Most of these slides were taken by two gentlemen, Alan L. Freed and Chuck Bothwell, both railroad locomotive firemen and life-long friends who, during August of 1974, took a trip in a Fairmont Speeder (a railroad maintenance-of-way gas-powered 2 seater) on the Milwaukee Road’s Pacific extension from the Mobridge, South Dakota crossing of the Missouri River all the way to Cedar Falls, Washington near Tacoma, 1, 222 miles, over 7 days. They had both the permission and assistance from the Milwaukee Road to make the trip, which was written about in the Milwaukee’s employee magazine. They took literally hundreds of 35mm slides, and a few years ago, digitized them, dust and all. I have cleaned a number of their digitized slides, and included a number of filler photos in this video for perspective. I thought their trip really interesting, as they traversed some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, and they dodged, and photographed, many trains along the way as well. I did not include their photos of railroad employees, larger cities, hotels, cafes and restaurants, etc., of which there are a great many. As they made their trip, the Rocky Mountain and Coast Divisions were still under electrification; you will see many GE/ALCO “boxcab” locomotives, and the “Little Joes” as well. The electric “Little Joes” are distinctive by their “backwards and forwards” traditional diesel locomotive outward appearance. The locomotives were originally built for lend/lease export to the Soviet Union, but with the post-World War 2 cold war, were not sent. GE/ALCO then made made them available to the Milwaukee Road to supplement their existing electric locomotive fleet. There are 3 “Little Joes” still in existence, 2 on display, and one still in use to this day near Chicago. They got their name from Joseph Stalin. You will also see the Milwaukee’s electric substations, that converted 100,000 volts AC, from hydroelectric plants, to 3,000 volts +/- DC for the locomotive’s traction motors, via motor-generator sets, transformers, and switchgear in the substations. The overhead wire that provided electric power to the locomotives was called “catenary” or “trolley” and the framework on top of the locomotives that slid along the catenary was called the “pantograph”. Most of the substation machinery was photographed at Avery, Idaho. Avery was a beautiful location, with a railroad yard right next to the St. Joe River. The electrified sections were from Harlowton, Montana to Avery, Idaho, and and again from Othello, Washington to Seattle/Tacoma, through the Rocky, Bitter Root, Cascade and Olympia mountains, with steep grades and bitter cold winters. The steam locomotives would freeze in sub-zero temperatures; the electrics were unaffected. The electrics also pioneered and incorporated something called “regenerative braking”, ancestor of dynamic braking now used in virtually all diesel locomotives. This allowed very heavy freight trains to descend steep mountain grades without having to use air brakes, and actually returned the unused electricity back through the catenary to the substations and from there, back to the AC power utilities for credit! The Milwaukee Road’s Pacific extension is conceded to be the best engineered U.S. transcontinental railroad of them all, with all of the right-of-way purchased by the railroad itself, not land grants. Their electrification program was decades ahead of any other railroad both in scope, a total of 660 miles electrified, and pioneered many innovations still used today. These slides and photos in no way belong to me, so this video must remain private.
source