Hiawatha Story, The by Jim Scribbins w Dust jacket Signed 5th printing

$50.00

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SWIFT of foot was Hiawatha . . .

At first there was a single experimental coach, then a fleet. Out of the fleet emerged a train, Milwaukee Road's entry in the urgent Chicago-Twin Cities speed competition.

That train nearly was called the Flash or the A-1. Polite politics produced instead Hiawatha. (Publicists and romanticists thank you, Longfellow, for the cue.) Shortly a service that was itself a legend touched northern Wisconsin, Omaha, Upper Michigan, even Seattle and Tacoma.

No better name could have been chosen, no finer trains operated. Hiawatha was speed, comfort, luxury. Hiawatha was a genre of imperishable passenger-car memories: Tip Top Tap, Touralux, Skytop, Super Dome. The Hiawatha earned a reputation and a following that would have pleasantly dumbfounded its creators.

The Hiawatha is all but gone now .. . except in this book, where the writer who knows it best brings it all back.

I MUST HAVE BEEN 10 or 11 years old when I discovered what was to become my favorite place for train-watching. Not that I had missed much on the Milwaukee railroad scene. Our house was only a half block from the Northern Division main line and, if I wished or the weather ordained, I could view the railroad traffic from our living-room window.

At night, in bed, I would hear the Mallet articulated pusher which ruled the grade separating our neighborhood.

It would lose its footing, and cinders would cascade onto the house roof as it fought for traction. The passenger trains were plentiful and in groups, which made them something special to be saluted from a reserved close-up seat on the Harley-Davidson shipping platform.

To a 10-year-old it seemed as though the beautiful open-platform observation car of the Copper Country Limited, the red cars of the Soo Line, and the loud-talking new Mikados with the huge initials U.S.R.A. on their tender flanks would go on forever. The "tin fizzles" could not possibly affect the trains.

Here at the foot of 32nd Street was enough railroading to surely go on forever, and with some to spare. As I got closer to the end of the street the view opened out. A 20- or 30-foot bluff furnished a place to sit and see the whole mile valley of railroad at work.

Nearest to me was the Merrill Park suburban station, the main line, and then a giant's ladder of short ready tracks for engines ready to go as called. Beyond were the coaling stage, sand and water facilities, two almost complete circle roundhouses, a brace of special-purpose shop buildings, foundry and miscellaneous, and, more dim in the distance, assorted large and small freight yards.

What a stage and what a backdrop! And things could happen and often did. A constant parade of new ideas in railroading could be viewed. For a while the Pioneer Limited was pulled by standard Pacifics brightly painted orange and red. A couple of doodlebugs used flash steam instead of the usual internal combustion. Various schemes of compounding were tried in the constant fight to make the steam locomotive more efficient. One by one the electric locomotives for the Puget Sound electrification stopped on their way West for public showing and mechanical adjustment. The Twenties in turn were ushered out by bigger and faster steam locomotives and improved rolling stock.

But the biggest story played on the Merrill Park stage was that of the Hiawathas. The atmosphere at the engine terminal and shops that spring of 1935 was supersaturated with suppressed excitement. The prospect of a race for the Chicago-Twin Cities business created unusual team spirit.

The story of the Hiawathas has needed telling. It is the story of mid-20th century railroad passenger service in microcosm. Detailed behind-the-scenes study of the Hiawathas shows the traffic pattern of the Milwaukee Road during a critical period, but also gives us the answer to what other similarly situated railroads did during the same years.

This book is that story, told by Jim Scribbins, whose service in the Milwaukee Road passenger department spans much of the same period as the famous streamliners. Jim's writing for TRAINS Magazine has primed his typewriter for one of the most exciting railroad sagas of the times. The Hiawathas came and they largely have gone. What happened in between is, every bit of it, between the covers of this book.

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