Rock Island Fans, Assistance Please

I need a brief blurb, preferably culled from a website somewhere, about the Rock Island's reasons for failure. It's for this paper I'm writing, and I just need a short note about Rock, since I plan to spend a couple of sentences talking about it.Thanks!

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Norfolk & Western’s Radford Division, Pulaski District: Who needs the Marias Pass?

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NW
Try doing a Google search on Chicago Rock Island & Pacfic railroad, one of the sites that should come up in short order(can't remember the URL) has a history of the CRI&P.
I can tell you that if not the cause it would at least have been the rock's final straw was the strike in late 78 early 79(IIRC)one of the other things that some people noted in retrospect was with the road hemoraging cash, the money spent on the "new image" Rock livery and painting every thing baby blue(some of the employees were almost afraid to step into the mens room for fear of finding the facilities now had a fresh coat of blue)may have been put to better use on upgrading the physical plant in order to maintain higher speeds with somewhat ratty looking locos rather than shiney freshly painted stock stuck on track with severe speed restrictionsGary S

"Some say this country's just out for a fight. After 9/11 man I'd have to say thats right"
"Have You Forgotten"
Darryl Worley

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Already did that; Google didn't give me what I was looking for. The Rock Island Technical Society's page (http://www.simpson.edu/~RITS/histories/RIHistory.html) didn't have enough on the why it went under; neither did something about Dwight, Kansas (http://www.ku.edu/heritage/research/rr/rock.html), even contradicting each other to some extent. Was there simply not enough traffic on the line, was it "redundant", or was it one of these things that went from somewhere to nowhere?Thanks.

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Norfolk & Western’s Radford Division, Pulaski District: Who needs the Marias Pass?

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The Rock Island did suffer from 'not enough traffic', and a lot of the Rock's routes did go from 'somewhere to nowhere', but I believe that most of the failure could be attributed to Management that lost the focus of the main reason to run a Railroad. The main reason is to offer service to customers. The Rock management became obsessed with other objectives, and neglcted the main one. The other ojectives?1. A very long-drawn attempt to merge the Rock into the Union Pacific. It was first placed before the US 'Interstate Commerce Commission 'ICC' regulatory agency in the late 1960's, and ruling was still pending when the Rock quit running in 1980. Now, granted, the ICC failed to give a timely response to an important issue, but the Rock management put all other major projects on hold while this one was stalled.
2. The management became obsessed with cutting costs. Necessary ongoing maintenance was neglected, and soon the Rock had long streches of trackage with very slow restrictions, frequent (and expensive) derailments, and signal systems that ceased to function. The locomotive shops were repeatedly cut back, and long lines of expensive locomotives were allowed to languish waiting for repairs, while the railroad had to lease locomotives to keep the trains moving. The level of customer service deteriorated because of the slow track speeds, trains often delayed waiting for power, and few freight cars were available to the customers for loading. The slow track speeds started cutting into profits because trains went 'dead on the law', meaning that a relief crew had to be called and the locomotives were delayed. The dollar amount of all the 'deferred maintenance' eventually became overwhelming. The obsession to cut costs also led to some very contentious labor negotiations, and the employee strike against the railroad in 1979-1980 was the final straw. To maintain service to the customers, the ICC issued 'Directed Service' orders that other railroads would operate bits of the system on a piece-work basis, and that was the end of the Rock Island. After the Rock quit running, several of the routes were purchased by other railroads. However, the deferred maintenance was an obstacle to continued use of these tracks. Here in Kansas, when the Cotton Belt took over the 'Golden State Route' between Tcumcari and Kansas City, the track was so bad that the repairs consisted largely of bulldozing the old stuff off the right-of-way and constructing new track on the grade. Very expensive, and the Rock would never have been able to catch up with kind of expense. The Rock's locomotives were in such poor condition that many were either scrapped or used as rebuilding fodder.Dan

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The RITS page was the one I was thinking of (sorry) The CRI&P's problems as I've read(from secondary sources so take with a grain of salt)was the physical plant being in some rather sad shape, both SP (the RI's partner to get to the west coast from New Mexico west)and UP(yes they were little Borg then) had expressed interest in mergers with the CRI&P in the late 60's early 70's in order to obtain a direct Chicago gateway (UP would get theirs about 6 years after the RI folded by Borging Mo-Pac and gain UP's own Chi town gate through MP's ex C&EI lines and SP would a few years after that through SSW's partial ownership of the Chicago Missouri & Western's former GM&O )but the merger deals never materialized.
To give you an idea on the condition of even the mainline out of Chicago, the Gene Wilder movie Silver Streak was supposed to be filmed on the CRI&P,that's why the last stop mentioned before the Streak gets to Chicago is Rockdale(though in reality it was a junction with the CRI&P and the EJ&E)the film crews did air surveys of the sections of the line they intended to shoot on but when they actually got on the ground their people found that tracks would not allow some of the speeds needed and so the deal was off and the film was shot on the CP.
It was a combination of lack of traffic due to shippers being able to route over other roads without the speed restrictions,too many branch lines(when IC needed to get lean and mean it spun off a lot of it's branch ops as well as a good chunk of it's fromer GM&O routing)heavy union feather bedding and mismanagement at the top.Gary S

"Some say this country's just out for a fight. After 9/11 man I'd have to say thats right"
"Have You Forgotten"
Darryl Worley

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I will ofer two slightly different perspectives.
First, A focus on bottom line financials due to over concentration on merger prospects. What may be considered deferable costs, turn into prohibitively expensive neccessities after a while.
The other major problem is the interstate highway system and trucking competition. Much of the Rock Island ran in territory which had excellent interstate highway routes which were subsidized by federal highway dollars. The trucks did not have to maintain the roads they mangled (take a trip down I80 after a few years of heavy truck use and you will see the cost on the highways), but the trains had to pay their way for track maintainence. Other roads had the fortune of going where highways were not as competitive, but most of the Rock was easily matched against cheap trucking.
Bob

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