Chicago and Northwestern Railroad (C&NW)

Before the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad (C&NW) was chartered on June 7, 1859, two other railroads formed the foundation North Western railroad system; these were the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, which had been chartered on January 16, 1836 and the Chicago, St. Paul and Fond du Lac Railroad that started operating in March 1855. On June 2, 1859, C&NW bought the Chicago, St. Paul and Fond du Lac Railroad. On February 15, 1865, it merged with the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. Later mergers and were the Winona and St. Peter Railroad in 1867, the Chicago, Milwaukee and North Western Railway in 1883, the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad in 1880, the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad in 1884, and the Milwaukee, Lake Shore and Western Railway in 1893. By 1899, the company had rostered 1,380 locomotives, 1,176 passenger cars, and 49,484 freight cars.

Potatoes from the west were one of the main crops carried by the CNW, and its potato sheds in Chicago were the nation's largest. It also carried sugar beets, corn, and wheat. This made the railroad dependent on the transportation of crops, adversely affected by government agricultural credit policies, which sealed a lot of products on the farms where they were produced. Although it stood sixteenth in operating revenue in 1938, it was eighth in passenger revenue among American railroads. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it contained its expansion of acquiring small railroads.

However, automobile competition, high labor costs, and over-regulation prompted the then President of C&NW Ben Heineman to “spin off” ownership of the railroad to its employees in 1972. By the 1990s, numerous corporations began to buy shares of the company and began to restructure the company. During the Great Flood of 1993 in the Midwest, several of their lines were flooded yet they quickly reopened these flooded lines. In April 1995, the Union Pacific acquired most of C&NW, while some trackage was operated by the Wisconsin and Southern Railroad. At its peak, C&NW operated with 11,046 miles of track.