The Milwaukee Road Bi-Polars, Class EP-2

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific, commonly known as simply the Milwaukee Road, is best remembered for its Hiawatha passenger trains and electrified main line known as the Pacific Extension. The fact that the great railroad is no longer with us is not as disheartening as knowing how and why its end came about. Its loyal and hardworking employees through the end were sadly cheated by upper management, which made a series of dumbfounding decisions beginning in the 1970s that ultimately ended in the railroad being sold to a rival in 1985.

With its web of branch lines in the Midwest and several other railroads fighting for the same amount of traffic that could no longer support so many railroads, the Milwaukee Road found itself in a hopeless situation on the eastern half of its system (and it was unable, along with the other railroads, to abandon most of these unprofitable lines because government regulations did not allow for such until the 1980 introduction of the Staggers Act which deregulated the entire industry).

However, all was not lost for the Milwaukee. Its savior, for the time being, was its Pacific Extension. Even as the company’s management began to make increasingly idiotic decisions during the 1970s (such as scrapping the electrification just as the oil embargo hit) and defer maintenance across the entire system, their main line to the Pacific Northwest continued to earn the company a healthy profit.

Sadly, the company’s fate was sealed when, in another short lapse of vision, management decided to shutdown its electrification in 1974 just as oil prices skyrocketed (a study done at the time found that if left in place the electrified lines would have saved, in 1970’s dollars, $64 million annually). Then, in the late 1970s to scrap the entire system west of Miles City, Montana, some 1,100 miles of track! While the results of this and other abandonment projects on the eastern side of the system worked in cutting costs the now much smaller railroad, which no longer competed for the lucrative traffic entering the Port of Seattle (which today is booming), made for a prime merger target and in 1985 the Soo Line Railroad purchased the company. With the purchase thus closed the book on one of our country’s most interesting and dynamic railroads.

A disturbing side note in the Milwaukee’s decline is the report that some Burlington Northern officials knew the railroad was going to file for bankruptcy even before its own people did. Was corruption and/or conspiracy involved? That is impossible to verify, of course, but with what transpired to the Milwaukee Road in the 1970s (nothing the railroad did in the 1970s made sense from a basic business standpoint) it certainly makes one wonder.

The unique Bi-Polars built by GE and Alco began arriving on the Milwaukee in 1919 for use in passenger service on the Coast Division, a total of only five were built for the railroad numbered E1 through E5. These locomotives carried a unique 1-B-D+D-B-1 wheel arrangement and featured a center cab unit (which pivoted on brackets) plus two end units all permanently coupled using ball and socket joints.

For power the Bi-Polars used General Electric Type 100 gearless, bi-polar motors for each of the locomotive’s twelve driving axles (thus this is where the locomotives received their “Bi-Polar” name). The locomotive’s top speed was around 70 mph and it produced roughly 3,200 hp, although it was designed to be able to haul a 1,000-ton passenger train over a 2% grade holding a steady speed of 25 mph.

The Bi-Polars were powerful and agile locomotives although they were awfully heavy and proved to be a maintenance headache due to their complex design. By the mid-1950s the locomotives had mostly been pulled from through, passenger service and relegated to branch or yard work. With the Milwaukee’s purchase of the famed Little Joes around the same time (1950) the end for the Bi-Polars came swiftly. In 1958 the Bi-Polars were pulled from service, brought east, and parked near Deer Lodge, Montana. In 1961 E-1 was scrapped followed by E-3, E-4, and E-5 in 1963. Luckily, E-2 survived the scrapper’s torch and today is preserved at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis.

For more reading on the Milwaukee Road and you might want to consider The Milwaukee Road from Tom Murray. Of course, being that the Milwaukee is a legend in the ranks of fallen flags, hundreds of publications (many quite good) have been written about it over the years detailing various subjects. However, this book is a superb publication and will at least give you a general overview and history of the CMStP&P (and it is filled with many, excellent, historical and colorful photographs) at which point you can decide if you are interested in further books of study on the railroad. Even if you are a historian and/or fan of the Milwaukee and have not seen this book I'm sure you will enjoy it!

And, for more reading about the Milwaukee Road Bi-Polars and other electrics the railroad operated consider Electric Locomotives from Brian Solomon. Not only does the book give a nice overview about the Milwaukee Road's electrified operations it also covers American electric locomotive technology in general.