MILW Milwaukee Road Steamers

Ruminating, I noticed that the MILWAUKEE was the
largest carrier to never have never owned a ten coupled locomotive. Which is odd, because most
of the carriers that had seasonal traffic peaks
on light rail, tried out some form of ten coupled
power to spread the weight and increase
train size, at one point in time or another.

It explains the popularity of Russian decapods
on the Frisco for instance.
There , the high tractive effort to weight ratio
and low price tags on these surplus locos made
them attractive.

Regardless, of the idiosynchratic matter of the
total absence of these locoforms, the road could
certainly use a decent treatment of our steam
power.
Nothing like the Stauffer books, or recent
Hundmann published Northern Pacific volume(s),
exist for CMStP&P steam power. That too, is
somewhat surprising, because lots of MILWAUKEE
road fans exist, but somehow nothing to resemble
Bernie Corbin's BURLINGTON steam book,
Lloyd Stagner' s several works, even King on the
DM&IR, and the recent FRISCO POWER by Joe
Collias, has materialized for us.

I know that there is an inprint recent
volume on MILWAUKEE steam, but it is a
woefully inadequate work that fails to
notice some important things that I know
about, and I do not consider myself an expert
on the subject. It provides little or no specs
for the locos, serves up largely dull
broadside shots of locos in terminals, and
somehow assumes that the renumbering
of locos through the years is what a roster
is all about. Too bad he didn't just take a
loco roster from Sy Reich's RAILROAD magazine
series. They have been used elsewhere with
Carsten's permission, and would have given
the meaningful data that tells one what
locomotives were capable of doing.

Maybe, the absence of information
is a symptom of the evergrowing trend
to fill a book with photos and think that is
railroad history. Well, some people believe:
" a picture is worth a thousand words", MAYBE
... the concommitant is that for this to
be true, the viewer has to know what he
is seeing. In the case where much is hidden
in the internal workings of a machine, as a for
instance, it is not going to happen. It also
has resulted in outfits like Morning Sun, which
has at least one error per page in their limited
captioning efforts; to survive disseminating
misinformation in massive doses editorially,
as long as the colored pictures are pretty.

Here's hoping we will soon get a book(s) out
of the current series from the historical society,
or from other sources, that will provide guys like
myself with a comprehensive picture of the
steam locos of the MILWAUKEE road.
Good-Luck, PJB

 

It is interesting. In Germany, Russia and China, ten-coupled engines were by far the dominant types of freight locomotive - but then, these were countries that didn't have so many articulateds. The only North American road I can think of which followed that pattern was PRR, whose most numerous large locomotive was the I1 2-10-0 and who disliked articulateds. The Mallet was the usual route for most US roads looking for bigger power. Not that ten-coupled engines weren't pretty widespread, but they weren't usually standard heavy power.

 

Pennsy's Ten coupled locos

TRIPLEX:
Your observations about Penn Rd is germane, and
their 500+ Class 'I' decapods in all versions(known
as Hippos to the keystone fans), as well as the
'J-1' Texas types (copies of C&O 'T' class) were
the largest groups of these types operated by any
North American carrier. The latter, despite their
being old designs at the time they were built were
vastly more modern than the 'I-1s' were from a
technological point of view.
However, the situation on the Pennsy was
strongly influenced by the Great Depression, and
the need to recover the investment on electrifying
their eastern mainlines. The lack of funds to
modernize the non electric motive power, result-
ed in their being a surplus of steam locomotives
that could only be disposed of by scrapping, as
the market for used locomotives of types run by
shortlines and poor "Class-1" carriers dried up
with the generalized economic depression that
saw many railroads become bankrupt and pass
into receivership.
The Pennsy, did engage in superheating the
Hippoes and attempting to upgrade their
speed, but this had limited success. There were
other decapods, specifically the WESTERN
MARYLAND's class 'I-2' , and the L&NE copies
of them that were light years removed from
the Hippos performance , despite being 2-10-0s.
The latter, were regarded by Fred Westing as
the best freight locomotives he ever was on.
Given Westing's authority and intimate
association with the Pennsylvania RR (reflected
in his several excellent books on their locos
and operations), that is no small comment.
The 'I-2s' could haul freight at 40-45 m.p.h.
They didn't hunt or damage track at those
speeds as did the Hippos, and virtually all
the USRA 2-10-2 efforts.

Locomotive purchases are often strange, from
the point of view of observers. They were often
made by railroads around the world from what
can only be considered whimsical rationales.
That is , if one assumes that the management
was trying to maximze the provision of trans-
portation, while minimizing the cost of
providing same.

Sometime this is serependiferous,
as in the L&NE buying copies of these
great WM designed locos, but that doesn't
make much sense either. Since they
were in the drag freight business ...
of hauling coal and cement, at twenty miles
an hour (less over the many grades enroute),
and would have been better off buying some
second hand Hippos from the Pennsy.
Apparently, they had the money, and opted
for a corporate statement of bravura , rather
than a sound capitalist decision.

Decapods, are interesting in another way to
the history of U.S. steam motive power (they
only were on N deM rosters if acquired with
an absorbed industrial line, and only CP had
any in Canada < several turned into 0-10-0s
for hump work >): the decapods built to
Russian designs, which were not delivered
secondary to the defeat of Russia in the Great
War and following revolutionary chaos, were
bought into the US market by the USRA.
These were excellent designs, having some of
the highest TE to loco weight ratios found
anywhere. They also were better than much
of the branch line locos found on the trunk
lines as well as some found on lighty built
mainlines found on western prairie operators.
Some carriers, notably JERSEY CENTRAL, had
local managements that refused to operate
them despite the need for locos at the time.
Generally, the opposition was BS and reflected
some holdovers from the days where locos
had to have a personal stamp of the CMO
in order to be sound.
That attitude was changing, and the DE
destroyed its vestiges after WW2. In any case
carriers of diverse types like ERIE, FRISCO,
READING, and even the WESTERN MARYLAND
found good use for them. The READING, which
operated the gargantuan 'K' class santa fes
(2-10-2s) and the WESTERN MARYLAND,
that had the already noted largest 'I-2'
decapods, both found yeoman work on
branchlines in local freight service for these
regauged Russian refugees (they were 'I-1'
class on WM).
So, as both smaller locos of less than100 tons,
and as the largest of their types extant, the
2-10-0 was a major role player on several
fronts.
The Pennsy 'J's were copied from the
ranks of the original superpower designs of
the Joint committee on Locomotive design
created on the Van Swerigan owned railroads.
At the time of their construction, the design
was inferior to the latest ATSF 2-10-4 types,
as was shown when they both shared the
same tracks for a brief period at the end of
the steam era,...but that is another story.
They were, as far as the Pennsy was concerned,
terrific locos, given the options available on that
system.
Good-Luck, PJB

 

Just curious if anyone has any info on the N3 mallets? I was ruminating how to maybe make a passable representation in N scale.

 

I know a spot where 10-coupled locos crossed a Milwaukee branch line - Taopi, MN. The CGW had the Texas types and the two railroads had a crossing there.



Doug

 

The Bachmann 2-6-6-2 is actually a pretty believable representation... My major question was about the coffin feedwater heaters, because I know some of the N3's had the heaters removed later in their service life, and was curious what the technical reason might be for that. I'm also trying to figure out how to represent the feedwater heater to make it a little more accurate.

 

I gave gcav17 a book titled 'Milwaukee Steam' that has a lot of N3 photos and some good text about them.