Milwaukee Road X3800: Deer Lodge’s Shop Goat

Published: October 8, 2026

There was one. Milwaukee Road X3800 was the shop goat at Deer Lodge, Montana, a four-wheel locomotive the railroad’s own men built to drag electrics across a turntable and into a roundhouse the trolley never reached. A storage-battery shop goat, such as Chesapeake & Ohio 18742 at Huntington, carries its current in a box on the frame. X3800 drew shop current: 220-volt direct current, through an extension cord plugged into the Deer Lodge roundhouse. Today, the little switcher sits on display near the depot at Harlowton, Montana.

Milwaukee Road shop goat X3800 pulls a Little Joe out of the Deer Lodge, Montana roundhouse in September 1973

Milwaukee Road shop goat X3800 pulls a "Little Joe" out of the roundhouse at Deer Lodge, Montana in September, 1973. The home-built shop goat drew 220-volt direct current through an extension cord from the roundhouse and spent its working life moving electrics onto the turntable and into the stalls. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · One locomotive · The roundhouse · 220 volts and a cord · Black, then yellow · June 1974 and the steeple-cabs · Harlowton · Related reading · Sources

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific — the Milwaukee Road
Number	X3800. One locomotive
Where it worked	Deer Lodge, Montana. Roundhouse and turntable
What it was	Home-built shop goat. The switcher utilized a truck off a former FM C-Liner with the carbody and cab scratch built by the Milwaukee's own shop forces.
Power	220-volt direct current through an extension cord from the roundhouse. The trolley outside was 3,000-volt direct current
Job	Move electric locomotives, Little Joes and boxcabs among them, between the turntable and the stalls
Paint	Black in the published shop views. Yellow, with the red tilted herald and black numerals, by July 11, 1972, and still yellow while it worked
Dated at Deer Lodge	April 29, 1958 (Krambles-Peterson collection, as filed). September 1967 (John Dziobko). April 10, 1971 (Doug Wingfield). July 11, 1972. September 1973, pulling a Little Joe out of the roundhouse
When the job ended	Rocky Mountain electrification closed at Deer Lodge across June 15–16, 1974. The last locomotive under the wire was steeple-cab E82
Display	Harlowton, Montana, on a short piece of rail beside the old Milwaukee depot. The bell is gone in the display views
Still unpublished	Year built, weight, horsepower, and which truck the shop started with

The working record is the American-Rails captions, dated photographs, Jim Scribbins on the last weekend of electric operation, and Deer Lodge men whose families later described the cord. Year, weight, and horsepower have no published card. Information compiled October 8, 2026.

Why the roundhouse needed a goat

Deer Lodge was the shop town of the Rocky Mountain Division. Electrics that had come over the 3,000-volt trolley from Harlowton, or up from the west, came into the yard under their own power. The wire stopped short of the turntable, and it stopped short of the roundhouse. A Little Joe or a boxcab could stand on a wired lead with its pans in the air. To go onto the table, and from the table into a stall, it needed something that could move where the catenary ended.

That something was X3800. A nephew of a Deer Lodge Milwaukee man, asking in 2012 about a picture he had grown up around, got the assignment in plain shop language. They used the little locomotive to move the large electric road engines in and out of the roundhouse, because the turntable and the house had no overhead wire. Jim Bernier, writing in 2003 from the same tradition, put the move one step finer: out of the stalls and off the turntable, on a cable plugged into the shop.

X3800, small enough that a man on the ground can look over the cab, has a Little Joe on the coupler and is walking it clear of the house. A film of the Deer Lodge turntable, passed along by the same Deer Lodge family, shows the goat moving a boxcab. Wingfield’s 1971 caption adds the shop hazard everyone who ran it remembered: now and then a wheel went over the cord.

220 volts and a cord

The trolley outside the shop fence was the Rocky Mountain Division’s 3,000-volt direct current, stepped down from the high-tension alternating-current lines at the substations. X3800 had no pantograph and no pole for that wire. What it had was a cord, and the cord went to a 220-volt direct-current outlet in the roundhouse. Shop voltage, house current, enough to turn one truck at a walking pace with a dead electric on the coupler.

June 1974, and the steeple-cabs

X3800’s job lasted as long as electrics came into the house. Jim Scribbins, in The Milwaukee Road 1928–1985, put the end of road and yard electrification at Deer Lodge across June 15–16, 1974. Train 264 arrived that Saturday at 7:50 a.m. Richard Steinheimer was among the few railfans who made the trip. The final electric locomotion, Scribbins wrote, was a diminutive yard switcher that kept working the Deer Lodge yard into the early hours of the next day. Electrification ended the way it had started more than fifty-eight years earlier, with a General Electric steeple-cab.

That steeple-cab is a different locomotive. Milwaukee owned four of them, classed ES-2 in the photo record. E80 and E81 were built in 1916. E82 and E83 were built in 1919. In March 1939 they came out of the 10050–10053 series and became E80–E83. E83 was retired in 1952. Of the three that remained, one switched Deer Lodge, one switched Butte, and one stayed at Deer Lodge in reserve. They took power from the trolley, pantograph up, and they classified the yard. X3800’s cord ended at the roundhouse wall.

Bill Edgar found E80, E81, and E82 together on the deadline at Tacoma’s Tide Flats in February 1975, after the Montana wires had gone cold, and identified E82 as the last Milwaukee electric operated, on June 15, 1974. Scribbins carries that yard trick into the early hours of the 16th. The same night, at the other end of the electric district, a marker at Harlowton dates the tie-up of boxcabs E57B and E34C on the roundhouse track at 11:40 p.m. Those were the last of the 1915 General Electric road engines still moving. The steeple-cab at Deer Lodge was the last locomotive under the wire.

Milwaukee Road
Little Joe electric locomotives
EF-1 / EP-1 boxcabs
Electric locomotives
Switcher locomotives
C&O / Chessie 18742, Huntington’s storage-battery shop switcher
Montana railroads

Sources

American-Rails.com photograph on this page, and the matching caption posted December 5, 2023: X3800 between assignments at Deer Lodge, July 11, 1972; 220-volt DC extension cord; home-built; electrics into and out of the roundhouse; displayed at Harlowton; photographer unknown
American-Rails.com, Milwaukee Road company page: the opposite side of X3800 at Deer Lodge during July 1972, same assignment, same display line
American-Rails.com caption, August 7, 2025: X3800 pulling a Little Joe out of the Deer Lodge roundhouse, September 1973
John Dziobko, RailPictures.net photo 640152: X3800 at the Deer Lodge terminal, September 1967, a Little Joe in the next stall
Doug Wingfield, RailPictures.net photo 361108: X3800 at Deer Lodge, April 10, 1971; extension cord to the roundhouse; the cord occasionally run over
Krambles-Peterson collection, Railroad Picture Archives, Milwaukee Road X3800 file: roster view filed at Deer Lodge, April 29, 1958
Kurt Clark, RailPictures.net photo 44865: X3800 at Harlowton beside the old Milwaukee depot, August 15, 2003; built by the Milwaukee; Deer Lodge roundhouse; extension cord; short display track
Jim Heringer, Railroad Picture Archives: X3800 at Harlowton, July 30, 2013
ModelRailroadForums.com, “Milwauke X3800,” opened July 17, 2012 by montanan: the cord; the uncle who worked Deer Lodge and described the unwired turntable and roundhouse; Harlowton as the same unit, bell missing; one locomotive; acquired by the depot’s historical society and brought in by truck, year unsaid; a film of X3800 moving a boxcab on the turntable
Bill Marvel, Under Milwaukee Wires (Morning Sun Books), page 57, as described by a reader on September 23, 2003: two photographs of X3800 in black. A 2012 reader of a book he titled Under Milwaukee Wires quoted a caption that the engine would be painted Union Pacific yellow and displayed at Three Forks. A 1989 resident of Three Forks found the old freight depot
Jim Scribbins, The Milwaukee Road 1928–1985 (Heimburger House, 2001), as quoted in the Milwaukee Road history file: Train 264 into Deer Lodge at 7:50 a.m., Saturday, June 15, 1974; Richard Steinheimer among the witnesses; a GE steeple-cab the final electric locomotion, working into the early hours of June 16
Bill Edgar, RailPictures.net photo 510798: E80, E81, and E82 at Tacoma Tide Flats, February 1975. Four ES-2 steeple-cabs; E80 and E81 built 1916; E82 and E83 built 1919; renumbered from 10050–10053 in March 1939; E83 retired 1952; Deer Lodge, Butte, and a Deer Lodge reserve; E82 the last Milwaukee electric operated, June 15, 1974
E57B marker, Harlowton, inscription by W. H. Wilkerson of the E57B Committee: E57B and E34C stopped on the Harlowton roundhouse track at 11:40 p.m., June 15, 1974
Harlowton Milwaukee Depot Museum, harlomilwdepot.org: 1908 depot at 307 Central Avenue South, open Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day

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