Ghosts of Christmas Past

In the cold winter months of 1977, it was announced that the Milwaukee Road would file for bankruptcy. The date was December 19.

The path to bankruptcy had been one in the making for many years, seemingly unavoidable, and without any large government loans or bailouts forthcoming. Perhaps the government was simply not in the mood to form a "Conrail West" made up of the struggling Rock Island and Milwaukee Road. Perhaps the lobbyists that seem to play such a prominent role in the workings of money and policy were simply better funded at the Milwaukee's major competitors.

History records that the line's final winters were cold indeed. Locomotives were borrowed to supplement a dilapidated fleet and movements across the system reflected the deteriorated condition of the lines. The announcement of bankruptcy must have been a crushing blow to the people who relied on the Road to make a living. Perhaps it was expected, but the announcement from the managers to their employees on that day 31 years ago must have been hard to swallow. The cold winter, the dilapidated railroad, the uncertainty of a bleak future, all at a time of year marked by hope and supposed joy. In the warm glow of Christmas trees across small Milwaukee towns in the West sat those who were most effected by the line's bankruptcy, caught in the irony of the season.

That season was a dark one in the history of America's Resourceful Railroad. In towns like Harlowton and Othello, where the job losses were crippling, the shadow cast lingers to this day. This was the Milwaukee's final bankruptcy from which it would never fully recover. The company that proceeded forward would be without it's Western Extension, a so-called "retrenchment" of it's Midwestern core lines. It would also be without it's most profitable lines and its balance sheets reflected the poor performance of the new Midwestern core immediately. A final irony from a railroad that seemed to exist on them.

31 years later, these ghosts of Christmas past haunt other industries in times of financial turmoil and bleak outlooks. Bailouts are available to some, but many people feel the crunch of an uncertain future. Nonetheless, there is something that can transcend the darkness of the moment in the brightness of a holiday season. The Bitterroot Mountains, shown on a cold and snowy day above, no longer echo with the passing of Milwaukee freights, but their beauty and presence remains today as it has since well before the Milwaukee hung its first electric wires over the line. There are reasons for Hope, even amidst the ghosts of Christmas past.

Comments

SDP45 said…
Leland,
Very moody tone. You sure hit the mark, though.

While stunning to the towns mentioned, I bet you can ask any 20 people in Othello today about the Milwaukee Road, and less than 5 will have a clue what you are referring to. It has been forgotten
12/20/2008 05:20:00 PM
Anonymous said…
This may be true, but much of Othello's growth has come since the abandonment of Lines West. Go down the main street there, like I did four years ago...many new businesses, chain stores and restaurants, streets in good repair, and a busy main highway from Warden to the west. The MILW left Othello before it's boom and that boom is only slightly fueled by the short line that retains operations on a weekly basis to Othello.
12/21/2008 06:37:00 PM
LinesWest said…
Some interesting comments here. Dan, you're absolutely right that these things are forgotten now by so many. The anonymous poster kind of hints at this too - that Othello has survived and become something else with just a few vestiges of what was. I'm not sure Othello is experiencing a boom, but perhaps in some sense. Regardless, its past is clearly not a well remembered one by those working the chain restaurants and stores. The Milwaukee memory is growing dim and life moves ever forward.
12/22/2008 07:28:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buried

Image
 Location:  Near Bear Mouth, MT 1603 miles west of Chicago The daylight is fading away in the photo above - in the space that has been cut by the Clark Fork River.  Here one finds the Milwaukee heading to Bearmouth, MT, making its way steadily west.  Still marking the path is the former NP (Montana Rail Link at the time this photo was taken) and not far away, empty tunnels that lie in unchanging darkness.  The searchlight signal of the old NP shows a high green along the steel rails still present, a lonely sentinel in a sad and lonely place. The signatures of Milwaukee were fading even during the time of this photo, now itself 20 years old.  The gravel road preserves what was the right-of-way but telegraphy and other markers were quickly falling even then.   Traveling along I90 is now a trip through forgotten history and gravesites.  Where bridges once crossed the old transcontinental, fill has taken their place.  No more insulator panels that guard the roads above from the electrical
Read more

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Image
 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or beyond hope in a place like th
Read more

Summer Skies and Fading Paint

Image
On the way out of Deer Lodge, the Milwaukee Road rolled west by a fuel rack and two depots that bounded it north and south.  To the south of the rails was the freight depot, shown above and below.  Note the telegraphy pole that rises through the roof at the west end.  One can scroll back through the decades online and find it, always present, rising right through the eve of the old freight house.   Those decades weren't kind to the old house either.  The white paint has washed and faded away, the wooden shingles are increasingly missing.  When these pictures were taken in the early 2000s, the end was very near.  To the north of the former main, the passenger depot has taken on a new life as a church, but no such rebirth has come to the old freight house.  Under the hot Montana sun, the remaining paint continues to fade away and soon the house, the loading dock, and the telegraphy pole that always seemed to rise through the roof will vanish from under these blue skies. To the north
Read more