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Western Railroad Discussion > MILW PCE QuestionsDate: 04/22/17 17:05 MILW PCE Questions Author: Northern Is there a reason why the MILW did follow the Clark Fork following the NP to Sandpoint and Spokane verses going over the St. Paul Pass routing line on their way to Snoqualmie Pass as part of the Pacific Coast Extension? Did the they ever attempt to secure and build its mainline along the north bank of the Columbia River before Hill did verses their the Snoqualmie Pass line and if so, how would they get to it from the east; via St. Paul pass or over another pass? Would the ownership of this routing make the MILW system more competitive with NP, GN and UP possibly cutting the cost of the PCE and averting some of the bankruptcies that the railroad experienced later in the 1900s?
One last PCE related question, instead of embarking on the feat of building the PCE, why didn't the MILW attempt to purchase the NP from Villard interests when it went into bankruptcy in the early to mid 1890s? They might have been able to pick up the entire NP system for a reasonable price and achieve everything the PCE did without the significant expense of building it. Date: 04/22/17 17:28 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: SCAX3401 I am sure several individual with much more knowledge of the subject will chime in, however, I believe that the Milwaukee Road wanted a straight shot across Montana, northern Idaho and Washington. They probably felt that most of the profitable traffic in Spokane and the Portland area was already locked up by the existing railroads. Thus, a shorter route across the Pacific Northwest was their best bet. It appears the avoided every significant city enroute except for Butte, MT.
Date: 04/23/17 01:02 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: funnelfan MILW had it in mind they wanted a fast route between the Puget Sound/ Asia and the upper Midwest when they built the PCE. Avoid the congestion in the cities and build a highly engineered line across the open vastness between on a more or less straight line. The problem is passengers and fast freight don't pay the bills like regular freight does. MILW now had more mountains to leap than it's competitors and that means higher operating costs which the electrification was to help solve. By avoiding cities, MILW also missed out on the freight generated in those cities. The combined debt of the initial construction and the electrification saddled the MILW in the long term. They couldn't build the needed feeder lines to bring the freight traffic to the mainline. The initial misguided thinking really doomed the MILW in the long run.
Ted Curphey Ontario, OR Date: 04/23/17 12:52 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: Dick Northern Securities (James J. Hill - GN)owned the Northern Pacific during the early 1900s before they were broken up. Hill would not have sold the NP to the Milw. He had earlier considered buying the Milw instead of the Burlington.
Dick Eisfeller Date: 04/23/17 13:27 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: steeplecab There seems to be a lot of confusion about the "old days" and the Milwaukee. It's important to find the money trail to understand decisions of the past. I offer here a very abbreviated story. William Rockefeller owned the Chicago, Milwaukee & St.Paul Ry. Rockefeller also owned the Anaconda Copper Mining Co, run by John Ryan, which pretty much owned Butte. Rockefeller wanted a railroad to get to Butte, and the NP was owned by Morgan and Hill. (Rockefeller didn't like Morgan.) So Rockefeller had his Milwaukee build to Butte. There was no sense going up the Yellowstone as the NP owned too much land because of government land grants, so his engineers opted to follow the Musselshell, and took advantage of the existing line by buying out Harlow's Montana Railroad. The line over the Continental Divide was an existing survey done by people in Butte to try to attract the NP when it first built through. Once in Butte it seemed the logical thing for the Milwaukee to do was build west to the growing Pacific Northwest.
That the Milwaukee electrified wasn't really a big coincidence either. Rockefeller also backed Ryan when he built the Montana Power Company, to provide electricity for the Butte Mines and smelters. So the Milwaukee used Anaconda Copper and Montana Power electricity to electrify the Milwaukee, selling several of the Milwaukee's hydro generation sites to Montana Power. As an aside, there is a theory that Rockefeller made enough money off of Morgan and Hill in the Northern Securities deal that it would have paid for the Milwaukee's Pacific Extension outright. If you want to know more, there's a long-established group, once on Yahoo and now moved to groups.io, that has accumulated and discussed at length, the Milwaukee's history. https://groups.io/g/MILW steeplecab Date: 04/23/17 15:53 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: up833 A lot of towns were started by a railroad or at least grew out of a water tank or a roundhouse. By the time MILW came to town there was no right of way land to be had. Cle Elum, WA was such a town, Ellensburg, WA and many others
Date: 04/23/17 23:37 Re: MILW PCE Questions Author: krm152 In order to avoid objections to PCE by GN and NP, MILW had to sign the St. Paul Interchange Agreement. Under the terms of this agreement, MILW was obligated to turn over freight destined for delivery by GN and NP at these roads at the interchange nearest to its point of origination. This was another major factor working against a successful outcome for the PCE.
The PCE was really not the way for MILW to go. Instead, they might have been better off establishing a connection with CN much like the SOO did with CP. ALLEN |