North Milwaukee 1

While North Milwaukee Yard is certainly not as busy a yard as others in Milwaukeeland, it nonetheless is an important crossroads of rail lines. A Canadian Pacific line runs to the south, connecting with the mainline near Miller Brewing Company. The Wisconsin & Southern's Milwaukee Sub runs from the northwest, and continues to the southeast. This line was once known as the Chestnut Street line, which was built from Chestnut Street along the Milwaukee River all the way to LaCrosse, by way of Horicon. The Canadian National's Saukville Sub runs north from North Milwaukee, and they have trackage rights on the WSOR to reach this line. In addition, the WSOR's Milwaukee Shops are along the north line, at Villard Street.

Prior to 1980, all of the rail lines at North Milwaukee belonged to the Milwaukee Road. In 1980, MILW sold the northwest line to the new Wisconsin & Southern Railroad^. In 1985, the Milwaukee Road's flag fell under the Soo Line, which included the line north of North Milwaukee (actually starting at "Mill") as part of a massive spin-off in 1987 to Wisconsin Central Ltd., who secured trackage rights on WSOR from the northwest to reach this line. As CP integrated long-owned Soo Line in the 1990s, the line to the southeast was sold to WSOR as well. Canadian National's purchase of WCL in 2001 marked further changes at North Milwaukee. The most recent change to North Milwaukee has been WSOR's acquisition in 2005 of a portion of the line to the north that CN wanted to abandon, and WSOR secured trackage rights on CN to reach its new Superior Subdivision. Many changes have happened at North Milwaukee over the last 25 years!

See North Milwaukee p.2 and North Milwaukee III for more photos from North Milwaukee!

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