Chapter 22

Boom Island

In the Judgment of the management, the value and importance of the road reposed in its relation and proximity to Chicago. Naturally, the Chicago division received all the favors, took the smartest locomotives and used the newest train equipment. Most of the improvement and grade correction had been expended on the line from Stevens Point to Chicago where competition impelled the Central to render comparable service.

Yet despite the fact that the St. Paul-Abbotsford division received little attention, and that its track and roadbed could not compare with that of the south end; the "West End" presented a healthy aspect and produced its full quota of the Central's income. Grain and flour shipments originating in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, with Manitowoc destination, boosted the traffic revenue. In the days before the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and the "Burlington" became such close friends and allies, large shipments of Montana stock came in steady streams to the Central at St. Paul, bound for the Chicago stock yards.

In view of its accomplishments and possibilities, the St. Paul and of the line required and merited rather extensive improvements involving heavy investments. The Central's position in handling passenger trains and traffic in the Twin Cities permitted little expansion. They owned no rails within the limits of the Cities and found no opportunity to build passenger facilities, as the good locations were already preempted and beyond the reach of practical economy.

Within the freight handling department, however, there appeared some room for justifiable expansion.

Since 1894 the Central had been a partner in ownership of the Minnesota Transfer Railway Company, a transfer and switching service railroad of twenty-seven miles in extent which provided connecting and belt line service in and around the Twin Cities. The Minnesota Transfer Railway was owned and controlled by eight railroads; namely, Great Northern,  Northern Pacific,  Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul,  Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha,  Chicago Great Western,  Chicago, Burlington & Northern, Wisconsin Central, and Minneapolis & St. Louis. 

All through freight coming over any of the lines named and destined for another of this group went to the Minnesota Transfer, according to agreement among the several owners of the Minnesota. Transfer Railway. By connections with the Minnesota Belt Line Railway, all the railroads interested in the Minnesota Transfer Railway had access to the Twin City stock yards, packing plants, and rolling mills. The Board of Directors of the Minnesota Transfer Railway consisted of executives, one each from the eight part-owners, H. F. Whitcomb representing the Wisconsin Central.

When the Central had completed its line to Trout Brook Junction (2.5 miles north of St. Paul) in 1884, trackage agreements with the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern provided access into the city of Minneapolis to the Great Northern passenger station located on the west bank of the Mississippi River at Hennepin Avenue.

Here, adjoining the Great Northern station at the south, the Central built a 400 foot x 100 foot freight depot, and acquired a small commercial freight transfer yard with a switch lead to the Great Northern main line off First Street North. The Central property at this point carried the name Hennipen Avenue Yard.

Through the facilities of the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern tracks and station, the Minnesota Transfer and the Hennepin Avenue Yard, the Central handled its entire traffic in the Twin Cities.

High trackage rentals to foreign roads, and the press of increasing business urged the Central to augment existing facilities by building a freight terminal of its own. In 1901 the road acquired a plot of ground located on a sand bar at the east bank of the Mississippi immediately north of Nicollet Island and bordering on 8th Avenue N.E. in the city of Minneapolis. The new terminal site took the name of Boom Island. Previously, the site existed as a name only on county maps; one of the submerged areas in the river during spring and fall seasons. Boom Island yard required extensive river protection and filling to elevate the grade above high water level. Central equipment and crews executed all yard construction work which required about two years, and the terminal was opened for service in the winter of 1903 and 1904. Yard trackage accommodated three hundred cars, and on the south end of the island at the river bank, a machine shop and fifteen stall roundhouse were constructed under contract with Butler and Ryan Company of St. Paul.

To gain access to Boom Island, the Central used the Great Northern main up to the river at Second Avenue, there branching off on its own rails across Nicollet Island over two steel bridges to the south end of the Island Yard.

The installation of the new yard extended the scope of operations in the Twin Cities, furnishing much needed room to service the profitable flour and grain traffic originating at the Minneapolis Mills. Boom Island retained its strategic value to the road until 1912 when the entire terminal properties of the Central were sold to the Chicago Great Western. In the 1909 lease arrangement between the Soo Line and Wisconsin Central, the Twin City terminals of the Soo Line were made available to the Central, thus rendering Boom Island and Hennepin Avenue Yards superfluous and unnecessary to Soo-Central operations.

Boom Island and Hennepin Avenue yards represented valuable assets to the Central, as records of the sale indicate that the Chicago Great Western paid $1,600,000 for these properties.