the SOO: Winter 1996 issue

Winter 1996 Issue

IN EVERY ISSUE

Soo News
WC News
Editor's Report
Executive Report
Gallery
Rip Track
Letters
Transfer Table
Less-Than-Carload

STAFF

Editor
Rick Johnson

Associate Editor
Ken Soroos

Associate Editor/Soo News
Jason Korth

Soo News
tom Mastoras

Wiconsin Central News
Galen Fromm

Modeling Editor
Chuck Derus

Contributing Editors
Andy Roth, Guy Kieckhefer, Doug Fleming

Editorial Consultants
Jack Witmer, Gregg Condon

Technical Consultants
Stuart J. Nelson, Wallace W. Abbey

Commercial Accounts
Joe Lallensack

Advertising Manager
Burnell Breaker

Back Issues
John Strenski

Winter 1996 Issue Hightlights

The Milwaukee Connection

by Mike Schafer

The run from North Fond du Lac to Milwaukee and back was long a stomping ground for first-generation diesels.

Metra's North Central Service

Passenger service returns to the old Soo Line in Chicagoland

by Andrew Roth and Lyle Gomm

Commuter rail service on Wisconsin Central's former Soo Line main into Chicago has begun. The route has not seen regularly scheduled passenger service since January 1965 when the Laker made its final run.

Metra's new North Central Service has a different twist, of course, since Soo passenger service catered to intercity passengers destined for Wisconsin and beyond. Frequent commuter-type services did not evolve on the Soo Line except for a brief time around the turn of the century and then only from Chicago out to the Forest Park area.

Drake, North Dakota

A crossroads on the Soo Line in central North Dakota

by Don Tank

North Dakotans can thank the Soo Line for opening much of the north central part of North Dakota. Soo's main line from Valley City northwesterly to Harvey was constructed, within a few miles, along the old J. F. Stevens railroad survey of 1853, which led from the Red River valley to Fort Union on the Missouri River at the Montana border. In 1893, Soo Line extended its main line from Harvey to Portal, on the Canadian border, with 154 miles of trackage laid in 1893.

The country the Soo was entering was sparsely inhabited save for the northern portion of McHenry County, near the Great Northern Railway, where Towner had been the county seat since 1886. The first settlers did not start to arrive in any appreciable numbers until 1898. Many of these moved in from Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The land of McHenry County is a rolling prairie of loam and sand which was then covered with buffalo grass and wild prairie flowers. Drake, which would be located in the southeastern corner of McHenry County, was not originally destined to become a center of activity in the Soo Line's scheme of operations. But it did.

Drake, North Dakota

A crossroads on the Soo Line in central North Dakota

by Don Tank

TBD

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