Not only UP via Nampa, Green River, and North Platte, but also UP/CP via Eastport/Kingsgate. Not only that, compared to "transcontinental" routes to and from California, BNSF's route from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest has much more competition.
With regard to NeueAmtrakCalifornia's statement, "then they could have sold the northern transcon (including the Pacific Extension) to Union Pacific, thus giving them a competing northern transcon to compete against BNSF": I'm sure UP would argue that they compete quite well with BNSF in this corridor right now, thank you.
Here's another take on the costs of electrification proponents don't mention. That meant power modifications for the "Gap" (or running the electric power through dead), and at the end or beginning of the electrification.Īn additional explanation is here: Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension: The myth of superiority The Milwaukee Road would not have this volume of trains, but electrification still stranded a lot of locomotive assets on a very limited amount of track (Harlowton to Avery Othello to Seattle/Tacoma). Same for the UP proposal with the electrification starting and ending at North Platte. Plus, of course, the personnel to make all these power modifications. The amount of yard capacity to accommodate all the trains in the terminal would be huge, as would the locomotive fleet (of both types) to be kept on hand to be available to maintain fluidity. Just the thought of having to modify the entire locomotive consist of ALL the trains at Lincoln (from electric to diesel electric and vice versa) again boggles the mind. Today, most of these trains are 125 cars or more, and operate with distributed power. Using the BN Powder River Basin to Lincoln, NE route as an example: During the height of coal movement it was not unusual to see 60 or more coal trains (loads and empties) on the route from Alliance to Lincoln. Lewith, he/she gives a link to a map of proposed electrification in the 1970s. For electrification to work, the electrified network needs to be expansive and cover just about all the possible routes, or be a fixed single route usually with a single commodity. Of course those who fantasize about this will tell you they have crunched the numbers and it was totally doable.įigures lie, and liars figure, of course, but there are constants in all the pro-electrification proposals: Ignoring the greatest costs, which are train delay, locomotive dwell, and restricting a large number of assets to a limited area of trackage.
#Open roads milwaukee install#
How a railroad which could not even install CTC, power switches, lineside detectors, adequate sidings, or even continuous ABS on its main line could spring for new locomotives (and likely a whole new electrical distribution system) boggles the mind - even for the 650 or so miles under wire - which was not even continuous (that is, the "Gap" from Avery to Othello was never electrified). Hence the enduring interest and "what if" speculation even though such scenarios are contrary to reality.
The Milwaukee Road's electrification - and really the entire Milwaukee Road Pacific Extension - was/is considered a novelty. There was an awful lot of short-sighted thinking going on then. I have to say that Milwaukee wasn't alone. So management pushed to abandon it, and did.only to find out that, once the decision was made, the accounting was in error and it had been one of the only profitable portions of the railroad. To anyone reading the financial report summaries (and not digging deeper), it appeared that the Pacific Extension was a financial sinkhole. Apparently their accounting department was double-counting expenses (but not revenues) for the Pacific Extension. Milwaukee was bleeding cash.but they didn't have a good idea of where.
The rest is history the wires came down.but by the time they came down, copper prices had crashed back to normal and the sheikhs reset the gas pumps. Milwaukee's management looked at the prospect of cannibalizing their existing 500+ miles of electrification and got dollar signs in their eyes. However, at about the same time (very early 1970s), copper prices spiked. To sweeten the pot, and since they knew the Milwaukee was on the verge of bankruptcy anyhow, they offered to finance the whole deal through GE Credit.
#Open roads milwaukee series#
Apparently they went to the Milwaukee Road and offered a proposal for "closing the gap".electrifying their main line between Avery, ID and Othello, WA which would have included all of the necessary modern (well, for 1970) electrical equipment and custom-designed electric locomotives, probably a derivative of their Universal series Diesels. The decision you mention was key.I don't have documentation on this, but I've heard on another forum that General Electric was hurting for business in all sectors around 1970. I'm not an expert on the Milwaukee Road (I'm a much bigger Santa Fe fan), but from everything I've seen their accounting and decision making was a comedy of errors.
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