I have in my RR library 4 primary bios of Hill inc. a 2 vol one that is
considered definitive. No mention that Hill felt the CB&Q was a less than
desirable partner. Bear in mind too this was a two-way street at the time.
Hill had Rockefeller interests backing him and the Q had Forbes & other Boston
money. Lurking elsewhere were the UP & Harriman interests et al. All were
jockeying for position just as were the Eastern roads. Per Overton's books, the
Q looked into acquiring GN. It was all a question of how best to benefit
stockholders; buy or sell and if so at what cost/price?
This might be a good topic for a future Lexington group meeting.
Gerald
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "Phillips, III, J.A." <whstlpnk@...> wrote:
>
> Charlie Vlk wrote on the Q list:
>
> ...This may be heresy, but..
> ...When James J. Hill was trying to get the GN and NP into Chicago the CB&Q
> was not his first choice. He would have preferred getting the Milwaukee
> Road or the Wisconsin Central/Soo Line. He was of the opinion that The Q was
> a poorly built railroad and stated that it had more curves and grades on the
> prairies than the GN had crossing the Rockies.
> ...While the CB&Q was a progressive railroad in many ways, in the early days
> I am beginning to believe that The Empire Builder was correct. The CB&Q had a
> continuous program of line relocations, curve easing, grade reductions and
> other general improvements after the turn of the century that suggest that
> there was plenty to do.
>
> I think you may have gotten a hold of some bad info on that one. I can think
> of a guy in Montana who would make this sort of argument, generally based on
> what he likes to say is "reading between the lines" of corporate
> correspondence, but what always appeared to me to be reading "into" the lines
> to me. As a matter of fact, the NP had the WC in its pocket for a while from
> Villard's return to the Board ca. 1886-7, until the second reorganization in
> the wake of the Panic of 1893. In typical Villard fashion, he leased it from
> his cronies without bothering to figure out if the rate he was going to pay
> was worth it. (Wasn't.) All three of the big Hill components suffered from
> the rough-and-ready era of railroading, all three dumped money back into the
> plant for years to come to sort out some of the more interesting engineering
> feats of the construction era. GN's Bob Downing made a point which stuck in
> my head, noting that something like 40 percent of the much-vaunted GN wound
> up on a line relocation _after_ its golden spike. I presume the NP put up
> similar numbers. As for poorly built, Hill and the NP didn't put the Q in
> their pocket until about the turn-of-the-century, by which time all three
> roads were already well on their upgrading their plants phase (as was EHH on
> the UP). Why on earth Hill would agree to the _massive_ two-hundred-per-share
> asked for by Charles Elliott Perkins if he thought the Q was a second-rate
> property is... unbelievable. Harriman wouldn't meet it, and as far as I know,
> Hill never courted any road but the Q as St. Paul's access to Chicago and the
> Middle West. As it was, the Q was the big earner of Hill's big three anyway,
> and whenever mergers were trotted out prior to 1955, St. Paul would never
> agree to let go of the Q in order to consummate the deal. (I note the 1925-33
> merger work under Elliott and Budd almost got the Federal green light ca.
> 1930-3, but only if it came with divestiture of the Q. No deal.)
>
> FWIW
> John Phillips
> Seattle
>
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