What if the Milwaukee Road didn't de-energize the Pacific Extension?

Wow, Mr. Meyer.

With reference to your immediate on the preceding page, you know I respect your knowledge, and such gives me rise to "why did I ever go to work for 'em"?

Who knows, maybe if I went with your outfit, and somehow could have accepted the "lovely winters in St. Paul" only to be followed by the summer "oven" of Ft. Worth (I thought I was going to become "Krispy Kritter" during my one night July '19 trip to Dallas), my railroad career would have been thirty five years instead of eleven.

Maybe you did, but you should have locked horns with Thomas Ploss (I believe he is now deceased), a MILW Staff Attorney from "my day" and who was "very pro Lines West".

I have Ploss's book. Very insightful about the politics and personal relationships that make most organizations tick. But it is obvious reading it that he was not an operations guy.

Much has been written about shady accounting and management shortcomings and conspiracies on the Milwaukee Road and how it might have affected what happened to the Pacific Extension. A lot of that can be subjective, and that's why I prefer to focus on the operational characteristics of the route. And when the route and its feeder lines have overall many more steep grades and circuity than the competition, that equates to a higher cost, which is simply an untenable situation - especially in the case of the Milwaukee looking ahead (from the 1970s) to deregulation (where lower cost railroads could undercut the Milwaukee) and longer, heavier trains (especially difficult and costly on routes with multiple steep grades).