Before the Cord is Snapped

 

The date was Friday, November 7, 1919 and at the GE plant in Erie, PA a new electric locomotive was undergoing demonstration in front of railroad reps assembled by GE [1].  The viewers included representatives from multiple US Railroads, two Canadian lines and a variety of others.  The locomotive in question was one of the first Milwaukee Bi-Polar types, 10251.  

The EP-2 Bi-Polars were monsters, with a total weight of 530,000 lbs and up to 86% of that weight atop the drivers.  That compared very favorably to steam locomotives of the time.  A Mohawk of the same vintage achieved only 68% of total weight on drivers.  10251 effectively bested one of these famous 4-8-2s plus another 4-6-2 coupled together that day. 

Most of their lives were spent on the electrified Coast Division of the Milwaukee Road, running the line between Othello and Tacoma across the State of Washington.  In their charge were the passenger trains that ran across the Cascades, utilizing electrical power to advance against the grades and weather associated with that section of Lines West.  They finished their years running the Rocky Mountain Division pulling the last electrified passenger trains there.  West of Butte, on the way to Deer Lodge we see the old mainline above near Finlin.  Though they never achieved the fame or success of the Joes or Boxcabs here, it is interesting to think of them painted in their Union Pacific colors hauling the Olympian Hiawatha across this scene.

Reportedly their final rebuilding made few on the Rocky Mountain Division happy and 1958 was their last year of operation.  10251, which had become E2, was donated to the National Transportation Museum at St. Louis where it remains today.  The photos below are from 2015, just shy of 100 years after the demonstrations and dignitaries of Erie, PA.  


Note the magnificent quad.

There is a caution in these tales from times past - that the cord can be quickly snapped.  From pulling the varnish, to a quiet existence on a rusty museum spur, 10251 sits in the company of other forgotten machines.  Few of these could match her style, size and power, however.  Her orange paint is fading in the summer sun, the few people around her are museum visitors from a different generation and it highlights the breathtaking brevity of descent:  from the highs of progress and achievement to the quiet that has come over Lines West, a thousand miles west of here.  As the writer of Ecclesiastes opines, "Remember Him before the silver cord is snapped [2]."

1). “C.M.&St.P. Electric Locomotives Tested at Erie,” Railway Electric Engineer, pp. 449–453, Dec 1919.  http://milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Electrification/Electrical%20Review/1919%2012%20CMStP%20Locomotives%20Tested%20at%20Erie,%20Railway_Electrical_Engineer-1.pdf

2) "Ecclesiastes 12:6," Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible, BSB, Copyright 2016, 2020 by Bible Hub.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rock-a-bye bye bye?

Image
There are footnotes to history and there are chapters. Dependent on your perspective, sometimes those footnotes deserve a book unto themselves. As the economy sagged in the seventies, railroads were hit hard. The East saw a general collapse in the form of Penn Central. As the seventies wore on, the PC would be combined with several other bankrupt roads to form Conrail, a government backed corporation who's sole goal was to save rail transportation in the eastern half of the country. Collapse worked its way through the western lines during these years as well. The Milwaukee Road pulled out of the West just over 30 years ago at the beginning of March. Bankrupt and reeling, its retreat to the Midwest would last only a few more years until its absorption by Soo Line. Its competitors in the West and Northwest managed to hang on, but healthy balance sheets were not to be found in the board rooms of the Cascade Green lines in those years. The Rock Island had a long flirtation with...
Read more

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 ...
Read more

Hidden in the Trees

Image
 MP1613.1, Ravenna, MT.  Substation 9  I once met the man who owned the old Substation at Ravenna.  In one of those strange twists of history, so I'm told, it was supposed to be torn down and sold for scrap as the bricks had value.  But the original sale didn't work, the scrapper never came and it remains standing near the howling roar of I90 to this day. I90 is just one part of  the U.S. system that moves upwards of 90% of freight by truck and highway.  But tucked in amongst the tall pines like a mirage, Ravenna looks out blankly towards that interstate and shouts quietly back about a different time. The year was 1972 and General Electric had put together a unique proposal: completion of the electrified railway portion of the Milwaukee Road.  In a formal proposal, offered by GE itself ("Proposal for the Completion of the Electrified Railway Operation of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad Company") via the Locomotive Products De...
Read more