This is amazing. Thank you for sharing your tremendous knowledge and experience. As a 60-year-old lifelong resident of teh city of Milwaukee, I'm now first discovering how special my city's namesake railroad was to so many people in the west. What a feat of engineering it was and a sad story of decline. There is barely a trace of the railroad left here. After the shops were torn down and the contaminated soil remediated, the site became a parking lot for the Brewer's new baseball stadium and a small industrial park for light industry. They tried to leave 2 of the shop smokestacks up as monuments to the railroad but they were not safe to leave free-standing and were eventually taken down too. Like most of the US today, the city doesn't manufacture much anymore and rail traffic here is a tiny percentage of what it used to be. Again, thanks to you!
Covid didn’t affect me, but before it interrupted leisure travel I made yearly trips from MN to the Idaho backcountry. At Wallace I asked locals at the gas station where the road with the railroad tunnels to Avery started? They had never heard of railroad tunnels and said you can’t get to Avery from here! Someone suggested Moon Pass street at the end of town maybe? I found my own way, including a walk to Pulaski’s tunnel, then on to Avery. That is an incredible driving experience for a flatlander that has never seen a railroad tunnel! Truly a national treasure. In 2016 I was further west to see what the Scablands were all about, and I wandered the backroads north from Wallula Gap. The few miles from Pine City to Malden felt like I was entering the Twilight Zone and a mile past Malden something told me to turn around and go back for a better look at that little town. I took some pictures and parked downtown for a walkabout. Mid morning on a slow day, not a person in sight, & the Post Office was the only thing open. I walked in and visited with the lady in charge and she gave me 1/2 hour history lesson on the place, including the railroads. I put Malden on my short list of peaceful places to retire someday and was heartbroken by the fire and smoldering ruins on the national news. A few more miles to Rosalia and I was again stunned to find those bridges looking like abandoned Roman Aqueducts, so more pictures to take. Getting on 195 into Spokane brought me back to harsh reality.
Many thanks for the detail, I watch the scenery & marvel at all the Bridges & Viaducts = much labor to bring to grade then build these marvels of engineering. Growing up in SE Mich in the 70’s we heard of the Milwaukee rd but never seen it. I appreciate your efforts to bring the story to my 65 “ screen tv via CZcams . I’m retired for 12 yrs & like to watch old film bites of how it used to be 👍😉❤️
47:30 My Dads train at Ramsdell, he was on duty at 4am that day they must have waited along time for their train dog caught it or work in the yard. The power was the same as his Teko turn the day before minus 2 units. They tied up in Othello at 8:50 pm, 16 hours and 50 minutes the story pictures don’t tell!! Thank you for the presentation!
The train at Mowry and Ramsdel on Sunday March 25 1979 are my Dads train we lived in the Spokane Valley. He commuted along with many others to St. Marie’s after getting called at all hours!
I drove through Malden in May of 2020 (defying governor's orders to stay home). Months later it was mostly gone. It's good to see pictures of the town when it was intact and still served the railroad. Thanks.
Beautiful work! I spent my summers as a kid going back and forth from Seattle to Aberdeen, SD, to visit family. I am sure I was close to some of these photos in June, July and August...
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for making it available. I wish I had known this kind of background information in August 1968, when I "hoboed" from Seattle to Buffalo via Renton, Harlowton, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Bensenville (Chicago), and Conway. From Renton to Bensenville I rode in an empty Penn Central boxcar (the only empty on the train according to a very helpful conductor at Black River Yard). Sweet memories.
He never rab a train anywhere, This is the most incomplete cliff notes history ever, He does even get the mountain grafes right not 1% but 1,8% in parts down Plummer for 12 miles. WTF
Wow! I graduated from Tekoa High School in 1976. (Go Tigers!) I spent a lot of time watching trains as a kid, both on the UP (OWRN), CMSP&P & NP out of Marshall down to Rosalia and through Oaksdale, Colfax and on down to Pullman. I remember visiting the UP office in Tekoa with my dad who ordered cars of anhydrous for Gardner & Smith. All gone now... Thank you so much for this!
I wish I could get a copy of the picture of the depot at Avery with the fish tank. I spent many hours there as a young girl when my dad worked on the Mikwaukee in the late 50s.
A very nice presentation with images I haven't seen before. I have some Milwaukee Road books containing many of your images, Mr. Leachman. I thought I would share that I met the nephew of one of the survivors of the horrific 1977 Pandora accident. The nephew attended a church I went to in Spokane and He was a good friend of mine. I knew him for some time before he told me this story. He said his uncle jumped from the train moments before the head-on collision. He unfortunately lost his legs as a railcar or something landed on him. Since the Milwaukee was facing really hard times by that point, the nephew made a point to let me know his uncle did not receive favorable treatment from the railroad in trying to get compensation from the accident.
@@alfabeech it's been some time since I've seen the video but one of the few accidents I recall that wasn't a track maintenance problem was the Pandora accident. That area was "dark" territory with no signals. One train was given written orders to take a siding to let another pass. That train overran its orders and collided head on in a cut very near Pandora. I think there were 6 of their relatively new SD40-2's that were wrecked. Amazingly, I believe all were rebuilt and put in service again. It's possible one didn't make it because one locomotive actually rode up over the other, damaging it quite badly. But track maintenance was a serious problem by the 1970's for reasons that have been debated over for years. Some say the meager traffic levels over the years gave motive for the Milwaukee to defer maintenance. When the larger capacity cars were run, track conditions deteriorated fast. That is true but there are other factors to consider. For instance, an interesting coincidence occurred in the 1970's. First, as a condition of the 1970 Burlington Northern merger, the ICC granted 11 new rail gateways to help bolster those meager traffic levels to help the Milwaukee compete against BN. Traffic did increase some and the Milwaukee looked to have a chance to get a leading edge, especially if they could improve speeds as they had the shortest and most direct route between Chicago and Tacoma. Additionally, in order to improve ailing operations in the 1970's, the Milwaukee Road board felt it a wise choice to bring into the top brass a handful of executives that had left the BN. This is where the arguments lie. There's a strong argument that these execs from BN were moles and they purposefully took measures to kill the company. To further back the argument, the Milwaukee had even established a connection in the east with the L&N. It seemed they had opportunity in the early 1970's to have the leading edge. But management seemed to take every effort to cause scheduling and reliability blunders and L&N eventually went elsewhere. As a further example, employees complained that new ties were laid out between Milwaukee and Portage only for them to be taken back up a few months later and never be installed. Maintenance was curtailed greatly by the mid-1970's, especially in the West. Track got so bad that between slow orders and derailments, customers left in droves. As part of the ICC gateway grants, Milwaukee had 80% of container and trailer traffic at Seattle. They had every advantage to pull ahead but lost every one. Some argue that it was too little too late but my argument is the early 1970's had an uptick but they didn't keep it. Recession and oil crisis definitely didn't help and the atrocious condition of the entire system by the later 1970's sealed the Milwaukee's fate. There was a man named Bill Edgar who was hired by Chicago & Northwestern in 1978-1980 who was sent out West to report as to whether C&NW could vaibly purchase the line and have its own route to the west coast. Bill's study concluded it would cost too much to revitalize the transcontinental portion in conjunction with potential traffic levels C&NW could obtain. So, yes, oil traffic and tofc traffic could have helped had the Milwaukee held on for a couple more years but from what I saw living there and Bill Edgar reported, the track was just too far gone to make it profitable despite the system being shorter and better engineered than BN. After the bankruptcy in 1977, the trustee ruled to embargo Lines West as management complained that was killing their financial bottom line. The books seemed to reflect that. However, audits of the books in 1978 revealed all the expenses of Lines West had been doubled. Had they been written correctly, a small profit would have been reflected despite such low traffic levels by the late 1970's. But the trustee had already ruled to abandon Lines West, so despite desperate attempts by employees to save it, they were all futile. A former employee once told me a Japanese company wanted to even buy the railroad and run their own trains but the courts ruled against that. So in a long roundabout way, it looks like it would take too much capital for any US railroad to revitalize the railroad even if good traffic levels could have been obtained. It's a very sad story and for one that grew up along their Chehalis Sub in the 1970's, I wish greatly the Milwaukee had survived, and there's a great chance it could have if proper steps had been taken in the early 1970's.
What a wonderful presentation on one of my absolute favorite railroad subjects. I have Fred Hyde's book on the Milwaukee, which includes several of your photos, but many in this presentation were new to me. Really appreciated your info on the loads and MTYs and where they went to. Bravo!
Thank you for your presentation. Such a treat to hear from someone who had first-hand experience with railroads and can give "inside" information--like what's in those boxcars and where the car racks came from and where they are going. I hope the border between Canada and USA soon reopens so I can drive back to that country.
I loaded barley out of Pine Creek, WA for a season. Talked to a local who remembers the Milwaukee coming through. One of the last trains to come through derailed in front of a tunnel just west of Pine Creek. He said they ran one more train through and then they were done. The remains of the derailed cars may still be the there, according to him.
Amazing pictures and great information. A lot of this stuff isn't really found in books, especially the types of car loads and insider information. Thanks, Professor! Back in Seattle now, but spent 2 years living in Berkeley up by Tilden Park. Miss the Redwood Valley RR.
I was up in Avery at Labor Day. The woman in the depot museum does not have a photo of the lunch counter and would really like one if someone could put her in touch with Rob Leachman. Thank you.
Rob, thank you for this video! I wrote down the dates of the photos and I’m going to look them up in my DadS time books for any matches! It is a unique connection to him again thank you for your meticulous dedication to preserving this history.
i hired out 08/16/1971 and ran trains as a locomotive engineer on this run over a hundred times and can say without equivocation this is the kind of nonsense that someone working in an office could propose as history. I have ran trains on every part of the state of Washington you show, You know very little the timetable doesn't show
So sad to see these right-of-ways abandoned. The DOT should have at least railbanked the interstate right-of-ways for the future. Rail is the most energy efficient transportation per ton mile of any mode. Everything on the railroad can be recycled or is renewable. The railroads had to compete with taxpayer funded highway systems. Not only that the railroads had to pay property taxes which highways don't. I know of two lines that were abandoned in the 1990's that would be very much in use today.
Yes. I've seen how these railroads were private money while government money destroyed towns and ways of lives with their meddling. They just went down a 4 lane near us, replacing perfectly good road signs and doubling the amount of them in an age of GPS. It's infuriating the money they can waste. During last recession they built sound walls with windows and sculpture on them. Infrastructure and wars. Pork.
This is amazing. Thank you for sharing your tremendous knowledge and experience. As a 60-year-old lifelong resident of teh city of Milwaukee, I'm now first discovering how special my city's namesake railroad was to so many people in the west. What a feat of engineering it was and a sad story of decline. There is barely a trace of the railroad left here. After the shops were torn down and the contaminated soil remediated, the site became a parking lot for the Brewer's new baseball stadium and a small industrial park for light industry. They tried to leave 2 of the shop smokestacks up as monuments to the railroad but they were not safe to leave free-standing and were eventually taken down too. Like most of the US today, the city doesn't manufacture much anymore and rail traffic here is a tiny percentage of what it used to be. Again, thanks to you!
Covid didn’t affect me, but before it interrupted leisure travel I made yearly trips from MN to the Idaho backcountry. At Wallace I asked locals at the gas station where the road with the railroad tunnels to Avery started? They had never heard of railroad tunnels and said you can’t get to Avery from here! Someone suggested Moon Pass street at the end of town maybe? I found my own way, including a walk to Pulaski’s tunnel, then on to Avery. That is an incredible driving experience for a flatlander that has never seen a railroad tunnel! Truly a national treasure.
In 2016 I was further west to see what the Scablands were all about, and I wandered the backroads north from Wallula Gap. The few miles from Pine City to Malden felt like I was entering the Twilight Zone and a mile past Malden something told me to turn around and go back for a better look at that little town. I took some pictures and parked downtown for a walkabout. Mid morning on a slow day, not a person in sight, & the Post Office was the only thing open. I walked in and visited with the lady in charge and she gave me 1/2 hour history lesson on the place, including the railroads. I put Malden on my short list of peaceful places to retire someday and was heartbroken by the fire and smoldering ruins on the national news. A few more miles to Rosalia and I was again stunned to find those bridges looking like abandoned Roman Aqueducts, so more pictures to take. Getting on 195 into Spokane brought me back to harsh reality.
Many thanks for the detail, I watch the scenery & marvel at all the Bridges & Viaducts = much labor to bring to grade then build these marvels of engineering. Growing up in SE Mich in the 70’s we heard of the Milwaukee rd but never seen it. I appreciate your efforts to bring the story to my 65 “ screen tv via CZcams . I’m retired for 12 yrs & like to watch old film bites of how it used to be 👍😉❤️
47:30 My Dads train at Ramsdell, he was on duty at 4am that day they must have waited along time for their train dog caught it or work in the yard. The power was the same as his Teko turn the day before minus 2 units. They tied up in Othello at 8:50 pm, 16 hours and 50 minutes the story pictures don’t tell!!
Thank you for the presentation!
The train at Mowry and Ramsdel on Sunday March 25 1979 are my Dads train we lived in the Spokane Valley. He commuted along with many others to St. Marie’s after getting called at all hours!
I drove through Malden in May of 2020 (defying governor's orders to stay home). Months later it was mostly gone. It's good to see pictures of the town when it was intact and still served the railroad. Thanks.
You're right...I am astonished, as I just barely missed it, and have spent my entire life regretting it. Just can't believe how good you had it..
Hello from Kansas 🇺🇸
Beautiful work! I spent my summers as a kid going back and forth from Seattle to Aberdeen, SD, to visit family. I am sure I was close to some of these photos in June, July and August...
What a nice presentation to see. Grew up with Milwaukee here in Great Falls MT.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing.
Absolutely stunning. Awesome narrative and slide show. Thanks for perserving a great railroad. More please!
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for making it available. I wish I had known this kind of background information in August 1968, when I "hoboed" from Seattle to Buffalo via Renton, Harlowton, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Bensenville (Chicago), and Conway. From Renton to Bensenville I rode in an empty Penn Central boxcar (the only empty on the train according to a very helpful conductor at Black River Yard). Sweet memories.
He never rab a train anywhere, This is the most incomplete cliff notes history ever, He does even get the mountain grafes right not 1% but 1,8% in parts down Plummer for 12 miles. WTF
Wow! I graduated from Tekoa High School in 1976. (Go Tigers!) I spent a lot of time watching trains as a kid, both on the UP (OWRN), CMSP&P & NP out of Marshall down to Rosalia and through Oaksdale, Colfax and on down to Pullman. I remember visiting the UP office in Tekoa with my dad who ordered cars of anhydrous for Gardner & Smith. All gone now... Thank you so much for this!
I wish I could get a copy of the picture of the depot at Avery with the fish tank. I spent many hours there as a young girl when my dad worked on the Mikwaukee in the late 50s.
A very nice presentation with images I haven't seen before. I have some Milwaukee Road books containing many of your images, Mr. Leachman.
I thought I would share that I met the nephew of one of the survivors of the horrific 1977 Pandora accident. The nephew attended a church I went to in Spokane and He was a good friend of mine. I knew him for some time before he told me this story. He said his uncle jumped from the train moments before the head-on collision. He unfortunately lost his legs as a railcar or something landed on him. Since the Milwaukee was facing really hard times by that point, the nephew made a point to let me know his uncle did not receive favorable treatment from the railroad in trying to get compensation from the accident.
@@alfabeech it's been some time since I've seen the video but one of the few accidents I recall that wasn't a track maintenance problem was the Pandora accident. That area was "dark" territory with no signals. One train was given written orders to take a siding to let another pass. That train overran its orders and collided head on in a cut very near Pandora. I think there were 6 of their relatively new SD40-2's that were wrecked. Amazingly, I believe all were rebuilt and put in service again. It's possible one didn't make it because one locomotive actually rode up over the other, damaging it quite badly. But track maintenance was a serious problem by the 1970's for reasons that have been debated over for years. Some say the meager traffic levels over the years gave motive for the Milwaukee to defer maintenance. When the larger capacity cars were run, track conditions deteriorated fast. That is true but there are other factors to consider. For instance, an interesting coincidence occurred in the 1970's. First, as a condition of the 1970 Burlington Northern merger, the ICC granted 11 new rail gateways to help bolster those meager traffic levels to help the Milwaukee compete against BN. Traffic did increase some and the Milwaukee looked to have a chance to get a leading edge, especially if they could improve speeds as they had the shortest and most direct route between Chicago and Tacoma. Additionally, in order to improve ailing operations in the 1970's, the Milwaukee Road board felt it a wise choice to bring into the top brass a handful of executives that had left the BN. This is where the arguments lie. There's a strong argument that these execs from BN were moles and they purposefully took measures to kill the company. To further back the argument, the Milwaukee had even established a connection in the east with the L&N. It seemed they had opportunity in the early 1970's to have the leading edge. But management seemed to take every effort to cause scheduling and reliability blunders and L&N eventually went elsewhere. As a further example, employees complained that new ties were laid out between Milwaukee and Portage only for them to be taken back up a few months later and never be installed. Maintenance was curtailed greatly by the mid-1970's, especially in the West. Track got so bad that between slow orders and derailments, customers left in droves. As part of the ICC gateway grants, Milwaukee had 80% of container and trailer traffic at Seattle. They had every advantage to pull ahead but lost every one. Some argue that it was too little too late but my argument is the early 1970's had an uptick but they didn't keep it. Recession and oil crisis definitely didn't help and the atrocious condition of the entire system by the later 1970's sealed the Milwaukee's fate. There was a man named Bill Edgar who was hired by Chicago & Northwestern in 1978-1980 who was sent out West to report as to whether C&NW could vaibly purchase the line and have its own route to the west coast. Bill's study concluded it would cost too much to revitalize the transcontinental portion in conjunction with potential traffic levels C&NW could obtain. So, yes, oil traffic and tofc traffic could have helped had the Milwaukee held on for a couple more years but from what I saw living there and Bill Edgar reported, the track was just too far gone to make it profitable despite the system being shorter and better engineered than BN. After the bankruptcy in 1977, the trustee ruled to embargo Lines West as management complained that was killing their financial bottom line. The books seemed to reflect that. However, audits of the books in 1978 revealed all the expenses of Lines West had been doubled. Had they been written correctly, a small profit would have been reflected despite such low traffic levels by the late 1970's. But the trustee had already ruled to abandon Lines West, so despite desperate attempts by employees to save it, they were all futile. A former employee once told me a Japanese company wanted to even buy the railroad and run their own trains but the courts ruled against that. So in a long roundabout way, it looks like it would take too much capital for any US railroad to revitalize the railroad even if good traffic levels could have been obtained. It's a very sad story and for one that grew up along their Chehalis Sub in the 1970's, I wish greatly the Milwaukee had survived, and there's a great chance it could have if proper steps had been taken in the early 1970's.
What a wonderful presentation on one of my absolute favorite railroad subjects. I have Fred Hyde's book on the Milwaukee, which includes several of your photos, but many in this presentation
were new to me. Really appreciated your info on the loads and MTYs and where they went to. Bravo!
Great presentation! Brings back memories of when my Dad worked in the Freight Sales Department of TMR.
Thank you for your presentation. Such a treat to hear from someone who had first-hand experience with railroads and can give "inside" information--like what's in those boxcars and where the car racks came from and where they are going. I hope the border between Canada and USA soon reopens so I can drive back to that country.
I loaded barley out of Pine Creek, WA for a season. Talked to a local who remembers the Milwaukee coming through. One of the last trains to come through derailed in front of a tunnel just west of Pine Creek. He said they ran one more train through and then they were done. The remains of the derailed cars may still be the there, according to him.
Amazing pictures and great information. A lot of this stuff isn't really found in books, especially the types of car loads and insider information. Thanks, Professor! Back in Seattle now, but spent 2 years living in Berkeley up by Tilden Park. Miss the Redwood Valley RR.
Excellent presentation, very nice to see so much detail from a traffic pov.
Fascinating to look at revenue blocks or lack of the PCE trains. Surprised at how well parts were well engineered versus the 2.2% mountain grades
I was up in Avery at Labor Day. The woman in the depot museum does not have a photo of the lunch counter and would really like one if someone could put her in touch with Rob Leachman.
Thank you.
Never seen pics before of the infamous and fatal Pandora collision. Thanks for posting.
Great video! My family is from Avery and remember many stories of the trains!
Rob, thank you for this video! I wrote down the dates of the photos and I’m going to look them up in my DadS time books for any matches! It is a unique connection to him again thank you for your meticulous dedication to preserving this history.
Great presentation--bravo!
1977 pandora wreck from Wrecked in the West.
Do you have any info on the bridge. Across. The Nisqualky river in Mckenna WA. That caught fire. And a train went into the river. Early 70s
Power was not all commercial. Much was from re owned hydro power and power that electric locos pumped back into the system thru regeneration
On the downhill glides I think? They had their own power stations, too, I think.
i hired out 08/16/1971 and ran trains as a locomotive engineer on this run over a hundred times and can say without equivocation this is the kind of nonsense that someone working in an office could propose as history. I have ran trains on every part of the state of Washington you show, You know very little the timetable doesn't show
You don't say anything about the nice communication pole line that shows on most of the slides. That ran from Indiana to Washington.
The Milwaukee would abandon its lines in the Pacific Northwest in 1980 before selling its soul to the Soo Line Railroad in 1986.
Indeed, and that "soul" was the profitable Milwaukee Road mainline between Chicago and the Twin Cities.
Oh yes, the Milwaukee Road is one of the railroads that no longer exist anymore.
So sad to see these right-of-ways abandoned. The DOT should have at least railbanked the interstate right-of-ways for the future. Rail is the most energy efficient transportation per ton mile of any mode. Everything on the railroad can be recycled or is renewable. The railroads had to compete with taxpayer funded highway systems. Not only that the railroads had to pay property taxes which highways don't. I know of two lines that were abandoned in the 1990's that would be very much in use today.
Yes. I've seen how these railroads were private money while government money destroyed towns and ways of lives with their meddling. They just went down a 4 lane near us, replacing perfectly good road signs and doubling the amount of them in an age of GPS. It's infuriating the money they can waste. During last recession they built sound walls with windows and sculpture on them. Infrastructure and wars. Pork.