Wisconsin Central Ltd.

The Wisconsin Central Ltd.. was a railway company in the northern United States.

History

After the Soo Line in 1985 acquired the Milwaukee Road, she made 1986 most of their tracks in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan as " Lake States Transportation Division " ( LSTD ) together. It was hoped that these operationally self-sufficient in operating regional company could operate the comparatively underutilized routes with a total length of around 3,400 kilometers economical. After the expected effects were not or only slowly fell, the decision to offer the LSTD for sale.

A group of investors, led by the long-standing railway entrepreneur Edward Burkhardt and Thomas Power, the company Wisconsin Central Transportation Corporation founded ( WCTC ) and earned about it in the spring of 1987 the LSTD of the Soo Line. To operate the railroad subsidiaries were established: While the WCL Railcars Inc. to take over the leases for the locomotives and freight cars, was a Wisconsin Central Ltd.. Formed as actual operating company (WC). The three companies took advantage of aware the name and from 1885 originating emblem of the former Wisconsin Central Railway, as a large portion of the acquired route network had once been operated by this. A third subsidiary, Wisconsin Bridges Inc., was to take over the jointly held hitherto by the Soo Line and Canadian Pacific Railway in Sault Ste. Marie Bridge Co. - inter alia Operator of the railway bridge in Sault Ste. Marie - furnished.

The actual operation of the acquisition of WC was held on 11 October 1987. Investment in vehicles and equipment as well as an intensification of customer care resulted in improved reliability and traffic growth, so that in its first financial year, a profit was recorded. In the 1990s, the Wisconsin Central Group began to expand through the acquisition of other railway companies. The root network grew in 1993 with the acquisition of the Fox River Valley Railroad and the Green Bay and Western Railroad, which in 1995 the Canadian Algoma Central Railway followed. The largest expansion to a route length of over 4,600 kilometers, reaching the North American WC - route network with the acquisition of a former C & NW track in Upper Michigan by the Union Pacific on 27 January 1997.

At the same time the Wisconsin Central Group also overseas was active. WCTC was part of a consortium that in 1993 the New Zealand New Zealand Rail Limited acquired and operationally as Tranz Rail. Four years later, the group bought shares of the Tasmanian railway companies TasRail and Emu Bay Railway. In the United Kingdom Central Wisconsin held its first meeting in 1995 with the takeover of the operator of mail trains, Rail Express Systems Ltd, on. 1996 Wisconsin Central also acquired the business areas Trans - Rail, Mainline Freight and Load -Haul of British Rail and transferred them together with Rail Express Systems to the new company English, Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS ). EWS took over the following year, also the former British Rail sections Railfreight Distribution and National Power, which the company was by far the largest freight operator in the UK.

On 9 October 2001, the entire Wisconsin Central Group of the Canadian National Railway ( CN) was purchased. The economically very successful Wisconsin Central, which had increased the traffic on their main line since 1987 by 300% was attractive, both because of its own traffic for the CN. In addition, their connection closed Chicago - Duluth a gap in the Y-shaped transcontinental network of CN.

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