Those Magnificent Quads

It was the electric motors on the Milwaukee Road's Lines West that received them: those beautiful quad headlights.

The original lamps that adorned the famous electrics, from the Bi-Polars to the Little Joes, seemed average
enough. Pictures posted across
various pages on the internet show a single headlight centered in a larger reflective housing, just like the steamers and diesels of the same era. Somewhere along the way, however, during the rebuilding that kept those electrics in service for decades and decades, a modification was made. A 4 sealed beam
headlight was installed, making the electrics instantly identifiable. Even the Little Joes received them, and their slightly smaller headlight housing made them all the more distinctive. The photo of the Joe shows the quad light arrangement, slightly truncated on the edges.

But then, it wasn't just the electrics that got this treatment. On a beautiful sunny summer day, tucked away in the back of the yards in St. Maries, ID, a distinctive non-electric resides with that beautiful quad on full display. The plow was a home-built for the Milwaukee, number X900109. The rib sides recall other Milwaukee projects like their distinct cabooses or ribside box cars. It was a construction technique used to bolster the strength of the side walls and it resulted in some very unique Milwaukee equipment.

The paint is badly faded on the old plow and rust resides around many of the weld joints. When needed, however, it has seen a recent call to action. The winter of 2007-2008 required its services on the Elk River branch. Shop crews spent a few days readying the plow and then pushed it out of town using a pair of the St. Maries River Railroad GPs. Perhaps the only disappointment of the trip was the lack of light from that fabulous quad: no power hookup was available from the locomotives to turn it on.

It appears that there will be no further calls to action for X900109. As noted in previous postings, the Elk River Branch is silent and the log cars that roamed there are cut into scrap. For now though, that quad headlight still rests atop the old plow in the yards at St. Maries. It's a nod to the Milwaukee's uniqueness, its home shops, and to those distinctive electric locos that ran the electrified mountain divisions for those many many decades. A magnificent quad.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Place Where She Only Sleeps

Image
 Location: MP 1566.8 Grant-Kohrs Ranch Not far from Deer Lodge, headed west on the transcon we arrive here, at Grant-Kohrs Ranch where the Resourceful Railroad only sleeps.  Instead of empty right of way and scattered gravel, steel rail still binds the land in this place that is unlike the many other hundreds of miles along Lines West.  Across the Grant-Kohrs Ranch, on federal Park lands, the railroad only seems to rest and slumber while waiting for a new time to come.  Against the backdrop of Montana clouds that hold no rain, the catenary poles can still be found here standing against the endless skies.  The lineside poles that mark an era of railroading now gone still hold to the right of way.  It is not hard to imagine them whipping by outside the windows of an Olympian under the electrified power of a Quill or Joe.  Perhaps an XL Special could easily whisk across the scene above as though decades had never passed. Things don't seem so forgotten or beyond hope in a place like th
Read more

Buried

Image
 Location:  Near Bear Mouth, MT 1603 miles west of Chicago The daylight is fading away in the photo above - in the space that has been cut by the Clark Fork River.  Here one finds the Milwaukee heading to Bearmouth, MT, making its way steadily west.  Still marking the path is the former NP (Montana Rail Link at the time this photo was taken) and not far away, empty tunnels that lie in unchanging darkness.  The searchlight signal of the old NP shows a high green along the steel rails still present, a lonely sentinel in a sad and lonely place. The signatures of Milwaukee were fading even during the time of this photo, now itself 20 years old.  The gravel road preserves what was the right-of-way but telegraphy and other markers were quickly falling even then.   Traveling along I90 is now a trip through forgotten history and gravesites.  Where bridges once crossed the old transcontinental, fill has taken their place.  No more insulator panels that guard the roads above from the electrical
Read more

Summer Skies and Fading Paint

Image
On the way out of Deer Lodge, the Milwaukee Road rolled west by a fuel rack and two depots that bounded it north and south.  To the south of the rails was the freight depot, shown above and below.  Note the telegraphy pole that rises through the roof at the west end.  One can scroll back through the decades online and find it, always present, rising right through the eve of the old freight house.   Those decades weren't kind to the old house either.  The white paint has washed and faded away, the wooden shingles are increasingly missing.  When these pictures were taken in the early 2000s, the end was very near.  To the north of the former main, the passenger depot has taken on a new life as a church, but no such rebirth has come to the old freight house.  Under the hot Montana sun, the remaining paint continues to fade away and soon the house, the loading dock, and the telegraphy pole that always seemed to rise through the roof will vanish from under these blue skies. To the north
Read more