When I worked for the mechanical engineerring department for the Milwaukee Road we had ALL of the 8" X 10" locomotive and car negatives (yes the negatives were 8x10!) in a back room. The negatives filled a 20 foot long wall that was at least 10 foot tall. I wonder what happened to them? We also had the departments correspondence going back to at least the 1880's. Every engineers space had bookcases - the wooden ones that you see in the antique store for $100 per section. Above what we called the "Wood shop" they had dead storage for all of the passenger car parts for the cars that we used to make. There were things like original wood veneer for the cars interior, sterling silver silverware, crates of brass fire hose nozzles and hundreds of various "logo" pieces that went into the cars.

The railraod declared bankruptcy in 1977 due to a decision to repair the track instead of locomotives. There was a time where we didn't hardly have any locomotives in running condition which of course puts a damper on your income possibilities. The companies stock was trading for around $2. During the bankruptcy it was decided to make the railroad smaller and to get rid of unnecessary things. The company had lots of unused land that was put on the market. I guess the land was worth a little more than they expected since the stock went to over $150. I think they finally sold over $500 million in land. How dumb can you be to not shed unused assets to save the whole company from bankruptcy? Of course this is the same company that suffered from things that also brought down GM. Years ago it was decided during union negotiations that the trip from Milwaukee to Chicago was a days work. So the passenger route between those two cities takes about 6 hours max roundtrip. Guess what? YUP - the whole crew got 2 days pay every day.