{"id":1593,"date":"2016-07-29T13:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T18:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=1593"},"modified":"2016-07-29T13:09:01","modified_gmt":"2016-07-29T18:09:01","slug":"milwaukee-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=1593","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Road<\/strong> Hiawatha passenger train service is being remembered today.\u00a0The Milwaukee Road is the most common name used to refer to the\u00a0Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad. The company began\u00a0its life as the\u00a0Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad. The line was established to connect the Lake Michigan port city of Milwaukee to towns along the upper Mississippi River. Becoming\u00a0the\u00a0Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad prior to\u00a0construction, the rail line first\u00a0reached the Mississippi River in 1857.<\/p>\n

During\u00a0the 1890’s the company decided\u00a0to extend the line to the Pacific Northwest. This was done\u00a0to compete with the other railroads operating in the upper Midwest. The Pacific Northwest Extension was approved in 1905, at an estimated cost of $60 million. Beginning construction in 1906, the track\u00a0was completed during 1909. However, many people would eventually blame this expansion for the demise of the Milwaukee Road.\u00a0The line\u00a0bypassed many cities in the region,\u00a0limiting the lines\u00a0revenue potential.<\/p>\n

Milwaukee Road Hiawatha service<\/h2>\n

The name “Hiawatha” was used by the\u00a0Milwaukee Road for its fleet of passenger trains. The service was operated by\u00a0some of the best train equipment\u00a0ever built.\u00a0The cars were built by the railroad at its own shops in the Menomonee Valley area of Milwaukee. The name Hiawatha comes from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “The song of Hiawatha”.\u00a0These Hiawatha trains were famous for some of their\u00a0fabulous\u00a0observation cars\u00a0designed\u00a0by industrialist Brooks Stevens.\u00a0Longer\u00a0“Skytop Lounge” observation cars were later\u00a0ordered from The Pullman Car Company for the “Olympian Hiawatha”\u00a0train in 1951. The\u00a0Olympian Hiawatha\u00a0train would later be purchased by\u00a0the Canadian National Railway.<\/p>\n

Throughout\u00a0the 1960’s, Railroads were no longer able to effectively compete for passenger service. Lower cost\u00a0air travel, and the convenience and popularity of the automobile, had taken its toll on the industry. Amtrak was\u00a0founded in 1971\u00a0by the government to take control\u00a0of the majority of passenger rail service. Amtrak would go on to operated a route from Chicago to Milwaukee to Minneapolis called\u00a0“The\u00a0Hiawatha”. The route would be\u00a0renamed as “The Twin Cities Hiawatha”. Later, extending\u00a0the route on to Seattle, it would be renamed again as “The North Coast Hiawatha”. The service was eventually ended for good in 1979.<\/p>\n

Amtrak also used the term “Hiawatha Service” for the passenger trains operating along the corridor between Milwaukee and Chicago.\u00a0This service continues to operate\u00a0today running along the original\u00a0Milwaukee Road tracks\u00a0between the two cities.<\/p>\n

\"milwaukee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger train service is being remembered today.\u00a0The Milwaukee Road is the most common name used to refer to the\u00a0Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad. The company began\u00a0its life as the\u00a0Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad. The line was established to connect the Lake Michigan port city of Milwaukee to towns along the upper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1593"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1604,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1593\/revisions\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}