrak was even created. Nevertheless, the remaining service remnants (principally around Chicago and Milwaukee) were merged in to Amtrak quickly, with the Milwaukee Road eager to rid their hands of any remaining obligations. Commuter services proved slower however, with the Regional Transportation Authority in Illinois coming in to existence in 1974 (3 years later then Amtrak), designed to lift the burden of commuter rail from the beleaguered railroads. Milwaukee Rock handed over all commuter service / intra-state service to the new agency, later named as "Metra", with Metra & Amtrak merely paying the Milwaukee Road for track access for their services - principally the "Hiawatha" service between Chicago and Milwaukee. This completely freed the Milwaukee Road from any lingering responsibility for passenger rail operations, helping their balance sheet with the reduction in expense and financial risk, although Amtrak especially found themselves happy to continue running trains along the Milwaukee Road's routes, particularly in the Midwestern area with the "Hiawatha" service between Milwaukee and Chicago in particular a heavy user of Milwaukee Road tracks.
Much needed additional funding for the Milwaukee Rock became available in federal loans under the "Rail Reorganisation Act of 1973", and was critical in the further rehabilitation of the Pacific Extension and the recovery of the new E-L route to New Jersey. The 1972 Hurricane (Agnes) had washed away miles of track in the east, with dozens of locomotives and wagons ruined or washed away too. Some of this could be handled through more efficient use of diesel locomotives under the combined Milwaukee Road, but equally new locomotives would be required as well, and federal loans under the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 were welcome in continuing the replacement of worn rails on the Pacific Extension.. The State of Iowa, a long time agricultural state, also chipped in with subsidies to repair and rehabilitate damaged branch lines to locations dependant on rail service - especially those who were losing rail connections via the bankrupt Rock Island railroad, whilst many shippers themselves followed suit themselves, eager to preserve and not lose rail access. Closing smaller loss-making branch lines continued, although was hard going in the 1970s having to justify in public hearing each one, but closure was critical for the Milwaukee Road, where studies had highlighted the low ratio of freight carried against the size of the network.
-------------------------------
Notes:
Well it's been a year since I wrote anything rail related. Being a timeline in the US, I've tried to stick to US terminology and spelling, so forgive me for the occassional slip up. It's only maybe 6-7 chapters, not long, but something once again....
The PoD here originally was Quinn not coming back to the Milwaukee Road; I place responsibility with him for a lot of the baffling business decisions (ripping out the electrification for a more expensive diesel solution, bad accounting which made the Pacific route look economically far worse than it actually was, refusing custom, doing everything to shoehorn the Milwaukee Road in to the Burlington Northern system). But regardless; here the Milwaukee Road has a more independent minded boss, who back the railroad to operate.
OTL, General Electric Credit offered to underwrite the entire cost of modernising the electric system out west (the small amount that was needed), as well as closing the gap which would substantially improve operational efficiency. Here, that's been taken up on - and a good thing too, considering the enormous spike in oil prices which occurred just after OTL Milwaukee Road finished ripping out all it's electrification.
A Milwaukee Road freight operates in the west.
By 1970, the Milwaukee Road was struggling to make ends meet with the railroad teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and financial insolvency. High up on the agenda was a drive to increase revenue, improve productivity and efficiency on the railroad, across the entire network - but especially noting the rise of traffic across it's Pacific Extension. A re-evaluation of assets and operations revealed the profit generation of the Pacific Extension, and hence a new "rail rehabilitation programme" to replace the ties and repair the tracks began to take place. At the same time, an inspection of the overhead electrification took place, noting how well it is holding up in general apart from the support trolley poles, for which many needed replacement after several years of deferred maintenance. An accompanying project to make a final decision over the future of the Milwaukee electrification took place in collaboration with General Electric, producing a final report advocating modernisation of the route. This scheme would push not just for retention, but that the "missing gap" between Avery and Othello should be filled in, with construction costs minimised due to the more friendly terrain in this area - a position later ratified by the board of the Milwaukee Road. The scheme, underwritten by General Electric Credit was seemingly a baffling decision for a supplier to make, but the act of doing this, and the low amount of electric locomotive manufacturers in North America meant that they were in effect securing a long term customer and would also serve as a test case for widespread electrification in the United States.
The modernisation would allow electric operation over a longer distance from Seattle & Tacoma all the way to Harlowton, reducing shipment costs, reducing operational costs and speeding up transit time, whilst providing significantly better operational efficiency with the entire route west of Harlowton electrified and thus requiring only a single change en route. Meanwhile, this would also allow diesel locomotives to be reallocated eastwards and providing a net saving there. Contracts were signed with General Electric to extend and modernise the system, despite continuing to use the 3kV DC system instead of the newer 25kV AC. It would also allow new rectifier substations and transformers (and fewer of them), with less manual maintenance and operation required, with some existing substations on the present electrified areas receiving newer rectifier equipment to increase available power, with existing motor-generator sets moved to other existing substations in mountainous areas where additional power was also required whilst the motor-generator sets also allowed easy regenerative power to be fed back in to the grid. New long term contracts with the local power companies (principally Montana Power and Washington Water Power) were also signed for the power - the existing contracts expiring around 1976, although part of the contract involved selling the Milwaukee's 115kV distribution line to the energy companies to offset costs. The line, which supplied power to all the Milwaukee substations, was also heavily used by the utilities to distribute power; but as long as power came to the Milwaukee substations, then the Milwaukee Road was not in the business of power distribution anyway, and the sale helped provide funds for the overall electrification project.
The speed of the hotshot freight expresses from Seattle/Tacoma to the Twin Cities or Chicago began to gently improve, as worn out rail was slowly replaced as finances allowed. A large upswing in traffic now began on the Milwaukee Road, largely due to the interchange points on the newly merged Burlington Northern as well as access to Portland. In previous years, these services - primarily the "XL Special" and "Thunderhawk" services - were operated by diesel all the way, even under the electric wires as the time to change from diesel to electric, back to diesel, and then back to electric again was not worthwhile. However, with the electric gap removed, and price of oil rocketing due to global events, the trains would briefly halt at Harlowton for a snap locomotive change. The time spent at Harlowton was reduced over time, as crews got used to the quick change, and the two hotstop expresses continued to be extremely popular with customers, and were marketed with the slogan "Two and a half day timetable!" due to their speed, which was almost a day quicker than the competition.
The Burlington Northern railroad merged in 1970, creating a new "mega railroad" in the north, and this spurred other mergers. With the Milwaukee Road / Chicago & North Western merger planned during the 1960s falling through, the only other option was the Rock Island - but this railroad was firmly falling apart at the seams financially. It lasted until 1975, before folding in bankruptcy court and being wound up, with the Southern Pacific taking up several of the former Rock Island's southern routes; the Milwaukee Road also made serious efforts to close some of the numerous small branch lines in an effort to save money and reduce expenditure to avoid the same fate, whilst spending funds on rehabilitating other routes. One in particular was the "Southeastern" route towards Louisville, Kentucky, where an interchange existed with the Southern Railway who willingly interchanged with the Milwaukee and proved to be a successful partner, whilst the bankruptcy of the Rock Island reduced competition in several Midwestern areas where the countryside was well over saturated by rail. Southern Pacific also continued to be a critical partner, exchanging traffic not only in the Pacific Northwest, but also for Chicago.
Fluctuating oil prices through the decades.
Mergers continued through the 1970s; the Union Pacific eventually took over the Chicago & North Western railroad, in order to obtain it's own access to Chicago, but the most important was the continued failure of the Erie Lackawanna to be rescued. Firstly Norfolk & Western declined to take it over, and then the failure to complete the take over by the Chessie, led to problems in what to do with the route. Conrail, the result of the bankrupt Penn Central railroad, was looking to be a dominant entity in the north-east United States, and regulators were loathe to hand over more routes to Conrail when there was little competition as it was. This led to a speculative offer by the Milwaukee to take it over and thus create a true transcontinental railroad. The idea was loathed by Conrail - but they were a government-owned company who would otherwise have no real competition, whilst several other railroads lodged objections. However, the ICC didn't want to add to market domination by any of the large western railroads, Conrail would be monopolistic, whilst Norfolk & Western and Chessie had both failed to take it over. Lack of options, therefore, meant the ICC approved it given the significantly smaller size of the Milwaukee Road compared to the larger western railroads such as Burlington North or Union Pacific, whilst the Santa Fe were promised continued trackage rights along the express route between the Midwest and New Jersey/New York area. Despite teething issues on some washed out areas - with federal loans helping rehabilitate the route to operational status, the merger would eventually be a significant shot in the arm for the Milwaukee Road, allowing freight to seamlessly travel between the Pacific ports at Seattle & Tacoma, the Midwest (chiefly Chicago and the Twin Cities), and the Atlantic ports at New Jersey and the wider New York area. It also turned out to guarantee the independence of the Milwaukee Road for better or worse, as the ICC would not contemplate a truly transcontinental route for any of the larger railroads.
By 1976, the electrification between Avery and Othello and thus the wider Seattle/Tacoma to Harlowton was complete - and just in time, for the price of oil by 1976 was just shy of triple what it was at the start of the decade (Jan 1970: approx $23 per barrel, vs Dec 1976: $63). The cost saving of electric operations between Seattle/Tacoma and Harlowton was now approximately $1 million annually - and increasing if & when the price of oil increased further, rapidly paying off the investment in the electrification given the uninterrupted circa 870 miles of electric route. The 30 newer General Electric locomotives, named E65, was a C-C design, with a significant tractive effort of 86,000lbf and 6,000hp (4.5MW) power based on 6 x 750kW motors, whilst to save on costs, the same chassis/super structure was used as the new GE E60 locomotives. The locomotives were single-cabbed (ie. a driving cab at only one end of the locomotive), but were full width and more comfortable for train crew then previous locomotives, and would usually be operated in pairs back-to-back to simplify operations with no need to turn them. The remaining 12 "Little Joe" locomotives could now be seen along the full stretch too, often as an extra helper locomotive on the more challenging and steep subdivisions of the main line.
Electric operation advertising over the years.
Passenger train wise, the Milwaukee Road had been an early adopter of strategies to reduce train operation. The Olympian Hiawatha was cut back early, and the many of the Milwaukee Road's historic passenger services were cut before Amtrak was even created. Nevertheless, the remaining service remnants (principally around Chicago and Milwaukee) were merged in to Amtrak quickly, with the Milwaukee Road eager to rid their hands of any remaining obligations. Commuter services proved slower however, with the Regional Transportation Authority in Illinois coming in to existence in 1974 (3 years later then Amtrak), designed to lift the burden of commuter rail from the beleaguered railroads. Milwaukee Rock handed over all commuter service / intra-state service to the new agency, later named as "Metra", with Metra & Amtrak merely paying the Milwaukee Road for track access for their services - principally the "Hiawatha" service between Chicago and Milwaukee. This completely freed the Milwaukee Road from any lingering responsibility for passenger rail operations, helping their balance sheet with the reduction in expense and financial risk, although Amtrak especially found themselves happy to continue running trains along the Milwaukee Road's routes, particularly in the Midwestern area with the "Hiawatha" service between Milwaukee and Chicago in particular a heavy user of Milwaukee Road tracks.
Much needed additional funding for the Milwaukee Rock became available in federal loans under the "Rail Reorganisation Act of 1973", and was critical in the further rehabilitation of the Pacific Extension and the recovery of the new E-L route to New Jersey. The 1972 Hurricane (Agnes) had washed away miles of track in the east, with dozens of locomotives and wagons ruined or washed away too. Some of this could be handled through more efficient use of diesel locomotives under the combined Milwaukee Road, but equally new locomotives would be required as well, and federal loans under the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 were welcome in continuing the replacement of worn rails on the Pacific Extension.. The State of Iowa, a long time agricultural state, also chipped in with subsidies to repair and rehabilitate damaged branch lines to locations dependant on rail service - especially those who were losing rail connections via the bankrupt Rock Island railroad, whilst many shippers themselves followed suit themselves, eager to preserve and not lose rail access. Closing smaller loss-making branch lines continued, although was hard going in the 1970s having to justify in public hearing each one, but closure was critical for the Milwaukee Road, where studies had highlighted the low ratio of freight carried against the size of the network.
-------------------------------
Notes:
Well it's been a year since I wrote anything rail related. Being a timeline in the US, I've tried to stick to US terminology and spelling, so forgive me for the occassional slip up. It's only maybe 6-7 chapters, not long, but something once again....
The PoD here originally was Quinn not coming back to the Milwaukee Road; I place responsibility with him for a lot of the baffling business decisions (ripping out the electrification for a more expensive diesel solution, bad accounting which made the Pacific route look economically far worse than it actually was, refusing custom, doing everything to shoehorn the Milwaukee Road in to the Burlington Northern system). But regardless; here the Milwaukee Road has a more independent minded boss, who back the railroad to operate.
OTL, General Electric Credit offered to underwrite the entire cost of modernising the electric system out west (the small amount that was needed), as well as closing the gap which would substantially improve operational efficiency. Here, that's been taken up on - and a good thing too, considering the enormous spike in oil prices which occurred just after OTL Milwaukee Road finished ripping out all it's electrification.