Old Missoula

Revolutionary Changes Take Place on Milwaukee Road

Beneath the Higgins Avenue Bridge at Missoula’s picturesque Milwaukee station, revolutionary changes in railroading are taking place.

Railroading is fast and efficient compared with the operation of 1908 when the Milwaukee first came through Missoula. Locomotives on the Rocky Mountain Division, of which Missoula is a part, operate by electricity, except those used for switching. Today’s rails are made of a tougher steel with a far longer life.

CTC Big Advance

Centralized traffic control enables a single track to handle 50 per cent more traffic. The Morse telegrapher is nearly extinct. His work is done by electric telegraphic typewriters or teleprinters, telephone, and two-way radio. Without the benefit of these new technologies, railroads probably would not have been able to survive the extremely difficult conditions of the post war period.

The Milwaukee introduced her new Olympian Hiawatha in 1947. This train is equipped with 12 cars, including a mail car, a combination baggage and dormitory car (to house dining car employes), a 40-seat dining car with diagonal table and seating arrangements, a recreation car with restaurant and cocktail lounge, reclining day coaches and sleeping cars with wide berths.

Within months Missoula will receive its Flexi-Van equipment. Flexi-Van, a new versatile type of railway transportation, consists of a specially designed flat car, light weight trailer units, and special highway wheel and axle assemblies known as “bogies.”

Its use differs radically from earlier types of rail-highway equipment in that the special trailer units slide from their highway wheels onto the flat cars in but four minutes, the operation being simplified by hydraulic lift-tables on the cars, which are powered from the highway tractor battery.

Recently the Rocky Mountain Division of the Milwaukee Road has made two consolidations.

In 1958 the division was extended 109 miles westward to Malden, Wash. This was the first consolidation or division since 1917, when the old Missoula Division was absorbed by the Rocky Mountain Division. A division shift was made again Dec. 1, 1959. The division now encompasses the area from Miles City to Avery, Idaho.

The Milwaukee passenger station was renovated in 1957 to permit concentration of the Milwaukee office and services to shippers. Freight offices of the Milwaukee Road, as well as the office of the Missoula agent, moved to the passenger station from their South Higgins and 4^th street location.

New Rate Plan

Only recently the Milwaukee introduced a travel-dine-sleep package plan. This new rate plan was established in 1959 primarily to benefit long-traveling and transcontinental passengers, embracing train fare, Pullman sleeping car accommodations and meals. It enables passengers to purchase rail tickets, sleeping car space tickets and meal coupons at the same time, in advance of departure.

The Milwaukee was hard-hit by the steel strike and droughts in 1959. Net income reflected a decrease of 8.2 million dollars in gross revenue. Lower revenues were caused by a decline in car loadings of grain, coal and forest products, which normally are one-third of the road’s freight income.

In 1960 the Milwaukee Road operates on 1,251 miles of Montana rail lines with an average number of 1,279 employes in the state. Wages paid by the Milwaukee amount to almost eight million dollars.

The Milwaukee Road has 98 electric engines which are used only in mountainous areas. The Milwaukee uses 733 passenger cars, with 60 sleeping cars, 50,280 freight cars, 286 switching engines and 483 cabooses.

The future promises even more amazing advances, such as automatic locomotives, remote control trains, fully automatic substations, semi-automation applied to other railroad procedures such as ticketing and car accounting, and electronic brains which supply complete information about freight cars on every system throughout the nation.

 

Agents in Missoula have been George B. Baker, 1944-56, who succeeded S. C. Ray; Ralph R Coon, 1956-59, and E. C. Reeves appointed Aug. 16, 1959.