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Mileposts On The Prairie Minneapolis & St Louis Railway by Frank Donovan HardCov
Mileposts On The Prairie The story of the Minneapolis & St Louis By Frank Donovan
Hard Cover
Copyright 1950 FIRST PRINTING
310 Pages
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations......viii
1. Resurrected Railroad ......3
2. Minneapolis Looks Afar.....9
3. The St. Louis Road .....21
4. The Skally Gets Control.....33
5. Washburn Regime......45
6. Enter the Rock Island ....63
7. Truesdale and Trying Times ....79
8. House of Hawley .......91
9. The Hook and Eye ......105
10. "... & Pacific" .......123
11. High Back Seats and Electric Lights ...137
12. The Clover Leaf and the Alton ....151
13. Retrenchment and Reorganization ...159
14. Bremner Takes Hold ......173
15. Doctor of Sick Railroads.....187
16. "Oh No, Day Kant Do Dat!" ....199
17. Sale and Salvation......213
18. Peace and Prosperity ......225
19. Men of M. & St. L.......237
20. From Woodburners to Diesels ....247
21. On Rolls the Louie......259
22. Time Freight 20 .......263
Acknowledgments......279
Family Tree.......286
Bibliography.......288
Index ....297
ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece-By the waters of the Minnetonka
First Section of Illustrations-Between pages 54 and 55. Henry Titus Welles and William Drew Washburn. Falls of St. Anthony; view of Minneapolis.
Manchester American-type locomotive; Albert Lea station. Scene along the St. Croix.
River boats and Lake Park Hotel.
Minneapolis' first skyscraper; Washington Avenue station. The Central Iowa's No. 26; an Iowa Central mixed run. Marshalltown blacksmith shop; grain elevators at Boyd. Edwin Hawley, William Haynes Truesdale and William Hep-
burn Bremner.
LeBeau, S. Dak., station; stern-wheeled ferry and rotary plowing in the blizzard of 1917.
Old M&St.L and Iowa Central timetables.
North Star Limited; passenger train at Peoria.
Ten wheeler and Mogul locomotives.
Consolidation, Mikado and other locomotives.
Pacific and Mikado doubleheading; gas-electric motor car.
Second Section of Illustrations-Between pages 182 and 183. Lucian Charles Sprague.
The Old (Motive power, roadbed, gondolas) .
The New (Motive power, roadbed, all-steel box cars) . Semi-streamlined Mikado; three-unit Diesel; Grinnell depot. Albia-Albert Lea motor train; blizzard of 1936; Keithsburg
bridge.
Railway Transfer yard; Middle yard; Cedar Lake shops. Extra freight in Scott county; local freight No. 70.
Sugar beets at Hopkins, Minn.; No. 20, flagship of the time freights.
All time map of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. Redwood, Minn., station; Madison station.
Mixed freight extra; No.19 coming into "Osky."
Olds, Iowa, from the cab of a Diesel; Monmouth-Peoria way freight.
Pacific, two-unit and three-unit Diesel locomotives.
Passenger and freight cars.
Diesel road switcher; Diesel shop at Cedar Lake, Minneapolis. Offices of the past; new offices under construction.
Map of Lake Minnetonka 71
An early advertisement 138
Advertisement of the North Star Limited 142
Sammy Dunn and the company ad 145
Map of dispositions proposed for M & St .L lines . . 201
The history of The Minneapolis& St. Louis Railway Company is one of the most interesting among modern Class I rail carriers. First, because in the years since the road was founded in 1870 it has encountered and conquered more vicissitudes than probably any road of its size in the country. Secondly, because it is a story of those far-sighted railroad pioneers who built, expanded and preserved the "little" big railroad that has played such a major role in the development of the great American Midwest.
The Minneapolis St. Louis is today a well-equipped, debt-free railroad, but it was not always thus. Old timers along its right of way still remember the jokes about M & St L standing for "Maimed and Still Limping" or "Midnight and Still Later." Indeed it is a fact that the Minneapolis & St. Louis was put up for auction forty-two times and each time there were no bidders. Then came the forty-third try - and L. C. Sprague. Since then, under Sprague management, the M & St L has become widely known as one of the nation's most reliable railroads with trackage, dieselized motive power and rolling stock of the best.
The Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway was organized in 1870 to provide Minneapolis with an independent outlet to the South and East. Later in the '80's, with W. D. Washburn as its president, it gained fame for its service to the Lake Minnetonka area at a time when that resort was as popular as Bar Harbor or Saratoga Springs is today. Afterward, in the 1900's, the Minneapolis & St. Louis achieved nationwide prominence when the quiet, frugal New Yorker, Edwin Hawley, used that road together with the Iowa Central as a foundation stone on which to build a railroad empire that spanned half the continent.
Beside making a notable contribution to the literature of American railroading, Frank Donovan has written a lively readable book filled with many fascinating railroad yarns about locomotives, rolling stock and railroad-en that reflect a broad cross section of mid-western American life. This, therefore, is a book written for readers who value authoritative railroad history, regional Americana or simply for those who enjoy a good story well told.
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