Connecticut western news., 1880-04-21
Home Testimony.

The recent completion of several brancl
 roads in Minnesota, in the interest of tn
 Chicago North Western Railway Company
 suggests statement of the total mileage o
 this giant corporation, and we give elsewher
 a complete official table of the different line
 which it operates, together with a map show
 ing the entire system as now completed Il
 will be seen that the total length of lines o the Chicago & North Western Railway i;
 2, 158 1-2. This is the greatest mileage oper
 ated by any companyin this country. It is made up of six divisions of the Chicago &
 North Western proper, and eight proprietary lines, and the whole system is subdivided into twenty lines aud branches. To control suc- cessfully such vast and complex system of railways evidently requires talent of the high. est order, and the splendid condition, financial as we'll as physical, which the property now exhibits is suficent testimony to the ability of the management.
 The nucleus of this great system, the old Galena & Chicago Union railway, was opened | from Chicago to Elgin 42 miles, in 1850, only | twenty-eight years ago. The Chicago & North Western Railway Company came into being, as the successor of the Beloit < Madi- son, Rock River Valley Union, and Chicago, St. Paul Fond du Lac companies, in 1859. In 1865! the Galena & Chicago Union was consolidated with it, and in the few short years that have followed the young corpora tion has gone forward with astonishingly rap- i'd strides, to it's present proud position. What'its future enlargement may be is left to imagination. A study of the map which shows the system already reaches into five states and territory, may prove suggestive of possibilities yet ahead.-R. R Age, Dec. l2, 1878
 HERE IS MORE OF IT.
 The New York Herazd has been looking over the business that is annually transacted by thes Chicago & North Western Railway Company, and the more the writer considers 1t the more he wonders at the immense mag nitude of it's transactions. the great length of it's lines, the incomparable wealth, fertility, and responsiveness of the sections that it penetrates, and the brilliant future which this gigantic corporation has before it. In collect ing the data for it's article, the Her0ld finds that North-Western operates ?, 100 miles of road, and reaches every important point al- most ill Northern Illinois, Wisconsin, in Northern Michigan, in Iowa, in Minnesota. and runs many miles in Dakota. If it's lines were laid eastward from New York they would extend more than two-tirds of the way across the Atlantic, or they would reach from the pine clad hills of& Maine to the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico. The Herald continues:
 Take down your map and trace it's routes. Fix your eye on Chicago as starting point Westward in nearly an air line you will trace it's California line until you reach the Miss ouri River at Council Bluffs, opposite Omaha here is single run of nearly 500 miles. | Back to Chicago again you look north. west l and follow another of it's routes through Mad | son, the Capital of Wisconsin, into Minnesota | and on to St. Paul and Minneapolis is | 100 miles more. Again looking from Chi eago you can trace line through Sparta, Wis, La Crosse, in the same State ;Winona, Owatonna and New Ulm, in Minnesota, and northwestward far into Dakota-here we see 525 miles more of road. Again coming to Chicago, we see two lines running northward- y-one along the lake shore to Milwaukee, md thence to Fond du Lac, and the other 'unning more inland, through Janesville, Wa ertown, etc. also to Fond du Lac; thence north, through Oshkosh, De Pere, Green Bay