Railroaders' Nostalgia > Checking out the Competition: ATSF and BN via Amtrak

Your RailsTiesBallast correspondent is on vacation so I thought I’d share a May, 1979 trip that was to visit friends and family in Albuquerque, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Seattle. Under this “cover” was a trip on Amtrak’s Chief, North Coast Hiawatha, and Starlight just for fun but it was/is always interesting to see how other RRs were/are doing around the country (and the world for that matter).

The three views are:

On the Chief west of Glorietta and on the NCH along the Yellowstone River and descending the west side of Homestake Pass, above Butte, MT. Oh for the days of almost tolerated open Dutch doors.

Impressions to this SP Asst. Division Engineer:

Overall this was a great exposure to several major routes across the nation and helped me in learning about the industry. We had occasional disappointments with the old equipment but some of the original cars certainly had local style, I remember in particular the giant coffee pot/urn in a former Great Northern diner and the Budd domes from the NP and GN were/are some of finest equipment to ever run on North American rails. It was (but isn’t it always?) a time of transition. We saw plenty of old grain elevators loading 40-foot cars but fleets of covered hoppers. Wayside buildings were coming down and we saw track gangs in mobile homes/trailers. F units were getting rare. I was in awe of the scale of the Mississippi bridges at St. Louis and other major crossings. Amtrak ran pretty well on schedule.

The Santa Fe was in really good condition and seemed to be a first-rate operation, and I would have been surprised to find otherwise. I had not seen the transcon since 1965 and that was on the old Chief which had different timing so daylight was in different places. I had never been east of La Junta.

The Midwest roads varied, I thought the east end of the Milwaukee and the GM&O line from St. Louis to Chicago were pretty good but some other lines seen at junctions matched the dire times I was reading about in the trade and railfan press.

Out west on the BN I imagined I could see the stresses. There was a lot of jointed rail and on the old NP route (that became Montana Rail Link) and not that much traffic. I encountered a disappointing employee attitude in Missoula. We were there for a service stop including fuel. As I walked the platform I saw that whoever was fueling from the other side had over-filled one of the units and fresh diesel was pouring onto the track. When I tried to tell them to shut it off I was met with hostility and it got worse when I tried to bring the environment into the discussion. It was their fight with management and they could care less about waste or pollution. In the coming months and years I read about the sale of those lines to Montana Rail Link and the grief it caused their employees with less that complete sympathy.

The trip made me believe that the SP had it good in several respects: most of the main lines being CTC and long stretches of CWR, generally robust industrial traffic and still-growing customers, etc. However the extra effort and cost to get over mountain ranges on all lines, especially the SP, kind of stood out as compared to the hundreds or thousands of miles travelled with grades seldom getting anywhere near 1%, or so it seemed.

Next week we’ll be back to work.

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Thank you for the impressions and the very nice photos of this bygone era!

First shot looks like east of Glorieta at the Blanchard curves. Eastbound.

Posted from Android

Who among us wouldn't like another chance to ride the NCHi?

The first car behind the baggage on the SWC looks like a SP 3/4 Dome.

nope

If not a SP dome, what is it.?

Sure looks like a SP Dome to me

mundo Wrote:
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> If not a SP dome, what is it.?
>
> Sure looks like a SP Dome to me


Transition car with a baggage dorm