mtuandrew wrote:And for the sake of this thread's discussion, who should C&NW have targeted instead, considering they wanted KC access badly?
Interesting question. It's a matter of perspective. From another
interesting discussion...
SlowFreight wrote:Desertdweller wrote:Ben Heinemann was the Darth Vader of Granger Railroads (can I say that here?). His concept of competition was to buy your competitor and shut him down, employees and public be damned.
Nothing wrong with calling Heinemann as he was.
I would also agree completely! Perhaps circumstances would have been different with someone else running C&NW at the time. But under Heineman, C&NW taking over the Chicago Great Western wasn't unreasonable given Heineman's two objectives of reaching Kansas City and eliminating competition.
But Chicago Great Western never had to agree to the merger. I mean, Turkey desperately wants to be part of the EU, but that doesn't mean the EU has to say yes. Hell, I'd like to nail Holly Madison, but that doesn't mean she has to say yes. For CGW, I'm sure it came down to bankers and stockholders, and not good railroading and good business, which gives us one more example of how Wall Street got in the way of better railroad mergers for our nation's network. If anyone has any details on the influences and conditions of the CGW-C&NW merger, please share! Because I can't imagine anyone at Oelwein thought C&NW would do them any good.
The question of
how C&NW could get into Kansas City brings up another question: To Kansas City
FROM where? Even
without the Minneapolis & St. Louis (shown in pink), CGW's Kansas City line could have remained a viable route to the Twin Cities when combined with the C&NW, and probably as competitive as Rock Island's Spine Line with proper and routine upgrades. Pieces of the M&StL probably would have made that connection even better.
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But if C&NW only wanted CGW to connect
Chicago with Kansas City, then it was really only interested in CGW between Kansas City and Marshalltown, Iowa, a distance of approximately 276.8 miles, where it crossed C&NW's east-west main line to Omaha. Well, if that freight was going all the way to
Marshalltown to get from Chicago to Kansas City and vice versa, then I think there were other options.
How about C&NW trackage rights over the CB&Q? I never thought I'd say this, but
some parts of the Tootin' Louie were actually useful. From Marshalltown, the M&StL, now part of C&NW, went south to Albia, west of Ottumwa, where it connected with the Burlington Route for a quick route to Kansas City. Name your price, Q. Access to Milwaukee? How about taking hot-shot fast freights from points west to the Twin Cities that would otherwise go over the slower GN from Sioux City and shifting them to the much more direct Omaha Line through southern Minnesota? Any deal could be arranged. Given the delicate balances during the 60s and 70s between the Granger Roads and Union Pacific, this could have been very interesting!
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Or trackage rights on Rock Island. Given that delicate balance between the Granger Roads and Union Pacific, why
not focus on merging with the Rock Island? Chicago Great Western was certainly smaller peanuts compared to the Rock, and it's not as if merging systems this large wasn't being done in the 60s. It seems to me that Union Pacific always held the upper hand with the Grangers fighting for Omaha/Council Bluffs traffic. Not only would Ben Heineman reach his two goals of connecting to Kansas City and eliminating competition in saturated Iowa and southern Minnesota, but both roads would benefit greatly as a whole new region of traffic was funneled through the Rock to the Southern Pacific at Santa Rosa, New Mexico.
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So to be clear, I think merging with CGW was good and reasonable for Chicago & Northwestern. But to reach Kansas City, I think there were other options that wouldn't have made for such a raw deal for the Chicago Great Western, an efficient system with sound financial standings. It seemed more like a takeover than a merger.
mtuandrew wrote:So for the sake of discussion, which company do you think CGW have merged with or into? I have my own opinion, but I'm curious to hear yours.
Yes, another good question remains. I'll have to start a discussion on that soon!