Talk:Milwaukee Road

Why was this page moved?

"Milwaukee Road" is a much more common name for this railway, especially considering the many name changes that happened over the years. I think this page should be moved back to that name. —User:Mulad (talk) 17:57, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

I moved it; it had this name for a long time before the end. Milwaukee Road still redirects here, and you can still link to that. The only thing that changes is the official title, which I feel should be the official name in most cases. Eh, if you want to be inconsistent, feel free to move it back. Have fun changing all the redirects. --SPUI 18:08, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another comment - we don't, for example, have Central Railroad of New Jersey at Jersey Central Lines, or New York Central Railroad at Water Level Route. If you want to find information in a historical database or book, like Moody's or Poor's, you look it up under the official name, not the nickname, however common. For instance, if you search [1] (which is based on Poor's, Moody's, and other official and semi-official sources) for Milwaukee Road, it says "See Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad". Soo Line isn't even covered, with only one entry, simply having "Soo Line Railroad" in the railroad field. --SPUI 18:14, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Well, all I'm saying is that Wikipedia is different than a reference manual, usually using the common name rather than the official name, at least when there is a significant difference in recognition between the two (for example, the article for Julius Caesar is not named "Gaius Julius Caesar"). Anyway, I'm putting it to a vote at Wikipedia:Requested moves. —User:Mulad (talk) 22:47, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad → Milwaukee Road

Much more well known as the Milwaukee Road. (The railroad also went through multiple name changes in its lifetime.) —User:Mulad (talk) 22:47, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose: Leave at official title, redirect as is. Cburnett 22:55, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Suppport - Milwaukee Road is clearly the more well known name of this, which is what our Naming conventions tell us to use (Google: 52000 to 800). We only use official titles as a slight preference when no one use is the predominant one. -- Netoholic @ 23:09, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)
• Oppose: As long as both names are mentioned in bold in the first paragraph and Milwaukee Road is a working redirect, I'd rather leave it at the official name, for consistency. —Morven 23:17, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)
• Support if that'd the common name. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:19, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Naming conventions prescribe using the commonest name, except where slangy or inaccurate; that is, George W. Bush, but not Ole Miss. ADH (t&m) 23:23, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • comment You just made the "slangy and inaccurate" thing up. Actually it prescribes, in pretty strong terms: "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things."
  • Jimmy Carter is at Jimmy Carter, although his name is James Earl Carter Jr, Bill Gates is at Bill Gates although his name is William Henry Gates III , William Henry Gates III KBE to give him the title the Queen Elizabeth gave him (and who's going to argue with a chick who has a whacking great sword and used to own half the world?) For heaven's sake (or whatever you hold sacred) let's just have article where people expect to find them. Bill Gates, Jimmy Carter, wherever people will look for this article. Just don't go out of your way to piss people off by making up Wikipedia policy that doesn't exist. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 00:20, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Leave it official. By the way, I noticed that Britannica calls their article "Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company". —Mike 04:20, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)
• weak oppose. I recently moved it from Milwaukee Road, but this truly is a borderline case, nowhere near as clear-cut as say Central Railroad of New Jersey vs Jersey Central Lines or on the other side Consolidated Rail Corporation vs Conrail. --SPUI 07:27, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Proteus (Talk) 16:26, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Neutrality^talk 21:35, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

This is a comment after the fact. I still do not like this current name, especially as Netoholic pointed out that his Google test had shown a 65:1 ratio between the common name and the official title. I often don't like using the Google test to determine page title, but when the ratio is so overwhelming, it is hard to ignore. Whatever, I guess. —User:Mulad (talk) 21:24, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

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I just noticed that the todolist wasn't migrated with the main page, so I've just moved it into the proper place for the article's current name. slambo 14:09, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

SP&P

The St. Paul and Pacific Railroad plays an interesting role in the life of Knute Nelson, and a link is made to this article from his in WP. It might be interesting to include more information about the extension that so preoccupied the Minnesota legislature in the mid-1870s. --Leifern 17:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad mentioned in that article later became the Great Northern Railway (U.S.), under the organization of James J. Hill. The Milwaukee Road didn't even build their extension until about 1905, according to this article, whereas the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was struggling to build its extension to Alexandria and Winnipeg in the mid-1870s. I have a book of Minnesota history at home that explains more about this; I'll look up the information and look into adding it into the Knute Nelson article. --Elkman - (Elkspeak) 19:14, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I made that one correction, but further edits to the Knute Nelson article would be great. It's looking to be a long article, and I'm writing as I do the research. --Leifern 19:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

rail distance size

The Milwaukee Road designed the tracks, and cars wheels, to have a slightly smaller than the standard distance between them This enabled their cars to run on other companies' tracks but prevented others from using their tracks. Their wheels would run on the inside portion of the tracks of other companies. When other companies tried to use the Milwaukee Road's tracks, their cars' wheels would ride on the outside of the rails and frequently would derail.

What???

This is egregious nonsense, but apparently it needs to be made plain. (And I am rather surprised that no one has commented on this in the past year and a half.) For starters, referring to what is properly the track gauge as "rail distance size" ("the standard distance between them") is a strong indication that this editor is unfamiliar with both the term and the topic. That a novel and even unlikely suggestion is made without any kind of citation seriously undercuts credibility of both the suggestion and the editor. Failure to sign the edit (which the history shows was done anonymously from 76.229.213.77) further suggests an inexperienced and naive editor.

Even if all the above objections were notwithstanding, the suggestion is nonsensical on its face. I doubt that such a ploy would even work as suggested. And quite pointless: why would any railroad want to increase the liklihood of derailments on their own trackage? It would be senseless. Which is a strong enough argument (lacking any contrary examples or evidence) to support a conclusion that no main-line railroad ever attempted such a stunt. J. Johnson (talk) 21:10, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Folks, what does the logo say?

If I may reopen the article name discussion, I'd like to point out what their logo, viewable at File:Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul and Pacific Herald.png, said. It seems pretty clear that The Milwaukee Road was the common name and not a slang name and should be the name of the article. It isn't like the other examples given above that weren't/aren't formally used. Jason McHuff (talk) 23:11, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: Drury, George H. (1994). The Historical Guide to North American Railroads: Histories, Figures, and Features of more than 160 Railroads Abandoned or Merged since 1930. Waukesha, Wisconsin: Kalmbach Publishing. pp. 374–377. ISBN 0-89024-072-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help). Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Mackensen (talk) 15:19, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

Pacific Extension profitability

I'm unconvinced by the claim cited to the Aberdeen American News that the Pacific Extension was actually profitable in the 1970s. Scribbins doesn't repeat it, and my sense is that if this was actually the case someone would have stepped in to operate it. The conventional wisdom, backed by most published sources, is that the Pacific Extension was a drain on the company and at the root of multiple bankruptcies. The ICC claim feels tantamount to a conspiracy theory and I think we either need a better source or we should remove it. Mackensen (talk) 18:57, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

I have read in a Trains Magazine article that loses on eastern lines were being hidden by assigning then to the Pacific Extension. This was only clearly understood when the extension was abandoned. Too late the directors found all the eastern lines losing more after the abandonment, which hastened the end of the road. Many inaccurate accounting practices were tolerated in the years when the merger with CNW was a goal. When that fell through the directors were replaced and the new directors took the bookkeeping at face value and, based on that decided to kill the extension which did not give the result they expected.Corumplex (talk) 02:47, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

• @Corumplex: Which article was this? There have been articles in Trains in the last few years which touched on the Pacific Extension but didn't repeat that claim. Mackensen (talk) 14:31, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

It was likely at least 4 years ago. I wish I could tell you more. If I come up with info I will let you know.Corumplex (talk) 03:52, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

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Ploss

I confess I wasn't familiar with Thomas Ploss before this edit: [2]. Apparently he was a lawyer with the Milwaukee Road who was discharged and wrote a book in anger. The Nation Pays Again is self-published. There's no absolute rule against self-published sources (WP:SPS) but to use Ploss we need reviews attesting either to the book's credibility or his status as an expert. The canonical example within rail transport history is probably Thomas Taber's three volumes on the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. In the alternative, something like "Former Milwaukee Road lawyer Thomas H. Ploss wrote a book claiming...", but if no one else made that claim it might amount to undue weight. Mackensen (talk) 12:21, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Corporate Conspiracy

I read something about how the company was sabatoged to decouple its assets from the company. Does this hold any merit? ( SailingOn (talk) 18:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC))

• There's a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the ultimate demise of the Milwaukee Road but I've yet to see any of them substantiated in a reliable source. Mackensen (talk) 18:55, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

"… and Puget Sound"

I don't have anything particularly citable but apparently another name that is at least a d.b.a was "Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound", which presumably deserves a mention. Here's a photo showing use of that name: File:Office of the Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Ry, located at 2nd Ave and Cherry St, in the Butler Building, Seattle (CURTIS 1007).jpeg. - Jmabel | Talk 21:47, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

• That was the wholly-owned subsidiary which built the Pacific Extension. It was probably merged or consolidated with the corporate parent after the extension was opened. I'll need to dig around. It's worth mentioning in the body where we discuss the extension. Mackensen (talk) 22:00, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 7 April 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jerm (talk) 03:07, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

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Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad → Milwaukee Road – Clear WP:COMMONNAME by a factor of multiple hundreds, thousands even, during the peak of the railroad itself. See here just for ngram stats alone. We're talking about real major issues of failing the recognizability criteria for all except subject matter experts. The fact that "Milwaukee Road" already redirects here shows that we expect someone searching for the name to be looking for this railroad, and with it clearly being the far most dominant name in common use, there's really no justification for keeping it at a technical name that was and remains largely unused by reliable sources. oknazevad (talk) 00:35, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

• Support per nom. By the way, I find the 2005 RM discussion amusing. No such user (talk) 08:16, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support. All reliable sources call it this. It's the common name by a mile. The intro should still use the legal name first, as it does now. Mackensen (talk) 11:37, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
• Support per nom. It seems like the common name by a huge margin. JackFromReedsburg (talk | contribs) 19:08, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.