Template talk:Twin Cities 400

Distance

The schematic at the bottom of the infobox says the distance from Chicago to St. Paul was 396.1 miles. The text of the main article says 408.6 miles, which likely came from the Scribbins book. (I will check on that and provide a direct cite.) The actual distance likely was 412.7 miles, based on the distance from Chicago to Wyeville of 238.9, and an additional 173.8 miles from Wyeville to St. Paul, as shown on the 1959 track diagrams for the Twin Cities Division, St. Paul to Elroy segment, found online here (warning: very large .pdf). Is there a source for the distance of 396.1 miles? Kablammo (talk) 15:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Excellent question. I pulled the numbers from a CNW timetable from 1948. I went and dug it up again. Here is my mistake. The distance from Chicago to Wyeville is 238.9 on the segment from Chicago through Milwaukee. The timetable also has mileage for the Viking. That takes the route from Clybourn junction, to Janesville and Madison. The distance on that route is the 226.4 to Wyeville. On the timetable, the rest of the stations count from there for the 501 Viking route, 515 Duluth Superior Limited, and 405 North Western Limited. So it would seem that all numbers after Wyeville on this template are 12.5 off on actual distance, which corresponds with 396.1 vs 408.6. The next question is, what are the actual milepost numbers on the Omaha route between Wyeville and St. Paul? Group29 (talk) 15:38, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

I believe the use of the template is to show the distance of the routes, not the mileposts, which I see now would be very confusing. For example, the M, St. P, & O counts miles from SPUD/7th street 0.0 to Westminster Jct 1.1 and out to Wyeville, not from Chicago. The Milwaukee / CB&Q joint track is the reaches 430 at SPUD/7th Street and switching over to 0.0 to count again towards Minneapolis. Thanks for catching this. Group29 (talk) 20:29, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

• Chicago And NorthWestern System [Time Table]. Rand McNally, March 14, 1948

Group29, thanks for checking on this. On the Wyeville-St. Paul segment, the mileage on the track diagrams are inconsistent with what you found in the timetable, as mentioned above. And as mentioned here, railroads sometimes had mileages in their public schedules different than those in employee timetables.

Do you know-- did the Viking go via Beloit, or the more direct route? Kablammo (talk) 19:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

It looks like the Viking and the Duluth Superior Ltd both went through Beloit, arriving at Janesville MP 103.3 and leaving Janesville at MP 91.1.Group29 (talk) 13:49, 2 November 2013 (UTC)