Milwaukee Road engineer~ are always seeking sOIllething better in design and Illethods. g The application of new techniques produced the HIAWATHAS, first of the Speed­ liners. For freight service,all-welded, plywood-lined steel box cars were developed that carry heavier pay loads with less dead weight. fJl Milwaukee Road craftsIllen build the best that rolls on rails in the COIllpany's cOIllplete Illanufacturing plant at Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (j[ Milwaukee Road Illen design 'eIll, build 'eIll and roll 'eIll. It's a cOIllbination' that can't he heat. THE ROAD • The Milwaukee M<lJqazin@ * Headlights * Corresponding with 3,000 servicemen "There's no place like home!" was about two hours before the former took would appear to be a stupendous task the frequent plaint of Walter "Jens" the oath down in Texas. Both of them but Warrant Officer Vernon LaHeist of Axness as he struggled through the entered office in 1925. If Mrs. O'Hern San Diego, Calif., doesn't think so. He jungles of Okinawa. Home, in this makes the grade. she will be No.3. enjoys it. Milwaukee Magazine Corre­ 'case, was Montevideo, Minn., where he headed immediately after his re­ spondent Agnes Christiansen learned lease from service. A short time • of the amazing correspondence while ago, at work on his new job as yard talking with Machinist Al LaHeist, who clerk, he watched the approach of The following is taken intact from often drops in for a visit with Agnes at a troop train. As one of the cars the April 20, 1946, issue of The the car foreman's office in Council drew abreast he blinked and took a New Yorker, where it appea.red in Bluffs. AI's son ~as confined to a second look at the placard it carried. the southeast corner of page 32: Japanese prison camp for three years "Where the hell is Montevideo?" it "As the invading waters retreated. and during that time managed to smug­ said. He was even' more astounded a shift in temperature changed Yel· when the occupants shouted, "Hi, lowstone into a huge sub-tropical gle out the addresses of 3,000 of his Jens!" It was a group of his Okin­ marsh w her e giant dinosaurs fellow captives. Last Christmas he sent awa buddies whom he had sold on drowsed and fed in the green half­ a card to everyone of them and re­ the merits of his favorite city. light that filtered down through ceived over 750 responses. great jungle trees ... something worse than the South Pacific jungles • • or even the dreams of a lotion drink­ er.-Booklet issued by the'Milwau­ Remark overhead in a Chicago Either the readers of this magazine kee Road.... restaurant: "I think the Milwaukee don't know their Texas and Wyoming "Jergens?". inquired The New Road has the pleasantest, most con· history or they just don't give a hang Yorker. tended-looking employes of any rail­ whether we are correct in our state­ The Milwaukee Magazine had a road in the city." ments or not. At any rate, no one to look around, and sure enough, there • date has called us on a mistake made it was on page 9 of "Postwar Vet· last month (in bo~d face type) conCern­ erans' Victory Vacations." Herman Weig, employed in the West­ ing the Milwaukee Road's potential ern Passenger Association's military gubernatrix. We said, gullibly quoting bureau in Chicago, tells us that there our informant, that if Mrs. Jennie was a time when the Milwaukee Road O'Hern, second trick operator at Wak~ honored passes issued by an outside con­ pala, S. D., should be successful in her cern. Back in the early '80s his em­ bid for the governorship of South player, the English firm of Close Bros. Dakota, she would be the first woman & Company, purchased about 165,000 governor in the history of the United acres of land in Pipestone County, Minn., States. That statement was unfair to from the Milwaukee Road. The brothers the memory of Mrs. Miriam Ferguson acted as agents for other English con-' of Texas and Mrs. Nellie T. Ross of cerns in the purchase, and la ter handled Wyoming. "Ma" Ferguson, who was the re-sale of parcels of land to settlers. elected in 1924 and staged a return en­ The firm's agents in Illinois, Iowa and gagement in 1932, is generally regarded other states would take prospective as the first and only woman governor of r/"1f::1 buyers-usually known as "land seekers" a state, but the fact is that Mrs. Ross "NO,MISS JON!:S, I ,!:EL sO JUMPY -to Pipestone City, where the branch was sworn in as governor of Wyoming \ DON'T WANT TO 5E!: ANYON!:." office was located; from there they would be driven out and shown the land. A. V. H. Carpenter, general pass­ enger agent of the Milwaukee Road at that time, furnished the firm with books The Cover of blank trip passes. As office boy for F. B. White, a commercial representative for the Western Union Telegraph Close Bros. in Chicago, Mr. Weig made Company in Chicago, demonstrates by the picture on the cover of this issue out passes in favor of the land agents, that a freight train can be even more photogenic than a sleek streamliner­ provided they advised the firm that they provided you know your angles, your hyperfocal distances and your exposure had one or more prospects ready to go. equations. In addition to all the photographic know·how common to the camera enthusiast, Mr. White harbors a love for trains and railroad subjects The English firm's field agent at Pipe­ generally. stone would report the arrival of each Taken near Mont Clare station on the west side of Chicago, the picture agent and the number of men the agent shows engine 644 pulling a string of loaded cars westward out of the Gale· took out. However, if he used a pass wood yards. The camera used is a Z~4 x 3 ~ Graflex, and the exposure was without having at least one land seeker, 1/150 second at f.8, with an orange filter. he never would be given another pass. Although an amateur shutter snapper working with· a box camera would need a little luck to get an equally good picture, it has been done plenty of All in all, Close Bros. purchased and re­ times. And that reminds us to remind you that the· Milwaukee Magazine sold to actual settlers more than 1,000,­ is always looking for good pictures of Milwaukee Road people and equip· 000 acres of land in Iowa, Minnesota, ment. With film returning to the dealers' shelves, and with several month. Kansas and Texas. It was this same firm of sunshine coming up, picture possibilities are limitleM. let WI 1ft wh,u which in 1898-1900 organized an": built you ~t. the White Pass & Yukon Railway from Skagway, Al<lska. to Whitehom. Y. T. May, 1946 J Just Call Him "Van " Appreciative patrons of the Mil· By Marg Sammons ure of poring over. Many of the pic waukee lWad frequently write us tures he has given away to schools, tl Jetters, but few write us articles. The author of this article, Marg exhibits and to civic institutions. Sammous, is a partner in the Chi­ him) at Deer Lodge in the same state. He started in railroad work in Mich cago industrial relations finn of Going east, the process is reversed. igan after leaving the navy. The yea Newcomb & Sammons, and a fre· Van's run is not a long one, but it is 1910 found him signing up with tho quent traveler on our road. She has stimulating. Milwaukee, and that was the year ho built UJ}, she says, many warm and Van is large (we'll settle for an even went to Montana. He was freight con enduring friendshiP'S during her travels on the Milwaukee, and in 200), youthful for his years (he's 63 ductor on the run from Three Forks t( this article writes of one of the Mil­ and doesn't look it) and handsome Deer Lodge and he held the job fOJ waukee Road employes she enjoyed (darned if we like to put it in print, 20 years. meeting and knowing.-Editor. but Van is good-looking with his He doubled back to Michigan tW( snowy-white thatch of heavy hair which years. after joining the Road, to brin~ ANY STATES lay claim to·being has been white since he was 25). He back his wife. He spied her playin~ M the nation's most hospitable, but knows every click of the rails from his the piano in a local movie theater, Montana seems to insist on the edge in division point at Harlowton to Deer tracked her down to her daytime em­ the argument. Not without justifica­ Lodge, which is his home town. His ployment in a music store and bought tion, either, for the Treasure State, route is through the mountains and the reams of sheet music he couldn't read­ sprawling as it does across prairies and canyons, by the rivers and the streams, just to get acquainted. Her friends mountain peaks alike, has a robust qual­ past the scattered ranches; he knows it "warned her against marrying a rail­ ity of friendliness and hospitality which all like a book. As the panorama that road man," Van reports. But next year has impressed almost everyone who has is central Montana opens like a beauti­ they will have been married for 35 visited there.