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Milwaukee Road: Map, Electrification, Logo, History

Last revised: October 26, 2026

By: Adam Burns

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific, better known as the Milwaukee Road, always went its own way. It headed west on its own Pacific Coast Extension and, in 1935, launched a streamliner, the Hiawatha, that the Midwest had never seen. The history is complicated, and it is full of setbacks. As an independent the company held no allegiance to Hill, Harriman, or Budd. It still grew into a system that fought for the agricultural business of the Middle West and for transcontinental freight to the Pacific Northwest.

From the Louisville gateway, reached by trackage rights over the Louisville & Nashville, through Chicago, and on to Puget Sound, the map was as long as any American railroad’s. The Extension itself was the short, well-engineered road to the coast. It should have remained a railroad. Much of the twentieth-century management of the property did not treat it that way. Thomas Ploss, a Milwaukee Road attorney, made that case in The Nation Pays Again, published in January 1985. The public had paid to build a competitive line to the Pacific. It paid again when the line was taken up and the shippers were left with one northern route.

What is left in 2026 is a Midwest railroad under Canadian Pacific Kansas City, plus branches in other hands, and a mountain grade that is now trail. Amtrak’s Hiawatha and Borealis use the Chicago–Milwaukee–St. Paul main. The Extension is gone. Steam locomotives built since 1900 are a separate roster. The quantity column there is 1,974. Twenty-three of those listings are the same frames counted again, so the locomotives are 1,951. The diesel roster counts 1,208 frames, each once.

It’s the final week of electrified operations as Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” E-77 leads an eastbound freight past the depot at Three Forks, Montana on June 8, 1974. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: The questions · At a glance · Early years · Logo · Pacific Extension · Electrification · Milwaukee Shops · 1925 and 1928 · Hiawathas · Final years · Bankruptcy · Passenger trains · What remains

The questions

A scholarly study of the whole story, and of the last thirty-five years in particular, has never been published, and it is desperately needed. It would answer a great many questions about an untimely end. In all respects the Milwaukee should have been a strong carrier. Its network of nearly 11,000 miles served every major Midwestern market directly, except St. Louis, and its western extension was shorter than the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific.

Even as long-haul freight grew after the Second World War, the Milwaukee’s traffic density lagged the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Tom Murray, in The Milwaukee Road, put the unease about as well as anyone has:

Today, many followers of the Milwaukee continue to ask why those responsible for the company — its management, its shareholders and creditors, its bankruptcy trustees, its regulators, and the court responsible for overseeing the company in its final years — made the decisions they did, and whether the Milwaukee might have been able to survive in some form if different decisions had been made. Those are important questions, and they deserve the best answers that serious scholarship can provide.

This article cannot close those questions. It can show where the record already answers them, particularly across the last ten years the railroad still reached the Pacific. For a great many people the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific remains their favorite railroad. Doug Harrop said so in “The Milwaukee Road’s Lines West,” written with Ed Lynch for the July/August/September 2009 issue of The Railroad Press (Issue 82):

In July 1979 I picked up a good friend, the late John Bjorklund at the Salt Lake City airport and we started a long drive north. We were just two rail nuts heading out to shoot some trains. But not just any trains. We would be immersing ourselves in the Milwaukee Road’s Lines West. Was this a big deal? It was to us. Back then, just about any railfan you talked to would list the Milwaukee Road as their first, second, or third favorite railroad regardless where they lived. That included John and I.

For anyone who liked trains, the Milwaukee did have it all: electrified operation until 1974, time freights, ore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Chicago commuters, timber in Idaho, a fleet of streamliners, and a locomotive roster that never quite looked like anyone else’s.

Milwaukee Road’s train #15, the westbound “Olympian Hiawatha,” exits Fish Creek Tunnel deep within western Montana’s breathtaking backcountry on the late afternoon of May 27, 1953. Alas, nothing remains here today aside from an empty path. Sandy Goodrick photo.

At a glance

Early years

Like the other great grangers, the Milwaukee Road began small, at a time when the iron horse was just coming west of Chicago. The earliest corporate predecessor was the Milwaukee & Waukesha Railroad, chartered in 1847 to connect its namesake towns with the Mississippi River. More than ten years passed before it became a railroad.

Charles and Dorothy Wood, in Milwaukee Road West, pick up the story with the Territory of Wiskonsan. A committee met on September 17, 1836, to incorporate a railroad for Milwaukee, the one settlement in the region that amounted to a city. Business leaders and politicians then fought over what should actually be built. Some wanted a railroad, some a canal, some a plank road. The canal men got the farthest on paper. The Milwaukee & Rock River Canal Company was incorporated in January 1838 and Congress granted it 500,000 acres. The canal was never built, and neither was the plank road. As railroads gained the argument, the other schemes faded.

An A-B-A-A set of F7s led by #106-C awaits its crew at Pigs Eye Yard in St. Paul on the morning of June 4, 1964. Marty Bernard photo.

Milwaukee & Waukesha

On May 19, 1849, the Milwaukee & Waukesha was formally organized. A year later the name became the Milwaukee & Mississippi, with an authorized capital of $100,000. Byron Kilbourn, the mayor of Milwaukee, was the first president. Construction began in the city on September 12, 1850.

Jim Scribbins, in Milwaukee Road Remembered, notes that the first five miles, out to Wauwatosa, were finished quickly. The last rails went down on November 20, 1850. The company put on an impromptu excursion behind its only locomotive, 4-4-0 No. 1, the Bob Ellis, an 1848 product of Norris in Philadelphia. Rails reached Waukesha, twenty miles, on February 25, 1851, and another celebration followed. The earnings could not cover the interest. The young railroad settled with its bondholders for $14,518 and stayed out of receivership.

Milwaukee Road FP7 #102A with the “Cannonball,” just east of the Watertown, Wisconsin station in July, 1967. This was a commuter train that ran Monday–Friday as trains 12 and 23 between Milwaukee and Watertown; the eastbound ran in the morning and westbound in the evening. Rick Burn photo.

Madison came in 1854, by a roundabout line that ran southwest to Whitewater and then north through Stoughton. Prairie du Chien, the original goal on the Mississippi, was reached on April 15, 1857. The Panic of 1857 undid the celebration. The Milwaukee & Mississippi entered receivership in 1860, was sold at foreclosure to New York interests, and came out in January 1861 as the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien.

A group of Milwaukee Road FMs — including H16-66 #554, H16-44 #401, and H16-66 #552 — run light at the depot in Madison, Wisconsin in February, 1965. Rick Burn photo.

Milwaukee & St. Paul

Alexander Mitchell, the Scottish-born banker who dominated Milwaukee, then entered the business. He organized the Milwaukee & St. Paul on May 5, 1863. By 1867 he had the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien and what had been the La Crosse & Milwaukee, and he added the McGregor Western. The new company was about 800 miles: Milwaukee–Madison–Prairie du Chien–Minneapolis, and Milwaukee–Portage–La Crosse.

The Panic of 1873 put other railroads on the block, and the Milwaukee & St. Paul used the opening. In 1872 it acquired the St. Paul & Chicago, along the west bank of the Mississippi into the Twin Cities. Chicago was reached in 1873. In February 1874 the name became the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. That title lasted more than half a century.

Milwaukee Road GP40 #2070 leads a freight across the EJ&E at Spaulding, Illinois in October, 1974. Rick Burn photo.

By 1876 the railroad operated more than 1,400 miles and owned five grain elevators in Milwaukee, rated at 3 million bushels. Iowa, the Dakota Territories, and more of Minnesota and Wisconsin followed. Mileage in 1880 was 3,894. The next push was west from Chicago toward Omaha. The Western Union Railroad, Racine to Savanna, came in 1879. The Chicago & Pacific, due west of the city, came in 1880. Council Bluffs was reached in 1882. Trackage rights over the Union Pacific, in 1890, put the trains into Omaha Union Station. Fargo came in 1884. Kansas City came in 1887.

An official, 1966 system map of the Milwaukee Road. Author’s collection.

Alexander Mitchell died on April 19, 1887. By the end of that year his railroad was 5,670 miles, one of the prominent properties of the region, with the Chicago & North Western, the Rock Island, and the Burlington as the rivals that mattered. Gross revenue in 1890 was $26.4 million, and the decade went into heavier rail and a modernized plant. In September the company took in the Milwaukee & Northern, which reached the iron ore of the Upper Peninsula and widened the traffic the granger lines could offer. As the century closed, the officers were already asking how a railroad in a crowded Middle West was going to keep its place. James J. Hill, the Empire Builder, had asked a harder version of that question in the late 1880s.

Milwaukee Road GP9 #311 with a short train at North Prairie, Wisconsin on January 17, 1975. Today, this line remains in service under Wisconsin & Southern. Rick Burn collection.

Logo

The tilted emblem, and the nickname Milwaukee Road, go back to the Alexander Mitchell years, though the railroad took its time about making either one official. The Woods’ book has the emblem appearing in 1880 and staying in use for the rest of the corporate life. “Milwaukee” began as the Milwaukee & Mississippi. “La Crosse” was the La Crosse & Milwaukee. After the Milwaukee & St. Paul was formed, Wall Street generally preferred “the St. Paul,” and the two names were used side by side for years.

The Milwaukee Road logo. Author’s work.

When the property was reorganized as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific in 1928, “The Milwaukee Road” went onto the timetables. In 1953 that title replaced the corporate name inside the tilted logo. The slogan that went with the later years was America’s Resourceful Railroad. The reporting mark was MILW.

Milwaukee Road GP9 #234 and a pair of B units are in freight service at Portage, Wisconsin in November, 1965. Rick Burn photo.

Pacific Extension

Hill’s St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba, the road that became the Great Northern, was already in Montana, and he could see that a railroad which stopped short of the Pacific would remain a regional carrier. He offered to buy the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, which would have given the Great Northern its own line into Chicago. The St. Paul declined. Hill and the northern lines then took the Burlington, in 1901, and got their Chicago connection that way.

Albert J. Earling became president in 1899 and argued for building to the coast instead of selling. The board approved the Pacific Coast Extension on November 28, 1905. The estimate was $60 million. The right-of-way was bought, without a land grant, and construction started from Mobridge, South Dakota, on the east bank of the Missouri. Crews worked inland from several directions. The last spike was driven at Garrison, Montana, on May 19, 1909. The full story of that construction is the Pacific Extension page, and the Woods’ Milwaukee Road West remains the book to own.

Tacoma, not Seattle, was the chosen Puget Sound terminal. The timber business was the reason that mattered, in a city that called itself the Lumber Capital of America, and the Great Northern and Northern Pacific already held the Seattle waterfront. Yards, shops, and docks went in on the Tacoma tide flats and stayed in use until the Extension was given up in 1980. Seattle came later, by trackage rights from Black River Junction, at Renton, into Union Station with the Union Pacific.

Milwaukee Road SW1200 #711 was photographed here at South Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 27, 1985. Mike Sosalla photo. American-Rails.com collection.

The extension was a remarkable piece of engineering. From east to west it crossed the Belts, the Rockies, the Bitter Roots, the Saddles, and the Cascades. The account long used for the line counts 45 tunnels. It also avoided the towns, in favor of a direct road to salt water. That choice, and the way the Union Pacific, the Great Northern, and the Northern Pacific protected their own gateways, held the tonnage down for years.

One finished railroad was already in the path. Richard A. Harlow organized the Montana Midland in 1893 to move low-grade ore from the Castle Mountains to a Northern Pacific connection at Lombard, named for his chief engineer, Arthur B. Lombard. The money failed. The project was reorganized as the Montana Railroad in 1895. Lombard to Merino, later Harlowton, opened in 1900, and in 1903 the line was extended beyond Harlowton to Lewistown, Montana. The traffic never arrived in the volume Harlow had expected. The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul had the property by 1910. Much of the grade had to be rebuilt for a main line. It was still more than 100 miles of finished railroad.

Murray’s mileage comparison is the one that matters. Chicago to Seattle on the Milwaukee was 130 miles shorter than the Burlington plus the Northern Pacific, and 22 miles shorter than the Burlington plus the Great Northern. Freight service began on July 4, 1909. Local passenger service began on July 10, 1910. The Olympian and the Columbian were launched on May 28, 1911.

The line did not really come into its own until the Cascade tunnel was open. Snoqualmie Pass needed a bore if the grades were going to be a main-line railroad’s grades. The tunnel is 11,890 feet, about 2.25 miles. It took two years and opened in January 1915, with two western portals for a second track that was never built. Cedar Falls to Rockdale, up to the west portal, was 1.7 percent. The bore itself was level. Cle Elum to Hyak, at the east portal, was 0.7 percent. Before the tunnel, the mountain was 2.2 percent on the east side and 2.75 percent on the west. The crossing is compared with the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific on the Snoqualmie Pass page.

The bill was the problem from the first season. Completing the Extension took $234 million, against the $60 million the board had been shown. Secondary lines bought or built through the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, and Washington put some freight on the new railroad at once, and they also added miles that never paid their way. Lines West added 2,159 miles. By 1917 the system was 10,257 miles. The debt, in the figures the Woods and Murray hand down, stood at $490 million. That figure is the company’s debt. It is not the construction cost of the Extension.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joes” E-76 and E-79 lead a westbound freight along the Clark Fork River at rural Bearmouth, Montana, circa 1970. The Northern Pacific main line can be seen at left. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Electrification

The officers then did something no other American railroad did on this scale. They electrified the two hardest stretches of mountain main line. In March 1914 the company set up an Electrification Department. One district ran from Harlowton, Montana, to Avery, Idaho, 440 miles. The other ran from Othello, Washington, to Seattle and Tacoma, 216 miles. The company’s own later fact sheet still used 656 route miles for the two together. Counting yards and sidings, the energized track was 902 miles, under more than 3,000 miles of wire.

The power companies were Montana Power, Washington Water Power, and Puget Sound Power & Light. They delivered 100,000-volt alternating current. Twenty-two substations stepped that down to 3,000-volt direct current at the trolley. Thompson Falls, a Montana Power plant on the Clark Fork, was a source for the western end of the Rocky Mountain district. The Coast Division drew on the Washington companies. The Rocky Mountain Division was ready early in 1917. The Coast Division was finished in November 1919. In July 1927 the nine miles from Black River Junction into Seattle Union Station were wired as well.

Milwaukee Road boxcab set E34 is seen here at work in the yard at Butte, Montana during the winter of 1958. American-Rails.com collection.

The gap between Avery and Othello was never electrified. The Woods note that the railroad had planned to close it. Passenger trains for Spokane left the original main at Plummer Junction on a line opened in 1914, partly on Union Pacific trackage rights, while the freights stayed with the original route through Tekoa, Malden, and Marengo. The gap had easier grades than the electrified summits, and the postwar slump finished the argument for leaving it dark. A 1971 study priced the 212 miles and the substations it would have taken to close it. The wire was still never hung. The electrification that was built cost about $23 million more, on top of an Extension that had already overrun every estimate.

The electric locomotives are their own pages: the boxcabs, the Bi-Polars, and the Little Joes. The Joes were twelve engines, acquired in 1950 and rated at 5,500 horsepower. In 1950 the railroad owned 116 electric locomotives, the peak. By 1972 the Rocky Mountain electrics were producing about 19 percent of that division’s unit-miles and about 3 percent of the system’s. The little shop goat X3800 at Deer Lodge was something else again. It pulled electrics into a roundhouse the trolley did not reach, and it drew 220-volt direct current through an extension cord. It is on display at Harlowton.

Milwaukee Road shop goat X3800 was photographed here in Deer Lodge, Montana during July, 1972. The little home-built switcher, powered by a 220-volt DC extension cord, spent many years pulling electrics into and out of the yard’s roundhouse. Today, it sits on display in Harlowton, Montana. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joes” E-74 and E-70, along with a GP9, have time freight #264 near Bonita, Montana during June of 1964. The Northern Pacific’s main line can be seen in the background. Ron Nixon photo/Museum of the Rockies (Montana State University) collection.

Milwaukee Road GP40 #2058 leads a westbound train over the Clark Fork River at Cyr, Montana on July 5, 1973. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joes” E-79 and E-72, along with a GP9, have an eastbound freight along the Clark Fork River just east of St. Regis, Montana on April 30, 1958. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joes” and a GP9 near St. Regis, Montana circa 1958. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road boxcab E-39 is ready to depart Butte, Montana with an eastbound freight, circa 1970. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” E-70 leads a westbound freight across the Clark Fork River at St. Regis, Montana, circa 1973. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” E-77 leads an eastbound freight past the “Gateway To Yellowstone National Park” depot in Three Forks, Montana on January 23, 1973. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” E-21 has an eastbound freight train at Alberton, Montana, circa 1973. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” E-73 with a dead freight east passing through the Alberton Gorge west of Cyr, Montana, circa 1973. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road boxcab set E45 and SD40-2 #3005 lead an eastbound freight over the Blacktail Trestle on Pipestone Pass in November, 1972. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

A Milwaukee Road “Little Joe” and a trio of SD40-2s lead a westbound time freight over Pee Dee Trestle in Idaho in August, 1972. American-Rails.com collection.

No information or photographer was included on this slide. American-Rails.com collection.

No information or photographer was included on this slide. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Shops

One of the great shop complexes stood in Milwaukee, near the Menomonee River, southwest of downtown. Mike Schafer, in Classic American Railroads, describes a plant that turned out cars and locomotives from the railroad’s early years. The shops built nearly 700 locomotives between 1882 and 1913, and the last one they built was a 4-8-4 in February 1938. They gained a national name a year after the Union Pacific and the Burlington had shown what a streamliner could be, by building the lightweight cars for the Hiawathas. The freight cars, cabooses included, carried the ribbed siding that was the Milwaukee’s trademark. Building at home saved millions that would otherwise have gone to an outside manufacturer. Pieces of that work are still in museums.

Alco at Schenectady built the four Class A 4-4-2s in 1935–1937, and Alco built the six Class F7 4-6-4s, numbers 100–105, in 1938. Milwaukee Shops built the cars those engines pulled. The Class A page has the Atlantic type. The F7 Hudsons are on the steam roster, under the same class letters the railroad later used for an Electro-Motive cab unit.

Milwaukee Road FP7 #64-C (built as #94-C) lays over at the Bensenville engine terminal (Illinois), circa 1964. American-Rails.com collection.

1925 and 1928

President Woodrow Wilson ordered federal control of the railroads for fear the war would jam the plants. The United States Railroad Administration took them at noon on December 28, 1917. The government did no better at keeping the railroads fluid than the companies had. Equipment ran down, and the plant was not maintained for the tonnage. The Milwaukee’s electrification still showed an estimated net saving of $12.4 million through 1924. The operating ratio, about 75.4 percent just after Lines West opened, stood at 98 percent by 1920. Those figures are the ones in the company histories. The Transportation Act was signed on February 28, 1920. Federal control ended at 12:01 a.m. on March 1, 1920.

Two more railroads came in during the recovery. The Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern was leased in 1921, a coal-road into southern Indiana that fed the locomotives and, much later, the corridor over which the Milwaukee reached Louisville. That last step was trackage rights on the Louisville & Nashville, which this railroad dated to 1973, a condition of the L&N’s 1971 purchase of the Monon. The Chicago, Milwaukee & Gary was acquired in 1922 and served as a belt around Chicago. The miles and the month sometimes printed for those two deals do not agree from one list to the next. The lease year and the purchase year are the dates that hold.

Milwaukee Road GP9 #207 with train 40 at Deerfield, Illinois. Rick Burn photo.

The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul could not meet about $48 million of 4 percent bonds that came due on June 1, 1925. Time reported that default, on March 30, as the immediate cause. Receivers H. E. Byram, Mark W. Potter, and Edward J. Brundage were appointed by a court order of March 18, 1925, and they took the property that day. Their final report is dated February 13, 1928. The property had already been delivered, on January 13, 1928, to a new corporation, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. At the reorganization the network was 11,252 miles.

The stock-market break of October 1929 put the new company back in trouble. Traffic collapsed, and in June 1935 the railroad filed for reorganization again. Receivers were appointed on October 17, 1935. Henry A. Scandrett was one of the trustees through the decade in which the Hiawathas were built. The receivership ended in December 1945. The court papers disagree with one another on the exact June day of the filing and the exact December day of the exit, so those two days stay at the month.

Hiawathas

The original Hiawatha was already on the road when that second filing was made. Scribbins, in The Hiawatha Story, has the first trainset in service on May 29, 1935, as trains 100 and 101 between Chicago and the Twin Cities, on a schedule of about six and a half hours. Crowds met it. In the first six weeks it carried 16,564 passengers, and it regularly sold out. A North Woods section followed in June 1936. The famous lineside signs said “Reduce to 90.” The Class A Atlantics, and then the heavier Class F7 Hudsons, were built for that running. Alco built both classes. Later Hiawathas were added while the trustees still held the property.

A Milwaukee Road E9A with the Santa Special at the Madison, Wisconsin station in December 1963. Rick Burn photo.

Milwaukee Road E7A #18A with a football special at Charter Street bound for Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin in November, 1963. Rick Burn photo.

The war restored the tonnage, and the transcontinental route was in the right place to carry it. After 1945 the railroad laid heavier rail, rebuilt yards, and retired its steam locomotives. Major steam repairs stopped in 1953. The official last steam trip was January 4, 1955, local freight 91 from La Crosse to St. Paul behind an S2 4-8-4. The last steam operation anyone has confirmed came later: Ten-Wheeler 1004 on trains 158 and 157, between Austin, Minnesota, and La Crosse, on the night of March 15–16, 1957. The electric locomotives were still at work. They would be, for another seventeen years.

Modernization did not buy a density the rivals already had. Murray’s comparison, for the year he uses and does not pin to a date in the prose, put Milwaukee freight-revenue density at 1.59 million, against the Burlington’s 2.41 million, the Great Northern’s 2.34 million, and the Northern Pacific’s 2.12 million. Income before fixed charges covered the financial commitments about 1.46 times. The same measure was 4.22 on the Great Northern, 3.24 on the Burlington, and 3.03 on the Northern Pacific. The Midwest was full of railroads, and a great many of the Milwaukee’s branches no longer earned their keep. Lines West were the bright spot.

A classic, A-B-A set of Milwaukee Road F7s, led by #115C, work a freight through Pigs Eye Yard in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 4, 1964. Marty Bernard photo.

An A-B-A set of Milwaukee Road F7s, led by #115-A, are seen here in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 1, 1964. Marty Bernard photo.

Milwaukee Road F7’s, led by #50-A, at Sturtevant, Wisconsin, circa 1967. Fred Byerly photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Final years

In 1963 the railroad added time freights 261, the XL Special, and 262, the Thunderhawk. It was by then the railroad to catch out of the Puget Sound. The figures long used for that trade give the Milwaukee nearly 80 percent of the traffic originating at the Port of Seattle, and roughly half of the container traffic leaving the Pacific Northwest. A carrier in that position had a future, if it would spend money on the plant the traffic required.

Burlington Northern began at 12:01 a.m. on March 2, 1970, a merger of the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, the Burlington, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle. The conditions handed the Milwaukee eleven new western gateways, including trackage rights into Portland and, through Portland, a connection with the Southern Pacific. New business showed up at the interchange. The Milwaukee’s 1970 result was still a net loss of $8.9 million. Net earnings were $12.8 million in 1973 and $11.4 million in 1974. Management would not spend the $120 to $140 million the new traffic was said to require. Between 1978 and 1983, in the years after the traffic had been turned away, the company said it spent $600 million on other improvements.

A Milwaukee Road 1970 Chrysler Newport hy-rail is seen here at La Crescent, Minnesota in March, 1974. Rick Burn photo.

Milwaukee Road RS3 #465 works freight service on the Valley Line as the train heads south over Route 73 in Port Edwards, Wisconsin on April 24, 1974. American-Rails.com collection.

The electrification was the decision that still startles. Worthington L. Smith, the president, announced on February 20, 1973, that it would be phased out. The oil embargo began that October, after the decision, not before it. On the company’s own later account, electric trains had already stopped on the Coast Division in 1971. Chairman William J. Quinn wrote Senator Warren Magnuson on November 11, 1973. In January 1974 Magnuson was told that a fuel-oil allocation to replace the electric operation was unlikely. The railroad de-energized anyway. On May 23, 1974, Smith set June 16 as the end of all electric operation on the Rocky Mountain Division and the start of catenary removal from Harlowton to Avery, 440 miles. The last mainline electric trains ran on June 15. A steeple-cab, E82, was still moving in the early hours of June 16. Electric operation ended at midnight. The photograph at the top of this page, E-77 at Three Forks on June 8, is that last week.

Milwaukee Road GP35 #366 at Bensenville, Illinois, circa 1967. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road FP7A #61A and F7B #102A lay over at the Bensenville, Illinois terminal on June 24, 1977. Marty Bernard photo.

Bankruptcy

Maintenance had been deferred until the plant could not keep the business it still had. The Milwaukee Road filed its Section 77 petition on December 19, 1977. The Washington Post, on December 20, reported that the directors had voted the day before, that the third-quarter loss was $16.7 million, and that the nine-month loss was $20.7 million. The federal court that later reviewed the case described losses of about $100 million over the three years before the filing. It appointed Stanley E. G. Hillman trustee on February 13, 1978. The 1978 loss was $82 million. Cash was running out at about $500,000 a working day. A 1979 loss on the full system was estimated at $157 million. Deferred maintenance was put at over half a billion dollars. The railroad in the court’s description was about 9,800 miles.

Hillman asked, on April 23, 1979, for authority to embargo. The court did not give him a systemwide embargo that June, and it did not give him an embargo at Miles City. A borrowing order entered in the middle of the month was widely misread as an abandonment order. Hillman resigned. An order of July 24, 1979, made Richard B. Ogilvie the successor trustee. On August 10, 1979, Ogilvie filed the plan that became known as Milwaukee II: a cut from about 9,800 miles to a Midwest core of about 3,400. An embargo of about 4,800 miles followed on November 1, 1979. The Interstate Commerce Commission rejected the plan on March 19, 1980.

Lines West were blamed for the losses. The Commission’s review, as Michael Sol recorded it from the proceedings, found the opposite on the western lines themselves. West of Miles City they had contributed $12.7 million in 1976, $11 million in 1977, and $2.9 million in 1978, while the railroad as a whole was losing on the order of $100 million. The abandonment application of August 8, 1979, conceded a positive net income, for 1976 through 1978, on the lines it proposed to abandon. Ploss’s account of the books is harsher still. He describes expenses on Lines West as having been entered twice, so that a contributing railroad was made to look like the source of the failure. The profit figures are the Commission’s. The double entry is the explanation Ploss and the railroaders who lived with those accounts have stood by.

Employees and shippers tried to keep the Extension, on the model of the purchase the Chicago & North Western’s employees had carried through in 1972, when they bought that railroad from Northwest Industries. The Milwaukee effort did not get the railroad. The last eastbound freight left Tacoma Junction at 8:47 p.m. on March 15, 1980, Extra 5802 East, with U36C 5802 on the point. Sol’s note of that train is on the Pacific Extension page. Through the 1980s, scrappers took up roughly 1,100 miles west of Miles City. Eastern abandonments cut more. A smaller railroad could be dressed up as a recovery. It was also a railroad someone else could buy.

All is quiet in Ingomar, Montana during August of 1980 after the once-mighty Milwaukee Road shut down its Pacific Extension earlier that year (March). The rails now await their fate. Alan Freed and Chuck Bothwell purchased a 1952 M-19 Fairmont Speeder (for $400) to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime trip over the abandoned corridor before its removal. Alan Freed photo.

There is a further story, and it should be told as what it is. Rob Leachman has said he had it from Burlington Northern executive Bob Downing. If it is true, it explains a railroad that was left for dead in the 1970s. Around 1972, chairman William J. Quinn is said to have offered the Milwaukee to the Burlington Northern for its debt alone, during an inspection of Lines West, on the condition that the Milwaukee make no major improvements while the deal was open. The board of Chicago Milwaukee Corporation, the holding company, wanted out of the railroad business. One member held out because the Milwaukee Land Company’s Rocky Mountain timber was too valuable to give away. A price of $50 million was named. The Burlington Northern balked. The timber was later sold for $125 million. Smith, not Quinn, is the officer who signed the electrification announcements. The offer, if it happened, was a sale of the railroad, discussed above the heads of the officers who were still trying to run it.

Former employees have long said that people at the Burlington Northern knew the bankruptcy was coming. A conspiracy is more than the evidence will carry. Ineptness will carry it. The eleven gateways of 1970 were a flood of traffic the railroad refused to handle, and the profits still rose. The railroad was dominating the freight between Chicago and Seattle. Giving that up was a management decision. It was a bad one.

The Soo Line bought the assets. The closing came shortly before midnight on February 19, 1985, at a price of about $571 million, roughly $187 million in cash and the rest in assumed debt. Judge Thomas R. McMillen approved the Soo. Trustee Ogilvie had favored the Chicago & North Western’s higher bid, about $786 million. The North Western did not appeal. Chicago Milwaukee Corporation did, and the Court of Appeals refused to block the sale. The Milwaukee Road, Inc., remained a separate Soo subsidiary through 1985. It was merged into the Soo Line on January 1, 1986, in the same transaction that brought in the Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern. The Interstate Commerce Commission’s notice is Finance Docket 30761, decided January 10, 1986.

Milwaukee Road SW1200 1216 (built as #2037), already wearing its Soo Line number, was the only switcher to wear the company’s “Milwaukee II” livery. It is seen here working the Miller Job at the Muskego Yard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in April, 1986. R. W. Brown photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road SD40-2s #199 and #204 were photographed here by Mike Sosalla in freight service in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 19, 1983. American-Rails.com collection.

Milwaukee Road SD40-2 #133 with the “Sprint Train” at Edgebrook, Illinois on June 4, 1979. John Nixon photo. American-Rails.com collection.

Passenger trains

The electrification made the railroad famous in the West. The Hiawathas made it famous in the Middle West. As the passengers left after the war, the Milwaukee was glad to pay its way into Amtrak, which took over most intercity trains on May 1, 1971.

• 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 – Twin Cities
• North Woods Hiawatha: New Lisbon, Wisconsin – Woodruff/Star Lake, Wisconsin
• Olympian: Chicago – Twin Cities – Seattle/Tacoma
• Olympian Hiawatha (replaced the 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
• Twin Cities Hiawatha: Chicago – Milwaukee – Twin Cities
• Varsity/Marquette: Chicago – Madison, Wisconsin – Mason City, Iowa

What remains

The abandonment of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific was one of the costly ones. A transcontinental railroad that still earned money on its western lines was taken up, and the northern Chicago–Seattle business passed to a single carrier. Burlington Northern held it. BNSF holds it now, on the former Great Northern and the former Northern Pacific. Union Pacific still reaches Puget Sound the long way, by the Columbia River and Portland. Canadian Pacific Kansas City has the Milwaukee’s Chicago–Milwaukee–Twin Cities main, and it does not have the Extension.

Amtrak’s Hiawatha runs between Chicago and Milwaukee. The Borealis, begun in May 2024, runs Chicago–St. Paul. The Empire Builder uses the Milwaukee’s line east of St. Paul. Metra still runs the old Milwaukee commuter service, the Milwaukee District. Wisconsin & Southern operates former branches in Wisconsin. The Twin Cities & Western operates former Milwaukee track west of the Twin Cities. In the mountains, the Palouse to Cascades State Park Trail in Washington, once the John Wayne Pioneer Trail, and the Route of the Hiawatha at St. Paul Pass are the grades the trains used. Eagle Nest, Vendome Loop, Pipestone, Snoqualmie, and St. Paul Pass are the pages for the crossings.

The Sprinting Indian survives with the Milwaukee Road Historical Association. The Midwest Hiawatha no longer runs across the prairies. The best engineered line through the Rockies and the Cascades is weeds and trail, and shippers cannot use it. That is the loss Ploss named. The nation paid for the Extension. It paid again when the Extension was abandoned.

What If..., by Brian Holtz and Brian Sigstad, published in 2022, takes a different fork: a Milwaukee Road and Rock Island merger in 1958, after the recession of 1957–1958 and before either company had settled into the long decline. The book is here.

Sources

• Murray, Tom. The Milwaukee Road. St. Paul: MBI Publishing, 2005.
• Ploss, Thomas. The Nation Pays Again. Self-published, January 1985.
• Schafer, Mike. Classic American Railroads. Osceola: MBI Publishing, 1996.
• Scribbins, Jim. The Hiawatha Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
• Scribbins, Jim. Milwaukee Road Remembered. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, second edition, 2008.
• Solomon, Brian, and John Gruber. The Milwaukee Road’s Hiawathas. St. Paul: Voyageur Press, 2006.
• Wood, Charles R., and Dorothy M. Wood. Milwaukee Road West. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company, 1972.
• Harrop, Doug, and Ed Lynch. “The Milwaukee Road’s Lines West.” The Railroad Press, Issue 82 (July/August/September 2009).
• Final Report of the Receivers, February 13, 1928, in the Milwaukee Road Archives. Receivers appointed March 18, 1925. Property delivered to the new company on January 13, 1928.
• “Business: Milwaukee Road.” Time, March 30, 1925. The bonds due June 1, 1925.
• Company announcements on the end of electrification, February 20, 1973; October 16, 1973; and May 23, 1974. Milwaukee Road Archives.
• In re Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Co., 611 F.2d 662 (7th Cir. 1979). The December 19, 1977 filing, the trustee, and the losses.
• In re Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Co., 784 F.2d 831 (7th Cir. 1986). The Soo Line sale.
• Interstate Commerce Commission, Finance Docket 30761, decided January 10, 1986. Merger of The Milwaukee Road Inc. and the Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern into the Soo Line.
• Sol, Michael. The Demise of the Milwaukee Road: A Timeline. The Miles City profit figures and the March 15, 1980 train are his.
• Sol, Michael. The End of the Milwaukee Electrification.
• Milwaukee Road in the ’70s: What Really Happened?
• Levitan, Sara. This Train’s Got the Disappearin’ Blues: A Study of the Milwaukee Road. May 1980.
• The Milwaukee Road Archives.
• Milwaukee Road Historical Association.

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