Railroaders' Nostalgia > Cheap, Mean, Slow to Pay, & Perilous

It didn't take long to figure out why some of them called it Cheap Mean Slow to Pay & Perilous.

I hired out in Tacoma in 1974 and was sent directly to Kent. That's the reason that I was hired, to work at Kent. The chief said that he couldn't keep any operators there and he hoped that with my experience, I would be able to handle it.

I showed up the first night and found a big orange sign at the end of the building "Parking reserved for MILW's No. 1 agent." I was told that the agent kept a file on each operator and his misdeeds. The files were in the safe, along with the pens, pencils, and other office supplies. If an operator needed a pen or pencil, the dead one had to be turned in. That was fine, except all office records were to be written with the supplied black ballpoint, and no other. Writing with something else could result in an entry in your file of transgressions.

Each shift had prescribed duties. The duties, such as mopping the floor and sweeping the platform could take the a substantial part of the shift. There were the usual agency duties too, such as checking the yard at West Siding, a couple of miles away. That was done using the company car, a 1959 Ford with 2 on the column. The transmission was broken and it only had second and third gear. Never stop on an ascending grade and don't get into a position that required backing.

Third trick had to do the 7am yard check (the official record of car location for demurrage- basically customers paying rent on cars that they kept for more than the allowed time to load or unload). The agency handled the auto distribution facilities at West Siding, a couple of miles south, the industries at Kent, and the Andover industrial park, four miles in the opposite direction from West Siding. The proper way to do a 7am yard check is to walk the tracks, check each car at each industry for load or empty, on spot/off spot, etc. That would take a lot of time, and third trick was assigned to sweep and mop the floor, all of it, the whole station, as well. On top of that, it was a hot train order job. Train orders were not on the agent's to do list.

Third trick duties also included having the lists ready for the MILW and UP locals that came to work at (if I remember correctly) 7am. Of course, the lists were based upon the 7am yard check. Since there was no engine working Andover at night, the operator had all night to get up there and check a couple of miles of industry tracks - after housecleaning, handling pickups and setouts and pickups at West Siding, and dealing with that pesky dispatcher. The standard way of dealing with Andover was a heated list (also known as steam heated, meaning the operator made the list up in the steam heated office based on what the conductor or yard foreman said was done instead of going out mudhopping the tracks).

There were pickups and setouts at West Siding (two auto distribution facilities) all night, requiring a real check. That could be challenging and time-consuming, given the train order work and the condition of the car.

One more thing; an operator who did not complete the assigned duties (remember, the train dispatcher was not on the duties list) was required to stay after the end of his shift on his own time to complete the work. That could mean sitting around heating the yard check for a couple of hours. Nope, it doesn't count for hours of service because you aren't on duty and not getting paid.

I received additional instruction on the first morning (my first pay trip was 3rd trick). I had made up the lists for the UP and MILW locals: pull and spot cars marked up for each track at West Siding, Kent, and Andover. I put the lists on the ticket window ledge by the train register. The MILW conductor showed up, looked at the pile of lists, told me in a stern tone that I was obviously new and didn't know how things worked around here. He tore up the lists, threw them on the floor, and walked out. They left with their caboose.

One night, the pen (THE pen) ran out of ink in the middle of the shift. The agent's rule was that the yard check had to be made out with THE pen in order to ensure the uniformity he required in his station. I could get by with the blue ballpoint I had for writing on the train record...maybe. That had to be done in real time, so here was no choice. Since the local didn't get lists (the conductor, being in charge, didn't take any instruction from operators), I just put off the yard check rather than deal with doing the work in a non-uniform manner with an incorrect pen and having to do it over. The agent came in to relieve me. Where's the yard check? Couldn't do it. Here's the dead pen. We argued about my dereliction and he informed me that I would now go out and mudhop the whole thing. The argument continued. I called the Chief Dispatcher. His decision was - you didn't finish your work. You had plenty of time. Go check the yard on your own time and be quick about it.

Not long after that, I had a really busy train order night. For a 40 mile long stretch of railroad, Tacoma - Black River was screwed up like a soup sandwich. The dispatcher was sticking out orders, sticking out conflicting orders, annulling orders then realizing that was not the one he should have annulled and sticking out more. Several trains had West Siding setouts and I had to deal with the lists and bills. Between the train order work and the agency work, there was no time to mop the floors, which involved moving all of the furniture in the whole station, cleaning under it, and putting it all back. When the agent came in, there was no sign of dampness anywhere.

You didn't mop last night.

Nope; I was buried with train orders and West Siding work.

The dispatcher is no excuse. You work for me, not him. Get busy and mop now!

Nope, I'm off duty.

You're off duty but you didn't bother doing your work. Get to it.

I walked out. The Chief called me at home to tell me that had better not happen again.

Then there were the dispatchers. For some reason, I was still there at the table at 730a one mornng and hadn't made the transfer yet. The dispatcher phone rang. I answered

K (office call for Kent)

Order number xxx to C&E Eng xxxx period Eng xxxx run extra blah blah blah blah at about 70 words per minute.

BK (break...stop sending) BK to no avail. He kept on sending.

By this time, I had three started by hand (writing by hand with a stick - stylus - the carbon providing the image of the writing) and got as far as the address. He finished with the signature. He expected me to repeat immediately. Instead...

Go Ahead Period (start at the beginning of the body of the order - period always signified the end of the addresses and beginning of the body of the order)

Spatch ripped into me. What kind of idiots were they hiring now. You can't even copy a train order. What are you doing there anyway? and on and on and on.

I had enough.

Where the hell did you learn to be a train dispatcher anyway, on an amusement park railroad? It's actually simple. You ring. I answer. You say copy three. I say no signal. You send. Now, Go Ahead period!

The railroad was train orders. There were several second class schedules, but not as many as there were trains. The practice was to not run extras (to avoid a dispatcher screwup and running a couple of extras into each other), so they hung rags (display signals for a following section) on every train. They never used engine numbers in the orders when referring to regular trains (required on SP after the train number indicators on engines went away), and at a given time, there might be sections of two or three different schedules in either direction out there looking for each other. Some crews resorted to a big cardboard sign with their train number - 4/78, etc. that they would display to trains they met. After SP and B&O, this (and everything else I was experiencing) was truly bizarre.

One night, there was a very late section, fifth or some such, of a day train setting out at West Siding. The rule stated that any train that becomes 12 hours late loses its authority. The schedule is dead. It is dead wherever the train is when it becomes 12 hours late. This train got to West Siding about 11h55m late. He had a setout that the schedule did not allow time for. There was no doubt, the schedule would die at Kent. It was yard limits between West Siding and Kent, so he could get to me with no problem, he couldn't get any farther.

I told spatch what was going to happen.

OK

I stuck three in the mill (typewriter), ready to copy. Nothing. They started pulling at West Siding.

K coming east, three in the mill.

OK

Now he's shining (I can see the headlight).

K coming east he's shining.

So?

We need to fix him, he'll be more than 12 hours late.

No we don't. What's your problem? Nobody will see him and he has time to make Black River before the schedule is dead there.

The head end was close enough now to see - green signals! The blew by at 40 mph.

K 5/78 (or whatever it was) green (signals) 113 (by 113am). Is there another one back there somewhere?

No, it just wasn't worth the effort to take them down (annul the next section).

The contract called for meal and lodging expenses (up to something like $4 per day) for operators assigned to work away from headquarters. The contract also allowed the Chief to reassign an extra operator's headquarters after 30 days. That meant we never got expenses. After Kent, I went to Tacoma Jct. - for 30 days, then Cedar Falls...for 30 days. I lived in Burien, a few miles from the Kent station. The agent at Kent, the dispatchers, and the moving headquarters were getting old.

I bid into the operator job at Bellingham. I got it with about 4 months of seniority. There had to be a message in that. There was.

TAW

WOW, I can hardly wait for "there was".

Excellent.

Best regards,

Rob L.

Wow, what a CF!

Great stuff.
I used to hang with the Operators at SP Burbank Jct. back near the end in the early 80's and I got to experience just about everything short of a derailment.
They let me do just about all their work and it was awesome.
It's a lost art now.
TAH

Perhaps the Milwaukee Road deserved to go BK

John Gezelius
Tustin, CA

john1082 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Perhaps the Milwaukee Road deserved to go BK


They overextended themselves big time when they built the "Pacific Coast Extension" in 1909.
And they never really recovered either.

PHall Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> john1082 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Perhaps the Milwaukee Road deserved to go BK

Their top management perhaps deserved it. Perhaps a few bad-apple employees deserved it too. I don't think most of the employees did.

>
>
> They overextended themselves big time when they
> built the "Pacific Coast Extension" in 1909.
> And they never really recovered either.

It irritates me no end to see the standard disinformation propagated yet again.

From BN merger day up to Oct. 1, 1973, traffic on the Pacific Coast Extension more than doubled. During this period, Milwaukee Road's system-wide traffic growth exceeded that of Union Pacific and all other major US roads, this despite a continuing traffic decline in Milwaukee's large low-density Midwestern network. During this period, the Pacific Coast Extension was profitable; the Midwestern Milwaukee was not.

The Pacific Coast Extension's Armageddon was the month of October, 1973. 24 derailments in 21 days in the Bitterroots. Key traffic accounts started to leave for UP and BN. Traffic never recovered.

After a year of negotiations, in Sept. 1973 top management got a tentative deal with BN for BN to take over the entire Milwaukee Road. In anticipation of this deal, little money was put into the PCE infrastructure and the electrification was abandoned. The deal ultimately fell through, and the railroad slid into bankruptcy.

The first Trustee was duped into believing the Pacific Coast Extension needed to be abandoned, leaving a Midwestern network as the goal of reorganization. When he realized he had been duped, he left with bleeding ulcers. The second Trustee was a politician who figured the die was already cast and just wanted to get the thing over with quickly and orderly.

From 1969 onwards, Chi-Milw Corp. management actively worked to transfer the entire railroad to another company and liquidate the remaining assets, especially the timber holdings out west. They were absolutely convinced it was impossible to make money in railroading. This effort continued after bankruptcy. Ultimately, they were successful when in 1981 the timber holdings in Washington and Idaho were sold for $181 million.

They got their money; we lost a transcon. Nowadays, BNSF is jammed across the Northern Tier and UP is close to the limit in the Blue Mountains.

Best regards,

Rob L.

Rob,

Interesting comment on the PCE.

If there were "24 derailments in 21 days in the Bitterroots" that begs the question, why? Was the infrastructure crumbling from deferred maintenance? If so, was it the lack of spending on maintenance on the PCE that was propping up the bottom line enough to claim it was profitable?

It would be difficult to claim the PCE was "profitable" for two years if, at the end of the day, it was never sustainable. That's just a shell game, and one that was not uncommon with railroads at the time.

I don't know much about the PCE so I'm just asking to understand better, not to ignite controversy or challenge you. I really don't know but I'd like to understand the situation better.

Thanks.

Mike

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rob,
>
> Interesting comment on the PCE.
>
> If there were "24 derailments in 21 days in the
> Bitterroots" that begs the question, why? Was the
> infrastructure crumbling from deferred
> maintenance? If so, was it the lack of spending on
> maintenance on the PCE that was propping up the
> bottom line enough to claim it was profitable?

This is a complicated story. There indeed was a lack of spending system-wide on track maintenance. But the October 1973 melt-down in the Bitterroots was exacerbated by a number of factors:

1. Summer and Fall 1973 was the first time when Montana and Dakota grain moved in 100-ton covered hoppers in landslide volumes to Pacific Coast export terminals instead of east to Duluth. Grain moving in 100-ton hoppers to the Coast had been increasing since the late 1960s, and there had been publicity big moves, but Sept., 1973 was when grain to the Coast really took off.

2. All of the Bitterroot derailments involved loaded 100-ton covered hoppers on downhill trains in tunnels or in sharp curves near tunnel portals.

3. All or nearly all of the derailments were on Locotrol-powered trains which were notorious for losing continuity in the many tunnels in the Bitterroots.

4. As of July or August, 1973, the track on the west slope of the Bitterroots was arguably the best on the entire Pacific Coast Extension (it had just been re-done with 133lb rail relay, new ties and 4 inches of granite ballast), EXCEPT there was no track work done inside the tunnels because there was no clearance to raise the track to accommodate the new ballast. During September, the grain cars began derailing at an increasing rate until almost all the ties on the west slope of the Bitterroots (ironically, most of them new) were cut by derailments. It must have become difficult to keep the track in gauge.

5. Milw management had been determined to make Locotrol work and end the electrification and facilitate merging the property into BN. The Joes stopped running west of Deer Lodge in late September or the start of Oct., 1973 and the Box motor helper over the Bitterroots was abolished. Instead of powering one train each way per day, Locotrol was now in command of 2-3 trains each way per day. The derailment rate exploded.

Around the end of the month of October management gave up and put the Joes back on the point of trains to/from Avery. (They lasted until June, 1974.) But the damage had been done. Key traffic accounts like Toyota were lost forever.

Locotrol was never fully successful, and manned diesel helpers were put on in the Bitterroots.

Almost all roads tried Locotrol and all had trouble with it. But none of them gambled as much on it as Milwaukee Road, and none suffered as serious consequences. Nowadays, DPU works flawlessly but perhaps we forget how terribly it worked in the beginning and how many decades it took to debug and refine this technology to become the great success it is now.

> It would be difficult to claim the PCE was
> "profitable" for two years if, at the end of the
> day, it was never sustainable. That's just a shell
> game, and one that was not uncommon with railroads
> at the time.

Consider all of calendar 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973. If the PCE were a stand-alone railroad, its numbers for those years would have been great. Yes, there was much deferred maintenance to make up. There were even capacity improvements that should have been made to accommodate 4.5 trains each way per day (as opposed to 2.25 before the BN merger). Average train length and tonnage had increased. Siding extensions were needed. Time-keeping on the time freights was steadily getting worse. It was clearly unsustainable without more money going in. But management had a tentative deal to transfer the railroad to someone else, so they were not inclined to throw money away.

KEY POINT: The revenue per carload on the Pacific Extension was excellent, the average mileage per carload was very high, and the carload count was way up. Eastbound, there was heavy lumber traffic, plus frozen foods (potatoes and fish), Toyotas and other autos, paper and pulp. Three solid eastbound trains of transcon loads, plus one or two more mixed trains of loads and empties. Westbound, Milwaukee had almost all the domestic autos to the PNW plus considerable forwarder merchandise. Then the turnaround of the Montana and Dakota grain contributed about 1 - 1.5 trainloads per day. As Curtis Crippen (retired Milw CEO) put it: "The Pacific Coast Extension is the lifeblood of this railroad." It contributed more than 60% of the revenue but less than 40% of the cost.

After decades of sad existence, suddenly, as a result of the BN merger conditions plus the change in grain marketing, the Pacific Coast Extension had the traffic to justify itself.

IF the Pacific Coast Extension plus Twin Cities - Chicago, Twin Cities - Kansas City, branches to the Janesville auto plant and the Columbia coal plant and perhaps one or two other key Midwestern branches could have been carved off as a separate railroad, that portion of the Milwaukee Road would have been a viable property with a bright future. But in the era before de-reg, without bankruptcy that was impossible to do. And under bankruptcy, it did not happen.

>
> I don't know much about the PCE so I'm just asking
> to understand better, not to ignite controversy or
> challenge you. I really don't know but I'd like to
> understand the situation better.
>

Your questions are welcome any time.

Best regards,

Rob L.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/14 10:43 by rob_l.

Rob, I remember you made a comment one time about Milwaukee MOW forces taking the spiral out of the track in the Bitterroots. Never quite understood that...can you comment on it? Everything else makes perfect sense.

I just went through Hyde's Milwaukee book again and looked at "fbe's" amazing photos of the derailing 100 ton hopper. It's rare that an employee gets a chance to photograph his own derailing train.


Thanks!


Allen

Thanks Rob. Very interesting. One point, DPU is far from flawless. We still lose comm all the time, and often at the most inopportune moments. It often reminds me of the Locotrol days when it happens. It's usually not a big deal but it can turn into one very quickly depending on the circumstances. I can only imagine how Locotrol's imperfections quickly ran the PCE operations into the ground with all that was going on. Thanks for the info.

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rob, I remember you made a comment one time about
> Milwaukee MOW forces taking the spiral out of the
> track in the Bitterroots. Never quite understood
> that...can you comment on it? Everything else
> makes perfect sense.
>

The sharp curves were engineered with spiral approach, as they should be. It was alleged by some that in the course of upgrading the track (which involved lifting it up and laying it back down), the spiral approach was inadvertently taken out of some of the curves. This is vehemently denied by others. I suspect it is true.

There was a lot of finger-pointing going on after the derailment melt-down. To this day, it is a very sensitive topic, and it is difficult to sort out the many contributing factors. What is very clear:

1. The melt-down resulted in the loss of key traffic accounts that were never recovered.

2. The derailment rate on the west slope of the Bitterroots under diesel operation eventually moderated (albeit it was mostly with manned helpers in lieu of Locotrol). By 1975, it seemed to be acceptable.

Best regards,

Rob L.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/14 11:18 by rob_l.

awesome info regarding the Milwaukee road. thanks.......

66

Being a native Northern Californian I don't know much about the MLW so please forgive a dumb question or two. Being built in 1909 I am guessing that it was a better built RR than either NP or GN and therefore transit times (PNW to Chicago) were faster or potentially faster than its competitors. Is this true? If so then in this day and age of transcontinental stack trains wouldn't they be a tough competitor if the track was still there?

It sounds like MLW management was dumber than a pile of ballast.

donnerpass Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Being a native Northern Californian I don't know
> much about the MLW so please forgive a dumb
> question or two. Being built in 1909 I am
> guessing that it was a better built RR than either
> NP or GN and therefore transit times (PNW to
> Chicago) were faster or potentially faster than
> its competitors. Is this true? If so then in
> this day and age of transcontinental stack trains
> wouldn't they be a tough competitor if the track
> was still there?

All three railroads (GN, NP and Milw) could make 3rd morning delivery from Chicago to Seattle if departure were made in mid-day. In 1963 Milw started its 55 1/2 hour schedule for train 261 (AKA the XL Special) from Chicago to Seattle. This got the Milw's hot traffic into Seattle in the evening hours of the second day after a 1230pm departure from Chicago. But there really wasn't much competitive difference between arriving at 8pm and arriving at midnight or 2am. I always wondered why Milw did not set the Chicago departure back several hours and exploit its speed advantage that way. The main achievement of Milw was that it got the Spokane and Seattle auto ramps located on their line, and they made high-wide clearances earlier than the competition, so they got a lock on the auto business that did not break until the Milw service collapsed.

By 1971 the Milw track had deteriorated so much that they had to lengthen the schedule for 261. It continued to slow down every year after that.

If Milw had good track and double stack clearances, it could be a strong competitor in this day and age. I know contemporary UP management regrets they did not acquire the Milw transcon. But no one in 1970s RR management was willing to gamble that the miraculous salvation of de-regulation would be coming in the 1980s.

>
> It sounds like MLW management was dumber than a
> pile of ballast.

Before de-reg, it was impossible to make a big profit in the RR industry. Even UP could not do it. For a RR with a big granger network like Milwaukee, it was incredibly hard to just break even. It seemed hopeless in the long run. (And without de-reg, it surely was.) So Milw top management worked hard to transfer the RR to someone else (with a big payoff of course) so they could concentrate on more profitable endeavors. First there was the attempt to merge Milw into CNW which finally failed in 1967. It was actually pretty funny: at the end, Heineman wanted Milw to take CNW while Milw management wanted CNW to take Milw. Neither party wanted to end up with a railroad. Next, Milw tried to get UP interested in taking Milw, but the UP Board in New York also was negative about taking on any more railroading. Next, there was the attempt to get BN to take over Milw. That came very close to succeeding but finally failed in 1974. Efforts to use the ICC to force BN to take Milw after 1974 also failed. So the RR entered bankruptcy in 1977.

Ultimately, Lines West was liquidated. The Chicago-Milwaukee Corp. investors and management ended up with a huge windfall when the timber holdings of Milwaukee Land Co. got sold in 1981 for $181 million.

With that big fat payoff, they did not feel dumb.

I think we the public and our public officials are the dumb ones for letting a transcontinental railroad get abandoned. It is an irreplaceable investment and an irreplaceable achievement of our forefathers.

Best regards,

Rob L.

we should spend the money and "resurrect" the Milwaukee road's pacific extension. I think it would be taxpayer money well spent.......

66

>All three railroads (GN, NP and Milw) could make 3rd morning delivery from Chicago to Seattle if departure were made in mid-day. In 1963 Milw started its 55 1/2 hour schedule for train 261 (AKA the XL Special) from Chicago to Seattle. This got the Milw's hot traffic into Seattle in the evening hours of the second day after a 1230pm departure from Chicago. But there really wasn't much competitive difference between arriving at 8pm and arriving at midnight or 2am. I always wondered why Milw did not set the Chicago departure back several hours and exploit its speed that way. The main achievement of Milw was that it got the Spokane and Seattle auto ramps located on their line, and they made high-?wide clearances earlier than the competition, so they got a lock on the auto business that did not break until the Milw service collapsed.

So that's why CB&Q/GN had Train #97 and CB&Q #97/NP Train #600 and 601??



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/14 12:52 by ClipX.

As always, rob_l has provided some thought-provoking analysis and commentary. Much appreciated.

It seems to me that the Milwaukee's failure, taking into account the points he made, is as much the ultimate failure of regulation as practiced by the ICC pre-Staggers as anything. If BN walked away (albeit perhaps with other motives in mind), and if UP's board wouldn't go for a MILW acquisition because it was sour on the profitability of railroading, then that seems to paint an even bleaker portrait for the industry's economic viability than I had heretofore understood. Even with the sorry Rock Island-UP merger case, endless John Kneiling carpings in the pages of Trains magazine, and other not-so-rosy factors out there, the Lines West abandonment seems a classic example of historian Albro Martin's thematic assessment of regulation as "enterprise denied".

Which leads me to wonder: how much did the MILW abandonment of Lines West affect the final passage and enactment into law of the Staggers Act? I've seen plenty of commentary that cited the Rock Island's long and sorry travail in relation to a UP acquisition as the poster child case for Staggers. And of course the Penn Central bankruptcy was right up at the top of the list, too. But how much did the MILW Lines West abandonment have an impact in garnering the final support that Staggers needed? A consensus for deregulation had been building on Capitol Hill for some time, and Jimmy Carter supported it. Did the Lines West abandonment have any influence in "sealing the deal"?

The dates are close.

The Milwaukee had filed for bankruptcy on September 19, 1977.

On August 3, 1978, trustee Stanley E.G. Hillman stated, "There are portions of the railroad's light-density main lines which are not being operated and which cannot be operated to make a positive contribution to earnings, at least to any reorganized Milwaukee Road. …The principal main line which, I have determined, represents a drain on the railroad is the extension from Minneapolis-St. Paul to the Pacific North Coast. The Milwaukee Road can no longer operate as a transcontinental carrier." [Statement of trustee Stanley E.G. Hillman, reported in Railway Age, Aug. 14, 1978, p. 10; cited in http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/conant/Railroad%20chapters%20with%20CH_4/Ch3-milwaukee-bankruptcy.doc].

The Staggers Act was introduced as a bill on 10/29/79, a little more than a year later. It was reported out of committee 12/7/79, and passed by the Senate on 4/1/80. It was then passed by the House with changes on 9/9/80, and finally by the Senate on 9/18/80. As bill (96th Congress) S.1946 (1980) it was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on 10/14/80. Sidebar: I can't help but note the relative speed with which this far-reaching, landmark, generally pro-business piece of legislation was passed, even when the Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress (House: 277-D, 158-R; Senate, 58-D, 41-R, 1-I caucusing with the Democrats). Such a contrast to the gridlock of today.

I agree with previous comments that the Lines West abandonment, and the loss of a transcontinental rail corridor, was truly tragic. The factors that affected the decision, as rob_l has pointed them out, also stand as an object lesson on the consequences of incorrect analysis. As western roads grapple with seriously constrained capacity today, one pauses at the least with a deep sigh to consider the value that the Pacific Extension could have in relieving today's capacity constraints.

It probably took the carriers some years, accustomed as they were to the heavy hand of ICC regulation for so long, to realize its potential of the Staggers Act. But had the Milwaukee been able to wait a bit before taking the draconian action of the abandonment; had the Staggers Act been available to reduce the regulatory burden and permit more freedom of action; and perhaps most of all, had a correct analysis been made and accepted of the true value of Lines West, the story could have been so much different.

If Lines West were the final sacrificial lamb at the altar of regulation, and helped to create the final critical mass of consensus for Staggers to pass, the price paid was great indeed. One only hopes, if the case, that the sacrifice was one which helped to finally bring about the end of the era of punitive regulation and, in Albro Martin's term, the denial of true enterprise in railroading. If so, the result may not have been correct or justified, and may prove ever more tragic and unfortunate as the years pass (and my guess is that it will). But it may have at least aided in the final demise of an ultimately uneconomic regulatory burden.

But at what a price.

MC
Columbia, Missouri

Great stories, interesting about the LocoTrol mess. The book 'Mainlines' alluded to many of the almost mergers, often with UP. The Rock Island being another story of a strong RR in the 50's but nothing left by the time the talking was finished.

TAW's story exemplifies the style of supervision of the day. Fits in well with the odd stories from John Crosby's website. Classic Management 101 examples of how not to do things.

*The timber sale sure sounds like the last nail in the coffin, every one went home with a few more bucks except the RR employees and the customers.

*Note that there is currently an extended PCE discussion on the Yahoo Group Milwaukee site. A lot more words and a lot less info though. Although the MP15AC discussion was interesting.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/14 14:38 by TCnR.