Spring 1997 Issue

IN EVERY ISSUE

Soo News
WC News
Editor's Report
Executive Report
Gallery
Rip Track
Letters
Transfer Table
Less-Than-Carload

STAFF

Editor
Rick Johnson

Associate Editor
Ken Soroos

Associate Editor/Soo News
Jason Korth

Soo News
tom Mastoras

Wiconsin Central News
Galen Fromm

Modeling Editor
Chuck Derus

Contributing Editors
Andy Roth, Guy Kieckhefer, Doug Fleming

Editorial Consultants
Jack Witmer, Gregg Condon

Technical Consultants
Stuart J. Nelson, Wallace W. Abbey

Commercial Accounts
Joe Lallensack

Advertising Manager
Burnell Breaker

Back Issues
John Strenski

Summer 1997 Issue Hightlights

Soo Line's Insulated DF boxcars

by Guy N. Kieckhefer

The Soo Line and its affiliated Wisconsin Central Railway, which at one time themselves owned a fairly large fleet of refrigerator and ventilated cars, retired all of these cars by 1947 and replaced them with ice bunker refrigerator cars leased primarily from private car owner Union Refrigerator Transit Company. In the meantime a demand developed on the Soo Line for insulated boxcars, the first ten of which were 39'-10" inside length, 3252 cubic foot insulated boxcars taken from the Soo 75400-75798 outside braced boxcar series for the transportation of wet lap woodpulp. By 1956 the demand for more modern insulated boxcars, primarily to service customers on its "Chicago Division" led the Soo to "build" (or more accurately to "assemble") 25 50'-6" lL XMRI (later XLI) insulated DF boxcars at North Fond du Lac in August 1956 under GMS 6898. These cars, charged to the account of the Wisconsin Central Railway, were not only insulated but also were equipped with DF loading devices and nailable steel floors and some of the earliest plug doors (8'-0") on the Soo. Assembled at North Fond du Lac from standard components such as Dreadnaught ends, Stanray roofs, Stran-Steel nailable steel flooring and Scullin trucks, these cars were the forerunners of the 449 RBL insulated refrigerator cars that the Soo was to buy between 1962 and 1976. In May 1958 these cars were joined on the Wisconsin Central by 25 similar 40'-0" XMEI insulated DF boxcars, again assembled at North Fond du Lac.

Chippewa Falls and its Soo Line Heritage

For a relatively modest-size city, this northwestern Wisconsin community had a textured and sometimes convoluted railroad history-with no less than four players, including an interurban line

By Robert Barnier
and Gregg Condon

Chippewa Falls-always a great place on the Soo Line! It was the first division point out of the Twin Cities on the main line to Chicago. On the southwest side of town was Soo's Irvine Yard, and the "beanery" hotel and cluster of houses near the yard office almost constituted a suburb. The yard was divided into East Yard and West Yard, and between the two were the engine facilities and yard office; the classic wooden roundhouse lasted until 1997. The whole place embodied those qualities of atmosphere summed up in the word "railroady."

Chippewa Falls is regionally famous for a small brewery that has stood the test of over a century's competition-Leinenkugels. It is also known for Chippewa Springs bottled water. Where the Northern States Power Company dam now stands there was once the world's largest sawmill under one roof. That's not unique, because as the lumber boom boomed, ever-larger sawmills superceded each other in rapid succession.

Soo was first in Chippewa Falls

The first railroad in the Chippewa Falls (C.F.) area was the Chicago & North Western through Eau Claire, ten miles south of C.F. This pioneer line was built in 1870 by the West Wisconsin Railway, a predecessor of the Omaha Road (Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha), which became C&NW. Chippewa Falls' first connection with the outside world of railroading was a railroad from C.F. to connect with the WWR at Eau Claire. That railroad was the Chippewa Falls & Western Railway Company Inc. (big title for a 10.25-mile railroad). Nobody knew it at the time, but this was to be the pioneer trackage of the Soo Line in the area. Constructed in 1873, the CF&W had one locomotive and one "beautifully appointed" coach, which an 1875 newspaper observed, "rides like a plank in a pond."

The CF&W didn't enter the main part of the city, which is on the north side of the river. Instead, the CF&W had a small yard on the south side of the river-just about at the south end of the current Bridge Street bridge. From this yard, the line swung southwest toward Eau Claire.

Enter the Wisconsin Central

After seven years of being the only railroad in town, the CF&W was joined in 1880 by the Wisconsin & Minnesota Railway (eventually Wisconsin Central, eventually Soo Line), pushing its way west from Abbotsford. The railroad didn't cross the river at first; it terminated in the CF&W yard on the south side of the river.

Enter the Omaha

Now here's a real oddity. In 1881, the Chippewa Falls & Northern-a construction subsidiary of the Omaha Road-built a line north from Chippewa Falls to Bloomer, Wis. This line eventually was extended to Superior. This company constructed the first railroad bridge in Chippewa Falls-the easternmost of four railroad bridges which eventually would be built in C.F. Union Pacific is the successor of the Omaha/C&NW and still uses the bridge on this site.

Conclusion

Chippewa Falls was always an important operating location and source of traffic to the Soo Line and its predecessor companies. It continues to be a notable location on successor (new) Wisconsin Central.

At this writing in 1997, the yard office at Irvine Yard is still in great shape. The old beanery hotel next door is still a tavern. A sand tower and scale house are about all that remain of Soo Line buildings in the yard, the old wooden roundhouse having just recently been razed. Amoco is an important shipper and a relatively new shed covers a track in West Yard for the unloading of tank cars.

.

An Engineer's Memories of Chippewa Falls

By Bob Barnier

It was October 1946, and I was just ten days shy of my twenty-first birthday. The call came that the Eau Claire branch crew was in need of a fireman. The engineer had told the frustrated crew caller, "Why don't you call that kid who's been hanging around the roundhouse?" So they called me.

A guy was supposed to be 21 when he started in engine service with the Soo Line, but I had indeed been hanging around there and they knew I was serious about the business. I took the firing job that day. How amazed they all would have been if we'd known that 41 years later I'd be the engineer on the last Eau Claire turn. Indeed, how amazed everyone at the roundhouse would have been on that distant 1946 day if they'd known that I'd be the last engineer on a Soo Line train out of Chippewa Falls, before the advent of the Wisconsin Central.

Early observations

The memories of the steam days are filled with activity. Diesels provided a cleaner work environment, but the steam engines were far more interesting.

When I started, I was the youngest man at Chippewa Falls (CF). My first regular job at CF was working as a hostler. There were three hostlers on eight-hour shifts, and each hostler had two helpers. We would service the switchers, the branch engines and the helpers (there were always three of them on hand). We would clean the fires, keep the tanks full and fuel the engines. We put sand in the sand domes-the sandhouse had its own drying equipment.

Coal for the locomotives was in two separate coal-tower pockets. Stoker engines had different coal from hand-fired locos. All of the locomotives kept at CF were hand-fired; the big road engines were stoker-fired. You can tell by looking at an engine if it's hand-fired-they have a short cab to accommodate the swing of a coal scoop.

Operations in '87

By the time the Soo quit the line in 1987, I had seen a world of changes in operations at Chippewa Falls. Now, in '87, the conductor would get a fax sheet from the Stevens Point dispatcher through the operator in the CF yard office. He would give us a clearance and provide us with a train sheet showing where the cars were and the switching to be done.

We couldn't leave the yard limits without clearance and train orders. By 1987 all trains on the line were run as Extras. The rulebook had over 800 rules in it, and you had to take a test on it once a year. Eastward trains had rights over westward trains-not that that mattered much by then, because we would be the only train on the line.

Conclusion

In October 1987, the new Wisconsin Central took over the Soo Line, including the Chippewa Falls branch, and I worked for the final three and a half months of my career running trains between St.Paul and Portage on the former Milwaukee Road. During this period I was involved in the worst wreck of my life. My train sideswiped another train which had derailed. I jumped to the left side of the cab and the engineer's side was sheared off. They had to scrap the engine.

But negative memories like that are few. A person couldn't have asked for a better job than to be a railroad engineer, and the Soo Line was a better company to work for than others I knew about. Working for the Soo Line was very much like being part of a family, and Soo management cared about the families of its employees. All of this left me with wonderful memories of the Soo Line at Chippewa Falls.

Order Here: DF Boxcars

Because of the generous dimensions of our deluxe, all-color Boxcar poster that accompanies this issue of the SOO, we were unable to bind it directly into the magazine as a set of pages. Rather, we simply had them folded and inserted with all issues going to regular paid SLHTS members; this poster is a bonus to all members.

Home | News | Archives | Events | Publications | Models | Contact | Links | Search
All content ©2008 Soo Line Historical and Technical Society
Last update: April 3, 2008

Direct any questions about this website's content or function to the webmaster.