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The Milwaukee Road's Western Extension: The Building of a Transcontinental Railroad | 
 enlarge | Author: Stan Johnson
Publisher: Museum of North Idaho Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $74.95
Buy New: $47.22
You Save: $27.73 (37%)
New (12) Used (3) from $47.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 360935
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 548
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.5
Dimensions (in): 11.3 x 8.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0972335668
EAN: 9780972335669
ASIN: 0972335668
Publication Date: March 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 great book November 4, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is great if you are a Milwaukee RR fan. It has alot of history not covered in other books. It also had alot of story and photos on the 1900s fire.
 Before Boxcabs and Little Joes September 10, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
A great book for those of us that fondly remember power changes at Harlowton, pacing the "XL Special" west of Piedmont, or camping alongside the St. Joe River waiting for the "Thunderhawk" to leave Avery!
Extensive coverage of the surveying, funding, and trackwork required to build our favorite railroad's Pacific Extension, with particular focus on the area between Three Forks and Avery; the crossing of the Cascades is covered, but not in as much detail as lines east of Othello.
Afer several chapters of general interest discussion of surveying and funding the line, as well as recruiting trackworkers in Europe (Montenegro? Who would have guessed!?)five chapters take you from Mobridge, South Dakota, to Tacoma, Washington, with particular focus on Pipestone and St Paul passes, and construction of the line through Sixteen Mile Canyon, above Harlow's Montana Railroad.
While certainly not a picture book, there are many superbly reproduced photographs depicting life along the right-of-way being built; most of the images I've never seen, and I have most of what has been published on the Milwaukee Road since the 1960s.
Unusual for railroad books, there are many "quality of life" images such as Milwaukee Road sponsored boxing matches, baseball teams, and dancing bears (real ones!) for the entertainment of trackworkers and their families. You'll also note the high per capita presence of saloons in these towns, like Taft, Montana. Guess the "hell on wheels" towns made famous by the Union Pacific four decades earlier was still alive and well in the early 20th century American west.
Author Johnson's latest addition to literature on the Milwaukee Road explores lots of new historical ground and is a fascinating read and a detailed examination of the construction of the Pacific Extension of one of America's greatest "fallen flags!"
Great photographs, horrible editing August 27, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
After the terrible 1893 depression (when much of the country's railroad mileage went into bankruptcy) the U.S. entered into a tremendous boom (the Great Northern's earnings quadrupled over 15 years from 1890). So in 1905 the Milwaukee Road decided to build to the Pacific Coast, partly so as not to get locked into just local Midwest business and partly because some directors controlled Anaconda Copper in Butte, and wanted to break the Great Northern-Union Pacific-Northern Pacific pool so they could get lower rates for Anaconda (in one of hundreds of errors in the book, the author suggests that only the Northern Pacific served Butte).
So Stan Johnson, based on a more than lifelong association with the Milwaukee Road (his stepfather was a conductor with the road, going back to construction days), has written the story of the road's remarkable Western Extension. The book has a fabulous collection of photographs, showing all phases of the process. The author goes down the whole route from Mobridge to Puget Sound, covering the major projects and mishaps involved, with detail added from years of stories from Milwaukee railroaders. As a result the book is highly recommended to all Milwaukee fans (of course), and also to anyone with an interest in western railroading and rail construction. Unfortunately there is no good map of the whole route. Readers with access to the Internet can use Terraserver-USA (with USGS topographic maps and aerial photos, with almost all the line covered) and Google Earth (the line can be followed fairly well, even where abandoned west of Miles City). While the construction process is well covered, Johnson says nothing about the financing required or the ultimate fate of the railroad (and the Extension), nor does he discuss the horrible cost overruns. Originally estimated to cost about $ 60 million (evidently from a rather casual estimating process, based on replicating the Northern Pacific), the cost in fact ran over $ 220 million, while electrification added another $ 23 million. The Milwaukee had bad timing, as its construction coincided with the rail construction boom at the beginning of the century (the Western Pacific, SP&S, Santa Fe's Belen cutoff, rebuilding the Central Pacific, plus others) so costs went up, while competing roads made it pay much more for land needed. But the worst came from the U.S. government; the Panama Canal was finished in 1914, forcing down freight rates, the newly active ICC (egged on by politicians) fixed rail rates while inflation (unknown since the Civil War) took off, and it sharply forced up labor costs. In addition to the directors' favoring their own interests over the railroad's (the Montana power contract for electrification for example), there was a lot of incompetent management. The 3,000 volt DC electrification chosen was a very poor choice (requiring manned substations every thirty miles), while it's hard to understand how the cost could have been justified on the Milwaukee's traffic base (but all that copper wire helped Anaconda again). Largely as a result the Milwaukee went bankrupt in 1925.
Unfortunately the text seems not to have been edited at all (except for spell check). There are hundreds of obvious errors. Parts of the text have had words added, while other words are deleted. The author's syntax is sometimes rather tortured, and his material could have been better organized. This is really unfortunate, as this could have been one of the great rail history books, a source of pride to everyone involved. Instead it's a terrible display of sloppiness, with only the picture editor deserving credit for a job well done.
Best Reportage on Subject May 12, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Stan Johnson's treatment of the building of the Milwaukee Road's Pacific Coast Extension is a masterpiece. He has done excellent research, and his writing is easy to follow. As a product, the book is impressive, too. The layout is pleasing, and many photographs complement Johnson's text. The only negative about the book is that the proofreaders let the author down; there are a lot of editorial errors in the text.
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