For some of the railroad execs, it seems like the preferred railroad is one which runs 0 trains across 0 miles of track

It legitimately makes me sad just how terminally stupid the Milwaukee Road's management was. They had so many things that they could have used to their advantage. They should have electrified more of their system. It would have saved them millions on diesel fuel prices. If they had done that, they actually might have been able to hold their own against competitors. Not to mention, I think their orange and black paint scheme is really nice. It is one of my favorite fallen paint schemes.

I had a relative who worked at the MILW shops in Milwaukee in its last final years. (1976-1979ish) I asked about it at a family reunion and we had a long talk about it. The shops were an absolute disaster, parts laying everywhere, dirty and disgusting working conditions, and more. The Milwaukee Road was so desperate for motive power that the shops sent out engines that were practically held together by duct tape and string. He said it was hell working there as his first job. He transferred to CNW, then WC, and finally CN. He retired in 2011.

The incompetence of the Milwaukee Rd management was more recently repeated by the guy who ran Sears into the ground.

Lease backs are the worst move a company can make. Lease backs are one of the significant reason of retail failure over the past 30 years. You never sell an asset you own just to lease it back.

this corporate mismanagement.... was a sign of things to come in corporate america!!!

Most of the milwaukee's board members were also on the great northern board. They wanted that railroad out of the north west to capitalize on frieght revenues and monopolize the BN by putting the competition out of business by making it seem like poor management. When in reality it was the same board making the decisions with the puppet out front. If it wasn't for the resourceful employees it would have went under long before the mid eighties.

I like how they thought that they'd actually be able to profit off of a spike in copper prices, as if those prices would just stay elevated for a long time and that it is no long process to remove tons of overhead wire. Sounds to me like management was just really dumb.

Milwaukee Road: "One derailment per day." Penn Central: "Hold my beer."

I watched the decline of the Milwaukee Rd first hand in its home city. Deferred maintenance on the rails and the motive power was brutal. In addition to the derailment stats, the railroad would intentionally over power their trains because it was highly likely there would be power failures on the road, but there would hopefully be enough remaining power to limp to their destination. The Milwaukee road was maybe the equivalent of the Pennsy for innovation and creative problem solving but as is speculated, there was a sinister dark plan to run It into the ground for personal or corporate stockholder profit. Much the same way Paul Kalmonovitz took down several major breweries like Falstaff and Pabst.

Crack. Meth. Stupidity. How more company execs don’t end up strung up from lamp posts by shareholders is truely amazing.

I read an article in Trains in the early 90s that mentioned that it was later discovered that a HUGE accounting error had occurred where expenses were effectively registered twice, so the Pacific line appeared significantly losing money- but it was only due to being doubled.. and the electrified route was in fact discovered to not be losing money at all... but it was too late.

Very well made video! Moral of the story: don't tear down the wires, especially during an oil embargo.

Biggest failure of all that ultimately doomed the Pacific Extension was the idiot who double entered the losses, and erased the fact that the line was still turning a profit. The most poorly managed railroad in history. (unless you include the Penn Central merger)

I live right next to the old double main between Chicago and St. Paul. Wish they were still here.

I made sales calls to the Milwaukee maintenance director, pitching several methods to save money on locomotive upkeep. He shot me down with accounts of how trying a portion of each method had ended poorly. Of course, he was not interested in the whole package, since a small part of the whole system had been mismanaged. I wondered how he got to the position he was in.

My mothers little hometown in Minnesota went into serious decline when the Milwaukee Road through town was torn out.

The Milwaukee Road was Presision Schedule Railroading before it was cool. It walked, then crashed and burned spectacularly orange fireball so the all modern Railroad company's could fly... head first into the same trap as they did, but now in super slow motion.

This video was Number 1 in my “Other Videos your audience watched” statistic and I can see why. Phenomenal job!

At least we got Milwaukee Road 261 in excursion service

honestly. I would have loved to see an F7 Hiawatha in Preservation. there's just something about it that just really appeals to me.

The Milwaukee road is one of my favorite railroads But I do not deny the issues with it It was definitely mismanaged There were lot of issues But you know one thing it had? Electric locomotives

Alot of the Pacific Extention through Montana, Idaho and Washington is now an off roader rail trail with many, many tunnels and bridges still in place. Theres also alot of telegraph lines still up along the ROW in western Montana along I 90 and theres still some evidence of the electricfication of the line as well.

Amazingly, when I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, both the New York (Penn)Central and Milwaukee ran on tracks a mile apart near my folks house in East Central Illinois. Both lines ran into Chicago and by the early 80's they were both abandoned. A local short line, KB&S, owns both lines and has been very successful hauling mostly grain to Tate & Lyle in Lafayette IN.

By '77 electrification on the Pacific extension was irrelevant. The division was suffering as many as 3 major derailments a week do to bad track. The main reason the wire was pulled was that all of the generating stations were breaking down and the MILW didn't have money to build new ones. And yeah, the mismanagement was epic.

If Milwaukee Raod never removed the electrified, Amtrak could have used those lines(assuming Milwaukee road sold all of it off to Amtrak).

You should've mentioned how a huge portion of the right of way, from Washington to Montana is abandoned and the tracks got pulled up (except for some spots in Idaho) but you can easily follow the trackbed throughout the whole pacific extension. Either way, this video was great. It would be cool if you can drop a video about the Sacramento Northern railroad when it ran from Oakland to Chico.

The Olympian Hiawatha. What a magnificent train.

Wow, how dumb can a railway be that they were making money but wouldn't invest in maintenance or sending additional Frieght cars in an area that needed it!

Ah, possibly one of the greatest railways of all time, and yet, the unluckiest, in terms of management. The "Little Joes'" are a story in themselves. BTW, can you do "Engines that look really weird - but were definitely successful". My example is the Pearson 4-2-4T express tanks for the Bristol and Exeter Railway. The first batch were constructed in 1853, and had a huge driving wheel that looked ungainly even by the standards of the time. But they were fast. And reliable. And fairly economic. So much so, that a variant of the class was built 15(!) years later in 1868 with only small detail changes. They survived quite a long time, and were loved by (most) drivers and passengers alike.

Ooooooooo! I just finished watching your fantastic episode on the Penn Central and was hoping you were going to do the same on the Milwaukee Road. I had no idea you had already done it so I’m super happy now.

The man most responsible for the collapse of the Milwaukee Road was a politically connected crook named Leo Crowley. In the 1920s, Crowley had embezzled money from banks he owned. But it was all covered up politically by his friends and against all logic, he somehow became the head of the FDIC in 1934 and ran it until 1945. He was forced out of politics in 1945 (after the war) because he was seen as hostile to the Soviet Union. And Harry Truman himself said that. He then (with no real qualifications) was made Chairman of the Milwaukee Road. It was Crowley in the 1960s who made the decision that the railroad would be sold by 1970. It was Crowley's plan to increase the earnings of the railroad by cutting maintainence and doing lease-backs. His plans all went wrong. The merger that the railroad was counting on to survive didn't happen in 1970 and he died in 1972.

I was aware that Milwaukee built (and then pulled down) an impressive electric network but I had no idea things were so bad behind the scenes! Certainly gives Penn Central a run for their (limited) money. Thank you for putting this together, it was great to watch.

Nice video! It’s always sad to see successful railroads like this die. If you need another railroad-related topic to look at, might I recommend the New York, Ontario & Western Railway? It was a class 1 railroad that had serious financial troubles throughout it’s entire lifespan yet somehow managed to last for 73 years before becoming the first railroad in the US to have it’s entire mainline abandoned. Looking forward to your future videos, man, keep up the good work!

I bet that the people who ran the railroad into the ground never lost a penny and more than likely made a fortune out of ruining it. 🤬

I had a transportation professor at the University of Texas in 1963 named Hampton K. Snell, who wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Montana in 1950 on the folly of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension. He conclusively demonstrated that the project was doomed to failure from the outset because relatively small Seattle was already served by three relatively strong railroads... Northern Pacific, Great Northern, and Union Pacific. "Pappy" Snell loved the Milwaukee and was fascinated by the PCE, and it's pioneering electrification, but knew the truth and shared it unemotionally with persons in the academic community interested in the economics of rail transportation.

Worthington Smith came to the Milwaukee Road from the Burlington Northern and seemed more interested in helping his former railroad than his current one. The trustee for the Milwaukee Road's final bankruptcy was former Illinois governor Richard Ogilvie who is forever hated in Illinois for instituting the state income tax.

You so need to document the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific ("The Rock"). Very similar story, just without the electrification...

It should be noted that Quinn left for the Burlington, and came back. Worth Smith came from Great Northern. Great video!

Actually the SOO did not absorb the Milwaukee Road. They purchased 95% of the rail properties from the receiver, but left behind the company itself and all it's agreements, contracts and other baggage. The Milwaukee also built that brand new high bridge over the Des Moines River just a few years before abandoning that line. Just a few years ago the UP dismantled and salvaged that bridge.

Honestly, I think one of the worst things if not _the_ worst thing the ICC did to railroads... was give trucking and air freight a free ride on taxes. This gave an artificial boost in attractiveness, especially to trucking. It didn't help that the automotive industry favoritism also infected the post office, leading to the end of the mail contracts that had kept passenger rail profitable even when passenger numbers were at a low ebb. And of course, during the Reagan era and onward the ICC allowed too _much_ combining of railroads, leading to the consolidated shittiness we have today. The "Short-term growth at all costs, loot and pillar-rob rather than build, tax-dodge/liability-dodge at every turn even if it's actually _less_ efficient, share prices more important than actual product/service, rob Peter to pay Paul" mentality has *always* been one of the problems with capitalism, especially corporate capitalism centered around big stock markets. It's part of how we got the friggin' Great Depression, so it's definitely not new. But I feel like the disease started spreading more aggressively in the '60s or even the late '50s, and William John Quinn seems like he had it.

Ohh that “word from our sponsor” is sooo good!!! Also, great merchandise. *I* *DON’T* know which one I like the most!!!

How many totally viable companies and good jobs have been killed by utterly incompetent management.

Mismanagement abound... Grew up counting Milwaukee road trains all the time

There is some argument to be made that the double reporting was done in order to force the value of the railroad down in the hopes that another railroad would see it as an inexpensive purchase and buy it at a depreciated value.

The final years of the Milwaukee Road was run far worse than the Penn Central railroad when it went bankrupt in 1970-Penn Central, Milwaukee Road-Far worse management than the Penn Central.

A lot of this sounds a lot more like malice than incompetence... Honestly kinda sounds like the management just didn't like running a railroad so they sucked the assets dry and ran off with the money that could've been used to save the railroad.

Good research, I was never able to understand it, but there's the... "anomaly" that no one dares to mention. So, it was possible to save the shortest route to the Pacific, and GE offered to fund it. Too Bad. The Route of the Hiawatha's - most distinguished train name ever: The Olympian Hiawatha

another great document about a railways downfall or bankruptcy,

This was a crazy railway; even the locomotives were bipolar

I wanna say thank you for this series and this particular video. I’ve always never been a fan of electric rail history but this video alone sparked an interest in mountain electric main line running and your channel has actually got me into the east coast railroads as I’ve always found them super overdone mainly in the model railroad community

Worked at the St. Paul roundhouse from 1974-1979. Was it really bad management or a planned corporate bankruptcy. Either way it allowed me to spend 34 years with Burlington Northern.

The Problems began with NOT having a good feeder system. The Milwaukee Road should have taken over the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific, the Spokane International, and the Pacific Coast Railroad (instead of the GN taking over their Maple Valley-Seattle route!). They should have also have also built branches to Yakima and Wenatchee, Washington (proposed as the Pacific Extension was under construction), and the Chehalis, Cowlitz & Cowlitz extension to Yakima (1928 proposal). Further, they should have bridged the Gap between Othello and Avery, instead of purchasing the SD40-2 locos! Another example Milwaukee Road incompetency: The Milwaukee's abandoning of the Olympian Hiawatha in 1961 because of the Seattle World's Fair (The Century 21 Exposition), the following year, because of the perceived Artifical boost in Tourist Traffic. That was a mess! My late-Grandfather worked for the Milwaukee for a time in 1952, and left because they were a damn mess! I love them, but the Milwaukee was a damn mess!

Fascinating story! Thanks for your excellent telling of this railroad's history!

Fun fact: If the Milwaukee Road route through the Northwest was still in use today, it would be the most profitable line in the US

The old freight cars were mainly financed through Continental Illinois Bank and Trust and look at their later failures. Today in Milwaukee with the decline of heavy industry we are down to 2 rebuilt GP9s and about 3 crews cover all remaining traffic and the CP recently lost the biggest shipper a malt plant that was good for 25 to 40 cars a day. Had 2 family members who worked there for 50 years but both recommended I pick a different career. Most bizarre thing I recall was circa 1978 when the board of directors were coming to Milwaukee to assess the situation they gathered up about 90 wrecked and cars awaiting scrapping and took them into Upper Michigan to hide them. In later days The Southwestern Line was a nightmare to operate. The track became pulverized by unit coal trains and all the sidings were filled with non-operable Freight cars making it very difficult for trains to pass. As we sometimes called it America's Remorseful Railroad. RIP EHL & RHB

This’ll be a *painful* topic to cover

I LOVED that “sponsorship”!

So basically if that route had been maintained, track speeds were raised as much as possible and a proper decision was made on being electrified or not (even if divided east/west) the route would of been a profitable east/west speedway to this day.

The Milwaukee Road had a line going west through southern Minnesota. One of the many small towns was Grand Meadow. The line went one block north of the house my family had along with a farm. I learned to count up to about 67 watching the train go by. We moved 5 miles north in 1973 to a larger dairy farm which was 3 miles west of the CGW going through Racine Minnesota. In the 1980’s as the bankruptcy of The Milwaukee Road continued, people working for the Federal Government on the bankruptcy were saying that they didn’t want The CNW to get The Milwaukee Road because they thought that The CNW would abandon and scrap every inch of the line. Too bad the Pacific extension wasn’t saved for Amtrak which would have eased up congestion on BN lines from Minneapolis to the PNW.

The major problem with the Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Paul and Pacific Railway was that it was a late Comer to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It couldn't compete on a one on one basis with the J.J. Hill roads of the Chicago,Burlington and Quincy, Northern Pacific, the Great Northern and Spokane Portland & Seattle combined interests whom already operated in much of the same region as the Milwaukee Road. Also when going to the Pacific Coast region of the Western Carriers District the Milwaukee should have taken advantage of building a line to Coo's Bay, Oregon where as Marvin Huett of the rival Chicago & Northwestern refused less than a decade later on the advice given to him by William Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan a mere eight years earlier in a conference in Chicago. In 1955 the Union Pacific rerouted their famous City passenger trains from Northwestern Station to the Milwaukee Road routing out of Chicago's Union Station to Omaha. Since Union Pacific, Southern Pacific and the Oregon Trunk Line were affiliated Harriman lines and years prior Harriman put in a bid to purchase the Northern Pacific Railway from the J.P. Morgan interests and lost out in a bidding war with James J. Hill. The Milwaukee Road would have been a better choice of accusation over the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific. This in turn would have given the Milwaukee Road access to Portland and Seattle via a connection with the SP Shasta Route from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle via quasi umbrella protection of the Harriman interests; That's if the United States Railway Administration would have allowed for the merger of Union Pacific to the Milwaukee Road the same year as the UP passenger train rerouting in Chicago occurred; I am sure the entirety of the Milwaukee Road would have remained intact for the exception of a few Western branch lines. By this merger this would have not only given the Union Pacific unaltered access to the Chicago market share and a connection with Eastern Trunk line traffic but would have given the Union Pacific access to iron ore mining in Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota but access to a Northern link with the Soo Line Railway a then United States subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Rock Island would have been better off being absorbed into the Southern Pacific system giving SP also access to the Chicago market share and a more direct Eastern Trunk Line connection with the New York Central Railroad and a access to LaSalle Street Station. But one cannot rewrite history or provide any form of common sense advice to the United States Government when it concerns common sense reasoning concerning mergers or routing proposals. Afterall this is the same government whom shared a lions share of blame for the forced shotgun wedding of Pennsylvania Railway and New York Central forming the ill fated Penn Central transportation company in the dead of winter in 1967.

Very informative and very well done video. Looking forward to other RR's you may cover like this

You should talk about the Rock Island and their attempt to merge with the UP that ended up in a lawsuit

Thanks for mentioning Michael Sol and his analysis. I used to chat with him on a old internet bulletin board probably 20 years ago about the Milwaukee Road.

The Indiana RRs were an attempt to make it to Cincinnati, which the MLW almost made it to.

All about shareholders and managers, screw customers and employees.🤷‍♂️😩🤦‍♀️

The trackage in Montana that was west of Billings, MT mostly got tore out and removed. It paralleled the Northern Pacific for much of that route and the BNSF currently operates that section now (formerly the Montana Rail Link). The section of ROW at the Idaho/Montana state line is now the Route of the Hiawatha bike trail, part of the rails to trails system.

That's insane about Thier repair costs and leases. Sounds like they deliberately wanted to run the company under. Seen the leasing issue before with trucks, then they buy them back later on.

Well done my American friend it is sad to see a company screw itself over like that

I still see some remnants of the Milwaukee Road in my state (Washington), bit of a shame that the mismanagement did the railroad in.

Love to see a video on the Milwaukee Road. It is my favorite fallen flag. Once one of the greatest in the world, but unlucky in their management.

What did David Bevin go work for the Milwaukee road after the bankruptcy of Penn central sounds awfully familiar 😂😂

I would have loved to seen a merger in the late 60s between The Milwaukee Road and New York Central with Alfred E. Perlman as the CEO. I feel like he wouldn't have made the same questionable decisions that the Milwaukee leaders made. My only concern is how and when they would improve the aging trackage. Otherwise, you would have had a coast to coast line with lots of service in the midwest. With electrified lines at both ends, who knows? perhaps a fully electrified, transcontinental railroad could have happened. The New York Road could have been good.

Did you know? The MILW engineers loved loved running electric locomotives in the cold mountains because as you might know, electric powered things always run better in the cold.

Knew some of this, but not all. Sounds more criminal than mismanaged. thanks

My grandfather worked for the MR. I was too young at the time to ask questions and learn some of the history he knew.

I was glad that you finally got around to the truth about the Pacific Extension. During the 1950's the expenses from the eastern lines were being hidden in the lines west. This was done to make the road look more profitable and help to close the merger with Chicago Northwestern. That dragged on for many years before the government killed it. The management changed after the merger failed and the new management was not aware of the lies hidden in the books and decided to kill the line west. Only after several years of this did they start to understand that they were cutting their own throats. The line into Indiana was firstly to connect to coal mines on south west Indiana and later an attempt to offer a connection to Chicago for the Southern. They did carry through traffic for Southern in the 1970's but by that time the ROW was so bad the plan had to be given up. To quote others, 'the Mil wake Road was so broke it couldn't pull its self out of it's own mud to save its life.' A correction is in order about the electrification as the wires came down a year before the Arab oil embargo. There was no thought about the price of oil going through the roof until the electricity had been shut down. If it had remained in place and running another year it likely would have remained. All very bad timing.

In 2013 Wisconsin Southern was, fully absorbed into Union Pacific and still have a few Wisconsin Southern trains and now uses local Wisconsin Contractors following the Stoughton natual gas explosion disaster.

A major lesson on how not to run a railroad

That buy leaseback deal was common with brick & mortar businesses. Safeway, for example, was the first large company to use this method to increase its number of stores and even to expand into other areas.

Hey Darkness; do you think you could do a video on the downfall of the MKT RR? I live and work next to the Katy Trail; or what use to be MKT right of way here in Missouri.

My new favorite channel, thanks

I wonder, (if you get a chance) could please do a video on the amazing but extinct Milwaukee ALCO built, streamlined Hiawatha steam locomotives, the 1935/7 - A class 4-4-2s and their bigger brothers, the F7 4-6-4s?

This video comes as personel to me because my home town of Brodhead Wisconsin was actually on the Milwaukee Road andchas an old engine permanently on display next to the Brodhead Depot Museum. Brodhead is 30 miles west of Janesville Wisconsin and about 20 miles east of Monroe Wisconsin which is infinitely famous for Cheese Days worldwide. We also have railtrails that are State Trails and in very Rough shape due to lack of funding through the WI DNR being cut under our Former Governor Walker. Up in Exeter Township in Northern Green County sits the olf Stewert Tunnel on the Badger State Trail which is closed off and has been since the August 2020 derachio. It will take some serious amount of money and a Railroad Restoration Expert. Heavy logging equipment to clear out years of overgrowth and everything else neded for The Non-profit organization The Friends Of The Badger And Sugar River State Trails to geet things going again.

The lines in Indiana were bought primarily to supply the railroad with coal, and also give the MILW additional eastern and southeastern connections. This was commonly referred to as the Chicago, Terre Haute & Southeastern (CTH&SE) and they served a number of coal mines.

The really sad thing is for the Line West part of the route, it had a far better surveyed route over the Cascades than anyone the than the SP&S and UP (which each snagged one side of the Columbia River) and when the tracks were yanked up around 1987, nobody seriously looked into buying the Milwaukee Road's Snoqualmie Pass route. That tunnel was tall enough for double stacks, unlike either the Stevens or Stampede Pass tunnels. Sadly, I live within sight of the line out to Gray's Harbor, which is not even a gravel trail anymore and can't even be seen in several front yards

One detail that’s important is why the copper prices increased and decreased so violently. This all occurred during Chile’s Salvador Allende’s nationalization of all foreign copper firms including Anaconda which drive up prices. By the time the wire got ripped down Pinochet had launched his US backed coup and prices stabilized.

not going to lie the story of the Milwaukee sounds like modern PSR rn

You’re right. Deferred maintenance killed the Road.

I lived in Cle Elum Washington and St. Maries Idaho in the 1970s and 80s. My father worked for the Northern Pacific/Burlington Northern as a forester and plant manager. At Cle Elum the two lines ran close together. The difference of track quality was clear to any causal observer. Trains on the NP/BN could be seen to run at much higher speeds than the Milwaukee Road. The Milwaukee mainline went through St. Maries Idaho. We knew many of the people who worked for the railroad. Driving up the St. Joe River Road that ran on the opposite side of river, seeing the results of derailments was common. It seemed the entire line through there was constantly on slow orders, some areas down to as slow as 10 MPH. It was no surprise to anyone in the area when the line was shut down. I remember hearing from my father that BN surveyed the abandoned line to see if it would be worth purchasing, but rejected the idea because of how much it would cost to revitalize it. The section from St. Maries to Plummer Idaho is still in use by the St. Maries River Railroad. This short line is owned by the Potlatch Corporation and is used to haul timber products from the mill at St. Maries to a link up with a Union Pacific branch at Plummer. A good part of the old railroad right of way up the St. Joe River is now the highway between St. Maries and Avery. The former route to the east of Avery is an interesting bicycle/hiking trail that goes over trestles and through tunnels. The Milwaukee was terribly managed and as noted here, its Pacific Extension bypassed numerous large cities such as Spokane WA. It did have potential, but mismanagement killed it.

If only a little common sense entered management. Imagine a modern Milwaukee Road with electric today??!! It would be a great road, if only it had the chance..😢😔

Greetings and salutations fellow earthling and space traveller.... Excellent video on Milwaukee Road.... Have a soft spot for the company, some would say an addiction, even an obsession, but then....with nearly 80 books about or by the (got a manual for their FT units, a pre Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific days) railroad and counting! ....and that's me being a Swede, living in Glasgow, Scotland! 🤜🏻🤛🏻🍻

261.......she survived pain

Don't forget about the Milwaukee Land company and the huge there lands.

Never knew railways could be funny. Well done. X

NYC sponsoring the show… I WANT. THAT. CONCEPT! I don’t know what a diesel is

Criminally negligent Executives. Unfortunately that trend continues today.

Man funny funny your good thanks for time on your video's 👍👍👍👍👍

Somehow they got bribed or extorted to destroy that railroad.