CHICAGO GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD

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Maple Leaf c.1960

CHICAGO GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD. In 1854, the Legislature of the Territory of Minnesota had chartered the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad (M&NW) to be built between Lake Superior, Minneapolis and Dubuque, Iowa. Nothing was begun until the railroad was purchased by Alpheus Beede Stickney and other investors in 1883. Immediately, the railroad began building and acquiring other lines. (1)

In September 1884, construction began and by October the road was operating between St. Paul, Minnesota southward to Lyle on the Minnesota-Iowa border. Late in 1885 the road reached Manly Junction in Worth County, Iowa which was on the Iowa Central railroad line. (2)

In the summer of 1885 the Minnesota and Northwestern announced that it wanted to acquire the Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska Railroad (WI&N) which was constructing track from Des Moines to Waterloo. At the time, the WI&N was attempting to acquire the Des Moines, Osceola and Southern which was completed from Des Moines to Cainsville, Missouri. (3)

On June 1, 1886 Stickney and his associates reincorporated realizing the name Minnesota and Northwestern was misleading. Forming the Chicago, St. Paul and Kansas City Railway (CStP&KC), they purchased the WI&N which because of its route across Iowa was known as "The Old Diagonal" since its founding on March 17, 1882. (4) On November 30, 1886 the DUBUQUE AND NORTHWESTERN RAILROAD conveyed its property to the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad Company of Minnesota. (5) This gave the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad Company a complete line of railroad from St. Paul to Dubuque, the line from Hayfield to Lyle where it connected with the Illinois Central, and a line from Sumner west to Hampton, Iowa. (6) Early in 1887, the CStP&KC purchased the DUBUQUE AND DAKOTA RAILROAD. In 1887 the CStP&KC purchased all the property of the Minnesota and Northwestern. (7)

By 1888 the Chicago, St. Paul and Kansas City Railroad (CStP&KC) had finished a continuous line all the way across Illinois to Forest Park, Illinois, except for trackage rights with the Illinois Central across the MISSISSIPPI RIVER. At Forest Park, Illinois the railroad made a connection with the ancestor of the Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal for the last nine miles into Chicago's Grand Central Station. The new construction included Illinois' longest railway bore, the Winston Tunnel, south of Galena.

Through merger and construction, the CStP&KC then added lines between Oelwein, Iowa, on the Chicago-to-St. Paul mainline, and Kansas City, Missouri, by 1891, and between Oelwein and Omaha, Nebraska by 1903. Oelwein became the hub of the railroad and its main locomotive repair shops were soon located there. The huge facility inspired Walter Chrysler, the future automobile manufacturer, who worked as the supervisor of the shops between 1904 and 1910 when he left after a dispute with Stickney's successor, Samuel Felton. (8) In his autobiography, Life of Ann American Workman, Chrysler wrote:

         They were the biggest shops I had ever seen. Sixteen or
         eighteen locomotives could be hauled inside them. In the
         winter darkness they were brilliantly illuminated with 
         sputtering bluish arc lamps...when I saw the transfer
         tables I felt like applauding... (9)

The Great Western also expanded its assortment of feeder branch lines in Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois, but plans to continue expanding the railroad north to Duluth, Minnesota, west to Sioux City, Iowa or Denver, Colorado, or south into Mexico, never occurred.

A new rail line in the Midwest, the CStP&KC fought well-funded competitors. Aware of the rate cutting, rebating and other forms of discrimination used by railroads at the time, he strongly supported one rate for all shippers for a specific commodity between two given points. (10) In a meeting with other railroad presidents, it is said he complimented each as a person of honesty and fine character before adding, "...but as railroad presidents I would not trust any one of you with my watch." (11) By 1892, however, his railroad was near financial ruin. He avoided receivership by reorganizing the road as the Chicago Great Western Railway.

The railroad survived the Panic of 1893 because the new company had no mortgage indebtedness. (11) With Stickney leading, the company developed a reputation for being an innovative and progressive competitor for traffic between the terminals it served. The locomotives' stacks were painted a bright red giving the Great Western the nickname "The Red Stack." (12) However, the Panic of 1907 forced it into bankruptcy, and the road was purchased by financial interests connected to J. P. Morgan. Stickney, who was forced out and replaced by Samuel Morse Felton, Jr. in 1909.

Felton realized that the railroad could not survive in the fiercely competitive markets it served without an ambitious and sustained effort to innovate and modernize. New rails, new locomotives including several Mallet locomotives (which set a precedent for the railroad acquiring powerful locomotives with huge horsepower) pulled ever-longer freight trains over the system. Gasoline-powered motorcars replaced steam power on the passenger trains.

Felton retired in 1929. At the time he stepped down, investors friendly with Patrick H. Joyce had purchased a controlling interest in the Great Western from J. P. Morgan and had placed him in charge of the Great Western. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 threatened these financial interests, so Joyce and his friends, along with the Van Sweringen brothers, embarked on a stock-manipulation scheme to keep the price of CGW stock high. In 1935, the railroad declared bankruptcy again. It was reorganized and re-emerged in 1941.

Despite the financial mismanagement, Joyce continued the modernization and innovation of his predecessors. The Great Western trimmed passenger service, which was never particularly profitable on the lightly-populated lines, abandoned branch lines and refurbished main lines, and continued acquisition of huge locomotives which pulled enormous trains, sometimes one-hundred cars long and longer. The most important innovation was the so-called "Piggyback Service", the forerunner of modern intermodal freight transport, which the Great Western introduced in 1936 by carrying several hundred truck trailers on specially modified flat cars. The Great Western was also an early proponent of diesel power. It purchased its first diesel-electric locomotive, an 800-horsepower yard switcher from Westinghouse, in 1934, and was completely converted to diesel power by 1950.

As this was happening, a group of businessmen friendly to William N. Deramus, Jr., president of the Kansas City Southern, purchased a controlling share of Great Western stock, and by 1949, this group appointed Deramus' son, William N. Deramus III, to head the railroad. He continued, even more aggressively than his predecessors, the modernization and cost-trimming that had become the hallmarks of the corporate culture of the CGW. Under Deramus, passenger service was almost entirely eliminated and the railroad's offices, spread out in Chicago and throughout the system, were consolidated in Oelwein. Even longer trains than before, pulled by sets of five or more EMD F-units, became standard operating procedure, which hurt service but increased efficiency.

In 1946, the first proposal to merge the Great Western with other railroads, this time with the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad. Investors balked and the CGW stayed independent, but even as the Great Western survived and thrived during the 1950s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the American railroad climate was changing. Railroads were merging, changing traffic patterns and threatening the delicate economic balance in which railroads of similar size and stability to the CGW could exist. By the time Deramus stepped down from the CGW in 1957 to take the presidency at the Missouri-Kansas-Texas the era of the railroad super-merger had begun.

Upon his resignation, Deramus was replaced by Edward T. Reidy. As before, innovations continued to keep the company profitable. Second-generation diesel locomotives such as the EMD GP30 and EMD SD40, the largest and most powerful the CGW ever owned, found their way into the system, and the Oelwein shops stayed busy repairing and maintaining the now-aged F-units long after many other railroads had replaced theirs. Passenger service, reduced to two St. Paul to Omaha trains, was gone by 1962. Labor costs were trimmed, branch lines abandoned, as the Great Western tried to stay fiscally viable enough to be a suitable merger partner.

Upon the failure of a merger offer from the Soo Line Railroad in 1963, the board of the Great Western grew increasingly anxious about its continued viability in a consolidating railroad market. Testifying before the Interstate Commerce Commission in Chicago, President Reidy claimed, "The simple fact is that there is just too much transportation available between the principal cities we serve. The Great Western cannot long survive as an independent carried under these conditions."

The CGW, therefore, was open to a merger bid with the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), first proposed in 1964. After a long period of regulatory wrangling, on July 1, 1968, the Chicago Great Western merged with Chicago and North Western. The CNW maintained the facilities at Oelwein for several years, but ultimately abandoned the yard and shops. Within a decade, most of the CGW right-of-way had been abandoned by the CNW.

Almost forty years after merger and piecemeal abandonment, some Chicago Great Western trackage and infrastructure remains in service. In Illinois, for example, the CGW mainline through St. Charles is now operated by the Union Pacific Railroad as an industrial lead for several shippers including a lumber yard; in Byron, a small section of trackage is used for car storage. Several depots also remain, some converted to better serve their new, non-railroad owners, and others restored to their former appearance. Long sections of former CGW rights-of-way have been preserved as rail trails, such as the Great Western Trail between Villa Park and Sycamore, Illinois, the Cannon Valley Trail between Red Wing and Cannon Falls, Minnesota, and the Sakatah Singing Hills State Trail between Faribault and Mankato, Minnesota.

Ultimately covering an estimated 1,500 miles in the Midwest, the railroad was called the "Corn Belt Route." It led from Dubuque past Sageville and into Durango, Graf, Twin Springs, Epworth, Farley, and Dyersville through some of the wildest and most scenic regions in the county. Faced in 1885 with a route for the Dubuque and North Western five miles north of their city, residents of Dyersville sent representative businessmen to Dubuque to negotiate with railroad management. As a result of the meeting, the railroad was granted free right-of-way through the Dyersville corporate limits. Three blocks of residential area were given for railroad use and the homes were moved from the land by the city.

The first train moving westward rolled through Dyersville in 1886. The immediate effect of the railroad included rising land values and business prosperity. The Chicago Northwestern Railroad, an east-west system, was known as the "Maple Leaf Route," because at Oelwein the stem of the route from Chicago branched into lines aimed toward Omaha, Kansas City and St. Paul.

In 1968 the railroad was merged with the Chicago and Northwestern. The railroad stopped service to Dyersville in 1956 and the depot was demolished in 1972. In the 1980s the decision was made by the railroad's parent corporation to abandon the line. A scramble started among conservation people, adjoining landowners and bicyclists who sought to create a bike path on the former right-of-way. Eventually the bicyclists won and HERITAGE TRAIL was created.

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Source:

1. "History of the Chicago Great Western," Online: http://www.cgwoelwein.com/cgwhistory.html

2. Donovan, Frank P. Iowa Railroads, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000, p. 53

3. Finch, Charles W. Our American Railroads; The Way It Was, East Dubuque, IL, Register Printing Company, 1988, p. 118

4. Donovan

5. "A Brief History Of the Construction And Operation of the Chicago Great Western Railway Company," Train Web. Online: http://trainweb.org/ucgw/hsfcgw10.htm

6. Ibid.

7. Donovan

8. Ibid., p. 59

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., p. 59

12. Ibid. p. 55