The Trains of 1948

While on a road trip earlier this month, I picked up a reproduction of a 1948 U.S. railroad atlas, showing all railroads, with their junction points.

That year was near the beginning of the end for passenger railroads in our country, as the interstate highway system went into construction during the next decade. So this atlas is quite a document of what once was in the U.S. and the places that needed consistent connection at that point in time. 

Here's the map of the lower 48 states:

And a close-up of how the Midwest was connected:

Here's Minnesota:

And the Twin Cities area:

Both downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul contained large passenger depots, two of which are still standing today (one now in use for Amtrak, the other as a hotel). 

The inside covers contain a dense listing of all the railroad name abbreviations. The ones that are meaningful in Minnesota, especially connecting the Twin Cities, are:

• CB&Q: Chicago Burlington & Quincy, which ran up the east side of the Mississippi and crossed into Minnesota at Hastings
• CMSP&P: Chicago Milwaukee St. Paul & Pacific, better known as the Milwaukee Road, which had a number of important tracks including one that ran due west out of Saint Paul and one that is now the I-90 corridor from La Crosse through Austin and Albert Lea. It also owned the tracks down the west side of the Mississippi that are the current Empire Builder tracks used by Amtrak.
• C&NW: Chicago & Northwestern, which ran east out of Saint Paul through Stillwater to Milwaukee, and also had a track that ran north of the current I-90 corridor connecting Rochester, Owatonna, Mankato, and New Ulm, among other cities.
• GN: The Great Northern (the most famous of Minnesota's railroads), which had more tracks than any other railroad. A couple of notable ones were Minneapolis to Superior and Duluth, __ to Fargo (more or less along the current path of I-94), an east-west route across the Iron Range, and the still-in-operation Empire Builder route to Grand Forks and beyond, all the way to the West Coast.
• M&SL: Minnesota & St. Louis, which ran west out of Minneapolis through St. Louis Park, Hopkins, and Excelsior before continuing to both South Dakota and Iowa.
• MSP&SSM: Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie (the most saintly railroad name, called the Soo Line) connected North Dakota to Minnesota to Wisconsin and Michigan. I am assuming this railroad moved a lot of iron ore, given the locations it connected.
• MW: Minnesota Western appears to have connected Minneapolis to small cities to the west, like Montevideo and Hutchinson.
• NP: Northern Pacific: Followed what became the I-35 corridor north to connect Saint Paul to Cloquet and then Duluth, and ran many other lines across northern Minnesota connecting regional cities. 

All those passenger connections went away over 20 years or so, and many of the freight connections later.  Leaving us with interrupted street grids and usually nothing useful to show for it. 

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I'm sure I've made errors in my listing of the railroads and where they went, since I'm trying to read a small map and not spending enough time on this because I want to get this posted and share it. Corrections happily accepted.