The alders now grow tall where the Milwaukee Road once ran, electrified, to Puget Sound. Has it really been 20 years since engineer Don Grigsby pulled the last train out of Tacoma in the darkness of March 15 1980? The alders don’t lie, but my God! Twenty years? The cold, hard truth in a box of black and white negatives makes the final days of the Milwaukee Road seem even more distant than that, roll after roll of black and white film carefully sorted and preserved. On small rectangles of celluloid come back memories of wonderful days spent hanging out in depots and roundhouses, cutting classes at school to spend the afternoon walking along the Milwaukee mainline high in the Cascade, and of weekends spent crazily chasing trains over the Saddle Mountains in a hand-me-down 1975 silver Monte Carlo two-door, the 8-track tape deck blasting out Journey, VanHalen, and Kansas. In January 1978, the nation’s number one pop song was the hauntingly beautiful "Dust in the Wind," which appeared at the same moment the Milwaukee Road declared bankruptcy. Its sparse acoustics and plaintive lyrics perfectly captured the futility of having something you care about slip through your fingers, out of reach for good. It seemed apropos to the Milwaukee Road at the time; the years haven’t dimmed its ability to tug at the heart.

Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea.                        All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see            Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind

The Milwaukee Road’s Puget Sound extension was a railroad that probably should never have been built. It was one railroad too far, one railroad too many. But the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul’s management faced few other options after the Northern Pacific and Great Northern (the "Hill Lines") jointly purchased the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy in 1901, effectively neutralizing the Milwaukee’s gateway at the Twin Cities, on which it relied on for much of its traffic. It was either acquiesce to Hill and become another "second-tier" granger railroad, or take the bold step and build to the coast. It chose the latter, and the decision helped drive the railroad into bankruptcy three times, 1925, 1935, and, finally, 1977.

Never able to compete with the Hill lines for traffic or interchange, the 1970 Burlington Northern merger was supposed to guarantee the viability of the Milwaukee Road---never before had a railroad merger’s approval hinged on ensuring the competition’s survival. Twelve previously closed interchange gateways were opened, the additional traffic supposed to keep the railroad viable. The traffic never materialized in sufficient volume to do so, because, some argue, BN undermined the very agreements that allowed its merger to take place. The Milwaukee begged inclusion in the BN to the ICC in 1975, a request denied two years later; nine months after that, the Milwaukee Road declared its final bankruptcy. Having lost $82 million in 1978 and $64 million in the first six months of 1979, the Milwaukee Road’s trustee applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission to abandon 2497.7 miles of railroad west of Miles City, Montana on August 9, 1979. An employee plan to purchase the Puget Sound extension was deemed financially unrealistic by the ICC and rejected, clearing the way for abandonment approval on January 30, 1980. A little less than a month later, bankruptcy court judge Thomas McMillan authorized embargo of the transcontinental lines. Though we hoped somehow, some way the railroad could be saved, deep in our hearts we knew it wouldn’t be.

Largely ignored after its electrification era, the Puget Sound Extension’s mythic status grows each passing year. There’s now a generation of northwesterners whose memories don’t include big orange GE’s treading down Hauser Way in Renton, or viewing strings of container flats and autoracks wrap around Windy Point high above I-90 near Bandera. And their memories don’t include perhaps the best memories of all: Milwaukee Road’s dedicated employees, the glue that held this railroad together when it was disintegrating under mismanagement and disinterest--the proudest group of railroaders I’ve ever met, certainly the most optimistic. But pride didn’t pay the bills, and I can’t help but wonder where they all are today.