Western sought to further expand its trackage by seeking to purchase one of the bankrupt Midwest railroads, the Milwaukee Road or the Rock Island, in the 1970s. After inspecting the Rock Island's property and finding its trackage in need of costly repairs, GTW turned its attention in 1981 to acquiring the Milwaukee Road. GTW saw the acquisition of the Milwaukee Road (shorn of its Pacific Coast Extension and many of its midwestern branchlines) as an opportunity to expand its route further south and west to rail interchanges in Kansas City, Missouri, and Louisville, Kentucky. It would also afford GTW the opportunity to connect directly with its corporate cousin, the DW&P, at Duluth, Minnesota. Instead of initially placing a bid for the Milwaukee Road and seeking immediate ICC approval, GTW embarked on a strategy to improve the line's revenue and track maintenance. GTW and Milwaukee Road would enter into a voluntary coordination agreement where GTW would direct more of its shipments over the Milwaukee Road's route. It would also launch a marketing effort promoting the merger. However, as the Milwaukee Road became more successful, two other potential bidders, the Soo Line Railroad and the Chicago and North Western Railway, petitioned the ICC to purchase the railroad. Despite GTW's efforts, the ICC rejected its bid and, after a further bidding war between the Soo and the C&NW, approved the Soo Line's acquisition of the Milwaukee Road. The two roads were merged in January, 1986. Improving efficiency and downsizing During the 1970s and 1980s, Grand Trunk Western would continue to improve its efficiency and embark on efforts to improve its operating ratio. It had consolidated some of its operations, including dispatching in Pontiac, locomotive maintenance in Battle Creek and railcar maintenance in Port Huron. Its intercity passenger train operations would be handed over to Amtrak on May 1, 1971. Responsibility for GTW's commuter rail operation in Detroit was turned over in 1974 to the regional transportation authority SEMTA. GTW moved into the intermodal freight business by creating intermodal transfer yards in Chicago in 1975, and suburban Detroit in 1978. The railroad's president at the time, John H. Burdakin, was also a proponent of the Automatic Car Identification (ACI) system. It was a means to identify the location of shipments and equipment with bar code labels on the sides of freight cars and locomotives. The labels were read by automatic scanners at various rail