Restoring the Milwaukee Road - Monroe to Mineral Point, Wisconsin line - Trains Magazine

MidlandMike

I don't recall if it was mentioned, but is the ROW is rail-banked?

As mentioned above it is mostly a rail trail and in Wisconsin as it was mentioned in one of the reports rail trails can revert back to rail use but a condition is they have to provide ROW for the trail and fencing seperating it from the new trail.     Wisconsin does Rail Banking which is to keep the rails in place, then converts to rails to trails, and replaces the rails with a trail.   

The Brookfield Depot to CN junction under I-94 section used to be rail banked and now is planned for rail trails.     Like the Mineral Point line that line was modernized around WWII and almost all the bridges are steel and were left in place when Milwaukee abandoned (I walked that line after abandonment, I think I counted 3-4 short steel bridges over creeks) between Brookfield and CN tracks, the line used to cross the CN tracks and proceed to the gravel quary and even beyond that to the other side of Waukesha where the WSOR tracks start.    The rails are still in place in some sections but torn up in others.   Towards the end the Milwaukee Road used to use a single MP15 but sometimes a pair of MP15's to shuttle to the gravel quary with Milwaukee Road hoppers for purchases of road ballast in Waukesha and bring them back to Brookfield for the next local through town to carry away, sometimes they would take the MP15, sometimes leave it.    I think that was one reason for heavy steel bridges......the gravel loads.     They even had a car scale there across the road from the stone quarry with a small scale shack.    Shack is gone but you can still see the pit where the scale was, last I checked.

I noticed that some of the Milwaukee Electric Lines ROW is now a rail trail, specifically the section of the line from Waukesha (just before Highway G and I-94 exit on your right by the Ingleside Hotel.... to Waukesha Beach to Delafield and beyond (I think it stops in Delafield not sure if it goes onto Pabst Farms and into Oconomowoc......before they developed Pabst farms you could see the interurban embankment.......it followed the grid pattern of the roads on one side of the road and turned sharply at a corner of a grid).   If you want to see Waukesha Beach,  Google St, Anthony's on the Lake Catholic Church on Highway SS off I-94.    The TMER&L Co Waukesha Beach Stop was right behind the Church's lower parking lot.   It is pretty cool if you have an old picture of the holding tracks and station you can make out where things were laid out still just by looking at the trees and their growth.    There is also a historical marker there next to the road and a power substation called Waukesha Beach substation.    I trapsed into get closer to the lake and I could not see any traces of the amusement park or beach left......you really have to know what your looking for there.    Local scuba divers tell  me that most of the underwater area is pretty well picked over and it's hard to find a turn of the century beer or soda bottle but you can still find one here or there.