The Milwaukee Road, "Road of the Hiawathas"

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific, commonly known as simply the Milwaukee Road, is best remembered for its Hiawatha passenger trains and electrified main line known as the Pacific Extension. The fact that the great railroad is no longer with us is not as disheartening as knowing how and why its end came about.

Its loyal and hardworking employees through the end were sadly cheated by upper management, which made a series of dumbfounding decisions beginning in the 1970s that ultimately ended in the railroad being sold to a rival in 1985.

While the Milwaukee Road was another of several Midwestern granger roads (meaning that it served the heart of America’s breadbasket in the Midwest and plains) it clearly distinguished itself from the many others by having a direct transcontinental line to the Port of Seattle, which competed with the likes of the western railroads, Great Northern (GN) and Northern Pacific (NP).

Like its name implies you can probably guess the Milwaukee Road began in its namesake city Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1850 known as the Milwaukee & Mississippi. After being renamed and then taken over by the Milwaukee & St. Paul the M&StP became known as the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul when it reached Chicago. After extending out through much of the Midwest serving the Heartland the railroad added “Pacific” to its name when it decided to build West, all the way to the Pacific coast and Seattle, Washington which it reached in 1909. The Milwaukee Road, just a few years later in 1915, electrified its Rocky Mountain Division between Harlowton, Montana and Seattle, Washington, including south through Tacoma, a distance totaling over 616 miles (there was a gab in this electrification between Avery, Idaho and Othello, Washington). The electrified lines would make the railroad a celebrity in the railfan community as few other freight railroads boasted such a project, or electrification at all!

The Milwaukee, though, was the very last to build a main line to the Pacific coast, a feat already completed years before by the NP and GN. In doing so it avoided larger cities en route to the coast, sacrificing traffic for speed. While foregoing traffic it accomplished its goal of speed as the Milwaukee boasted the shortest route between Seattle and Chicago. When the piggyback revolution (i.e., truck trailers fixed directly to railroad flat cars) caught on in the 1950s and 1960s the railroad was one of the first to embrace it and began service in the mid-1960s. Because of its clear advantage of a direct route between Chicago and Seattle it soon dominated the market in the West.

Not only was the railroad famous for its electrification but also its Hiawatha passenger trains, especially those that operated through the heartland on its main line that reached the cities of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska. Featuring steam locomotives of the Hudson (4-8-4) and Atlantic (4-4-2) classes they could regularly reach speeds of over 100 mph across the flat plains along track that was virtually as straight as an arrow from Chicago to points West and their Reduce to 90 trackside signs are legendary.

As traffic began to drop throughout the 1960s, coupled with passenger trains that were draining profits even further, when Amtrak was created in 1971 the railroad was happy to rid itself of its long distance trains as well as its extensive commuter operations in the Chicago area, the latter of which was taken over by today’s Metra, a regional public commuter service operated with public funds. (A common myth is that passenger trains earn profits, which is not true. Passenger trains rarely, if ever, earn a profit simply by passenger fare, and were able to be operated for so many years by the private railroads because freight revenues and contracts with the United States Postal Service offset the expenses.)

With its web of branch lines in the Midwest and several other railroads fighting for the same amount of traffic that could no longer support so many railroads, the Milwaukee Road found itself in a hopeless situation on the eastern half of its system (and it was unable, along with the other railroads, to abandon most of these unprofitable lines because government regulations did not allow for such until the 1980 introduction of the Staggers Act which deregulated the entire industry).

However, all was not lost for the Milwaukee. Its savior, for the time being, was its Pacific Extension. Even as the company’s management began to make increasingly idiotic decisions during the 1970s (such as scrapping the electrification just as the oil embargo hit) and defer maintenance across the entire system, their main line to the Pacific Northwest continued to earn the company a healthy profit.

However, the company’s fate was sealed when, in another short lapse of vision, management decided in the late 1970s to scrap the entire system west of Miles City, Montana, some 1,100 miles of track! While the results of this and other abandonment projects on the eastern side of the system worked in cutting costs the now much smaller railroad, which no longer competed for the lucrative traffic entering the Port of Seattle (which today is booming), made for a prime merger target and in 1985 the Soo Line Railroad purchased the company. With the purchase thus closed the book on one of our country’s most interesting and dynamic railroads.

Today electrics no longer conquer St. Paul Pass on the Rocky Mountain Division and all is quiet over the famous Pacific Extension except for the sound of Mother Nature and the occasional hiker along a number of rail/trails. Likewise, Hiawathas no longer pace across America’s Heartland and through Iowa. However, the sprinting Indian logo lives on with the Milwaukee Road Historical Association and Amtrak continues to operate a passenger train named after the famous Indian.

Notable Milwaukee Road Passenger Trains

Olympian Hiawatha

Twin Cities Hiawatha

Afternoon Hiawatha: (Chicago - Milwaukee - Twin Cities)

Arrow: (Chicago - Omaha/Sioux Falls)

Chippewa-Hiawatha: (Chicago - Channing, Michigan)

Copper Country Limited: (Chicago - Green Bay - Calumet, Michigan)

Midwest Hiawatha: (Chicago - Omaha/Sioux Falls)

Morning Hiawatha: (Chicago - Milwaukee - Minneapolis)

Olympian: (Chicago - Twin Cities - Seattle/Tacoma)

Pioneer Limited: (Chicago - Milwaukee - Twin Cities)

Sioux: (Chicago - Madison - Rapid City, South Dakota)

Southwest Limited: (Chicago/Milwaukee - Kansas City)

Tomahawk: (Chicago - Minocqua, Wisconsin)

Varsity: (Chicago - Madison, Wisconsin)

For more reading on the Milwaukee Road you might want to consider The Milwaukee Road from Tom Murray. Of course, being that the Milwaukee is a legend in the ranks of fallen flags, hundreds of publications (many quite good) have been written about it over the years detailing various subjects. However, this book is a superb publication and will at least give you a general overview and history of the CMStP&P (and it is filled with many, excellent, historical and colorful photographs) at which point you can decide if you are interested in further books of study on the railroad. Even if you are a historian and/or fan of the Milwaukee and have not seen this book I'm sure you will enjoy it!

Also, to learn more about the Milwaukee’s famous Olympian Hiawatha and the other Hiawatha services consider purchasing a copy of The Milwaukee Road’s Hiawathas from authors Brian Solomon and John Gruber. The 160-page book details the entire 36-year history of the trains from 1935 through 1971 and is filled with photographs. If you’re interested in general history and overview of the Milwaukee’s premier passenger services you will definitely enjoy this book.