During my travels last week, we went across the Dakotas into Montana. We followed the old Great Northern (BNSF) and portions of the CMStP&P along US12. Unfortunately we did this near dusk at one time and during the late hours another so I couldn't get any pictures. The old Milwaukee ended at Miles City in a fairly large yard and appeared to go on from there. Sadly the tracks ended just past the town. What's left of the old Pacific Extension is nothing more than a dirt path with occasional piles of old ties and a few telegraph poles. Most of the bridges were still in place, but many of them were taken out. Most of the ROW is still intact, so my wishful thinking set in to rebuild the line someday. Yeah right!
I felt sad seeing the old ROW left abandoned. It didn't seem right that this great railroad just gave up the way it did. We stopped in Forsyth, MT for gas. This is a crew interchange on the busy BNSF. The Milw avoided this town completely on the opposite shore of the Yellowstone River. They thought they were being smart by avoiding the town as they raced north and west as fast as they could. Route 12 parallels the ROW for most of its length up to Roundup, MT. There are a few obvious yards and occasional old station spots in such places as Melstone and others. There is even a preserved station on what appears to be one of the few branch lines that came off the mainline. At Melstone, there are signs of the railroad still left here and there including an old hoop for handing off trainorders to the engineer. The stand and hoop sit in the middle of a grass-covered field with short greyish dirt and grass all over. There are other signs including the turntable site which is visible from the air, but other than that the other traces are long gone.
Why did the Milw cut it off and why did they give up? I thought that perhaps because the line went through the middle of nowhere and how the Milw avoided the bigger towns in favor of the open country. This was one long ride, believe me, through nothing but high prarie country. There is nothing here; just ranches and cows! There was no revenue along this stretch of track, and this made me think this. After doing some research in various places, I found out that this section was somewhat profitable up until the end even with little online traffic. By this point, it turns out, the management wanted to sell off everything to someone else, and they were doing what they could to basically kill the company and take whatever they could from the infrastructure. The company tried for mergers with the CNW, but the ICC got in the way and took their time approving everything. Then once things were in place, the management fought over the merger. By the time this was going on, a lot had deteriorated even more. In the mean time, their longtime CEO quit and a newbie was appointed. The new guy had little experience and set out to gut what was left with his bad decisions and poor planning.
One of the worse things they did was a big lease-back program with their rolling stock. They sold their aging rolling stock to the banks and in exchange leased back the freight cars. The lease payments were so high that there was little profit. They probably couldn't always afford the lease payments, so many cars were held out of service by the bank. Whatever cars they had not included in the lease program were in use constantly so they ended up with car shortages particularly as the cars started to wear out and many were bad-ordered. These cars were already old and getting older. This pissed off customers and drove business away because of the delays and shortages of equipment. On top of that no one bothered to work on the ROW so there were major speed restrictions all over the route. This too caused more loss of revenue as they couldn't run anything without the crews outlawing, causing more delays.
The biggest snafu was killing the electric service which was considered fully operational. Experts even said not to cut the electric service or kill the Pacific Extension but they did this anyway. It was even suggested that they connect the two disperate sections together and unify the electric lines. Instead they thought they could make a big profit on the copper and scrapped the system. They killed the electric service instead. Copper prices tanked and instead of getting $36 million, they got only $5 million. General Electric even offered to help them connect the two sections together, and given their financial state, were even willing to finance the project out. The cost for this was only $39 million, or the same amount they spent on the new diesels they purchased at a time when diesel fuel was going up. Remember this was in the mid-1970s during the energy crisis. Foolishly they were dumping what could have kept them afloat for an anchor that was pulling them under. Killing off their most profitable line too was essentially like shooting one's self in the foot. This cut the cash from an already cash-strapped company.
The more I read, the more I found out how foolish the management was. When they called it quits, their books were messed up. What was supposed to be a profit, was put into the debit column. The Pacific Extension was actually making the most money for the corporation, but instead showed a big red hole on the books. Someone made a costly accounting error which was taken literally and the management used this to shut everything down. The rest is sad history. They embargoed the line in 1980 and ripped the tracks up shortly afterwards. All that's left today is a grassy embankment that parallels US12 for a good portion of its life in Montana. The rest of the line became part of the Soo which is now CPRail.
John
I felt sad seeing the old ROW left abandoned. It didn't seem right that this great railroad just gave up the way it did. We stopped in Forsyth, MT for gas. This is a crew interchange on the busy BNSF. The Milw avoided this town completely on the opposite shore of the Yellowstone River. They thought they were being smart by avoiding the town as they raced north and west as fast as they could. Route 12 parallels the ROW for most of its length up to Roundup, MT. There are a few obvious yards and occasional old station spots in such places as Melstone and others. There is even a preserved station on what appears to be one of the few branch lines that came off the mainline. At Melstone, there are signs of the railroad still left here and there including an old hoop for handing off trainorders to the engineer. The stand and hoop sit in the middle of a grass-covered field with short greyish dirt and grass all over. There are other signs including the turntable site which is visible from the air, but other than that the other traces are long gone.
Why did the Milw cut it off and why did they give up? I thought that perhaps because the line went through the middle of nowhere and how the Milw avoided the bigger towns in favor of the open country. This was one long ride, believe me, through nothing but high prarie country. There is nothing here; just ranches and cows! There was no revenue along this stretch of track, and this made me think this. After doing some research in various places, I found out that this section was somewhat profitable up until the end even with little online traffic. By this point, it turns out, the management wanted to sell off everything to someone else, and they were doing what they could to basically kill the company and take whatever they could from the infrastructure. The company tried for mergers with the CNW, but the ICC got in the way and took their time approving everything. Then once things were in place, the management fought over the merger. By the time this was going on, a lot had deteriorated even more. In the mean time, their longtime CEO quit and a newbie was appointed. The new guy had little experience and set out to gut what was left with his bad decisions and poor planning.
One of the worse things they did was a big lease-back program with their rolling stock. They sold their aging rolling stock to the banks and in exchange leased back the freight cars. The lease payments were so high that there was little profit. They probably couldn't always afford the lease payments, so many cars were held out of service by the bank. Whatever cars they had not included in the lease program were in use constantly so they ended up with car shortages particularly as the cars started to wear out and many were bad-ordered. These cars were already old and getting older. This pissed off customers and drove business away because of the delays and shortages of equipment. On top of that no one bothered to work on the ROW so there were major speed restrictions all over the route. This too caused more loss of revenue as they couldn't run anything without the crews outlawing, causing more delays.
The biggest snafu was killing the electric service which was considered fully operational. Experts even said not to cut the electric service or kill the Pacific Extension but they did this anyway. It was even suggested that they connect the two disperate sections together and unify the electric lines. Instead they thought they could make a big profit on the copper and scrapped the system. They killed the electric service instead. Copper prices tanked and instead of getting $36 million, they got only $5 million. General Electric even offered to help them connect the two sections together, and given their financial state, were even willing to finance the project out. The cost for this was only $39 million, or the same amount they spent on the new diesels they purchased at a time when diesel fuel was going up. Remember this was in the mid-1970s during the energy crisis. Foolishly they were dumping what could have kept them afloat for an anchor that was pulling them under. Killing off their most profitable line too was essentially like shooting one's self in the foot. This cut the cash from an already cash-strapped company.
The more I read, the more I found out how foolish the management was. When they called it quits, their books were messed up. What was supposed to be a profit, was put into the debit column. The Pacific Extension was actually making the most money for the corporation, but instead showed a big red hole on the books. Someone made a costly accounting error which was taken literally and the management used this to shut everything down. The rest is sad history. They embargoed the line in 1980 and ripped the tracks up shortly afterwards. All that's left today is a grassy embankment that parallels US12 for a good portion of its life in Montana. The rest of the line became part of the Soo which is now CPRail.
John
