by Bill Anderson/photos as noted
June 1958: picture a 12-year-old budding railfan on a road trip with his family, making the trip’s next-to-last stop in Missoula, Mont. Shortly after the family’s late-afternoon arrival, the melodic sound of the westbound North Coast Limited’s horn was heard blowing for a street crossing several blocks from the motel. The sight of Northern Pacific’s two-tone green streamliner diverted attention from unpacking the car. However, the main event for this young railfan occurred the next morning, with a drive down to the depot of the other railroad in town, Milwaukee Road.
Shortly after 7:00am, the headlight and flat nose of a bipolar electric locomotive materialized to the west. As the eastbound Olympian Hiawatha was braking to a stop, I snapped the first of what would be tens of thousands of railroad photos. Decked out in Union Pacific’s Armour Yellow paint scheme — a change rooted in the two roads’ 1955 passenger operating agreement — the one-of-a-kind features only found on Milwaukee Road gave this streamliner a different personality. Most unique was the motive power, running over the longest segment of electrified main line on the continent. Other unique characteristics were the full-length Super Dome lounge and, bringing up the rear of the train, the Creek-series Skytop sleeper-lounge car. Although there was a modest flurry of platform activity, well-wishers outnumbered passengers boarding or leaving the train by three to one.
Beyond this uniqueness, questions were raised. Here was a train in the June 1958 vacation travel season with only two coaches and fewer than three sleeping cars. To put this into perspective, that summer there was no domestic jet airline service, and the Interstate highway system amounted to significantly more plans and construction than completed segments. Moreover, the previous day’s North Coast Limited had about double the number of coach and sleeping cars, as did UP’s named passenger trains rolling across my native southern Idaho that summer.
ABOVE: With the new train’s name lettered on their cab sides, an A-B-A set of Fairbanks-Morse “Erie-built” diesels leads the inaugural run of the Olympian Hiawatha on June 29, 1947. —Milwaukee Road
The Olympian Hi was completing its 11th year of service. At the time, it was not known that it had less than three years remaining as a transcontinental streamliner. That rather low-capacity consist telegraphed a warning that despite all its unique characteristics, there was trouble.
An Olympian joins the fleet
The reimagining of train travel with the streamliner era beginning in the mid-1930s also included fleetwide name differentiation for some railroads. Rockets, Zephyrs, and City-series trains were populating Midwestern and Western timetables as part of the campaign to shake the Depression doldrums. For Milwaukee Road, this name identification was Hiawatha. Indeed, for nearly two decades, the Hiawathas set, improved, and maintained schedule and service standards for the Chicago–Twin Cities corridor.
On June 29, 1947, Milwaukee Road introduced the latest, and what would be the last, member of its Hiawatha fleet, the Olympian Hiawatha. With superlatives such as “Hours Faster … Years Ahead!” the train stood tall with the competition running on Great Northern, NP, and UP in Chicago–Pacific Northwest service. However, in addition to fast-improving air, bus, and private auto competition, the Olympian Hi ran head-on into challenges similar to those of Milwaukee Road’s freight service; that service succumbed to these competitor railroads two decades later.
ABOVE: The eastbound Olympian Hiawatha passing Pewaukee Lake, Wis., in a classic mid-20th century promotional photo. —Milwaukee Road Photograph Collection, Milwaukee Road Archives, Milwaukee Public Library
Success for any regularly scheduled intercity passenger service is highly dependent on population served. In this category, with the exception of its namesake city, the Milwaukee Road route served no population centers of any size where one or more of those competitor railroads were not also in town. Despite matching the fastest Chicago–Seattle rail schedule, the Olympian Hi was handicapped with no direct service to Portland, Ore., a major passenger source for the other three railroads.
Just as Milwaukee Road’s Pacific Extension to Seattle/Tacoma, completed in 1909, was considered a route too far that pushed a strong Midwestern railroad into two bankruptcies prior to World War II, the same factors were baked into the Olympian Hiawatha. However, the exuberance coming out of the World War II experience had many railroads, including Milwaukee Road, spending prodigiously on new passenger rolling stock. Milwaukee Road and most of the railroad industry misjudged the trends for the postwar economy that within several decades could support only a skeleton of long-distance passenger trains totally underwritten with government support.
Compounding the Olympian Hi’s challenge when passenger cash flows turned negative was the railroad’s inability to absorb those losses. Although the railroad industry’s financial strength was weakening, Milwaukee Road’s was falling faster than its Pacific Northwest competitors. With Milwaukee Road’s freight operating profit diluted by more than 50 percent to cover passenger services during the 1950s, unprecedented steps to cut those losses could not be postponed.
ABOVE: A distinctive Creek-series Skytop sleeper-lounge car brings up the rear of the Olympian Hiawatha in this 1953 view. —Milwaukee Road Photograph Collection, Milwaukee Road Archives, Milwaukee Public Library
The Olympian Hi goes on the block
At the end of 1959, fully two out of three passenger train miles that Milwaukee Road operated when the Olympian Hi was born were gone. However, these reductions were either secondary trains or consolidations that had a limited im-pact on service levels. For example, in early 1957 the Olympian Hi was consolidated east of Minneapolis with the Afternoon Hiawatha westbound and the Morning Hiawatha eastbound.
With weakness on the freight side and increasing losses on the passenger side, some drastic actions were required. For 1960, Milwaukee Road contended that nearly 65 percent of the operating profit from its freight business was consumed to cover total system passenger losses. The fattest target to make a meaningful impact in reducing the financial bleeding seemed to be the Olympian Hi.
It’s not that Milwaukee Road did not try some self-help to build ridership and reduce expenses. It attempted to attract additional demand for sleeping-car space in the late 1950s with experiments to honor coach tickets in both the first class and Touralux cars. It also tried some sleeping-car fare reductions. Additionally, in 1959 during times of low demand, the Skytop lounges were removed. When they did run, it was only from Minneapolis west. However, these and related efforts did not materially improve the bottom line for the transcontinental Olympian Hiawatha…