The Chicago Great Western Railroad was a spunky midwestern carrier
that contributed mightily to the transportation industry. The
1,500-mile CGW, built by the iconoclastic and ambitious A. B.
Stickney, proved to be exceptionally innovative as it developed new
ways to compete with larger railroads. Pitted against tough,
determined competitors, the CGW during its eighty-five years made
innovations that changed the history of American transportation.
Among the pioneering activities for which the Great Western is
remembered are the early use of internal combustion equipment, the
hauling of truck trailers atop flatcars ("piggy-backs"), and the
use of extremely long freight trains. Indeed, much of the
railroad's past supports the notion that smaller, less-established
carriers like the CGW frequently stimulated changes in industry
thinking and practices. In spite of its innovations, the path of
the Great Western, sometimes called the "Great Weedy," did not
always run smoothly. In the 1930s, John W. Barriger III quipped,
"The Chicago Great Western is a mountain railroad in a prairie
country serving a traffic vacuum." Such a negative assessment was
not uncommon for this Granger pike, which in fact climbed some
steep grades and owned a long tunnel. And while the road did not
operate in a "traffic vacuum," its competitors were well entrenched
and robust. By 1903, the CGW served the strategic gateways of
Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Joseph, and Omaha.
Between Chicago and the Twin Cities alone, the company competed
with six other roads. When the Chicago & North Western acquired
the Great Western in 1968, one of America's most imaginative
railroads disappeared. The Corn Belt Route is the first scholarly
treatment of the Chicago Great Western Railroad, a company that has
long intrigued the railfan, whether collector, modeler,
photographer, or historian. Richly illustrated, this book tells the
lively story of one of the great small railroads that once served
the Midwest.
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