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Summer 2003 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
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Summer
2003 Issue Hightlights |
The Port of Gladstone
Part one: the city is built by the Soo Line
by Jim Welton
If only one could turn back the clock a hundred years! As we look at
the quiet, beautiful serenity of Little Bay de Nocquet on Lake Michigan
today, it staggers the imagination to visualize the level of activity
that took place there for thirty years after the Soo Line’s arrival
in 1887.
My first exposure to Gladstone came in January 1942 when I was sent there
as an extra train dispatcher to work the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. By that
time, all dock trackage and facilities had been removed, but the old grades
were clearly visible and my working hours gave me the opportunity to look
up and talk with some retirees who had worked in the dock area in its
hey-day. Most of them were more than willing to spin a few yarns about
this almost-forgotten part of history.
When I was learning to become a train dispatcher at Thief River Falls,
Minnesota, two of my mentors had been Lou Kircher and Win Aasve, both
of whom had worked on the Gladstone Division. They often talked of the
days when Gladstone was an important port. My grandfather had been section
foreman on the old Wisconsin-Peninsula (later Gladstone) Division at Catawba,
Wisconsin, and my father and his two brothers learned telegraphy there.
All of these factors were stimulants for me to research this operation.
Gladstone’s history is interwoven with the Soo Line Railroad. It
was originally known as Saunders Point, named after a Green Bay fisherman,
Captain Nate Saunders, who often camped there during fishing seasons.
The Soo Line built Gladstone on Saunders Point. |
The history, preservation and restoration of the
Soo Line depot in Thief River Falls
Pennington County, Minnesota
By Donald L. Stewart
The Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railway
Company (Soo Line R.R.) depot located in Thief River Falls, Minnesota,
is a prominent landmark on the east side of the city’s central
business district. The depot, functioning as the Winnipeg division point
for the Soo Line, played a critical role in the development, control,
and distribution of the vast agricultural largesse of northwestern Minnesota
and the northern half of North Dakota.
The Soo Line, under the leadership of Edmund Pennington,
general manager and, later, its president, began constructing a link
between Minneapolis and Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1903 and the tracks entered
the outskirts of Thief River Falls in September 1904. In 1905, having
constructed a first-class wood depot on the same site as the present
depot as well as warehouses, derrick house, mechanics shop, roundhouse,
and turntable (the latter three still extant), the Soo Line transferred
its division point from Glenwood, Minnesota, to Thief River Falls. That
same year, construction was begun on the line west from the city to
Kenmare, North Dakota, known as the “Wheat Line.” The 1910
completion of the “Plummer Line” from Thief River Falls
to Duluth and the 1913 extension, known as the “Whitetail Line,”
into Montana connected farmers from Northeastern Montana, across North
Dakota, and in northwestern Minnesota directly with the Great Lakes
and the world and transformed the city into a thriving railroad center.
By the early teens, having captured 90 percent of the
city’s freight traffic, the Soo Line had usurped the position
of its chief rival, the Great Northern Railroad, which had arrived in
the city in 1892. The Soo’s offices consisted of the 1904 combination
passenger-freight depot and a division office building located in a
converted residence that had been acquired on the right of way. In order
to accommodate more traffic, a train dispatcher, superintendent’s
offices, and, to some extent, as an “in-your-face” to James
J. Hill’s Great Northern, the decision was made to replace these
facilities with a larger, architecturally-designed, brick and stone,
combination passenger and freight depot. The Minneapolis architectural
firm of Kenyon and Maine was awarded the contract and the principal
architect was William Kenyon, who had designed a depot for the Soo in
Minot, North Dakota, which had been built in 1912. The Minot depot had
some similarities, but is smaller and was built for different uses.
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General Steel Castings bulkhead flatcars
Series 5567–5573, 5911–5959
by Chuck Derus
In 1963, the Soo Line ordered four bulkhead flat car “kits”
supplied by General Steel Castings. Built in the Fond du Lac shops, numbered
5567–5573 (odd numbers only) and finished in the new Colormark paint
scheme, these new cars supplemented an aging fleet of bulkhead flats mainly
built in the late 1930s. With 48'-7" between the 10'-9" high
wood-lined bulkheads, these cars saw service where loads like pipe, wood,
and drywall could slip out of the pile and damage adjacent cars on a regular
flat car.
The four home-built GSC bulkhead flatcars must have proven
satisfactory, as the Soo ordered 24 more kits in series 5911–5957
(odd numbers only) with 10'-3" high steel-faced bulkheads in 1968.
These cars were slightly larger, with a 50-foot clearance between the
bulkheads, and a capacity increased from 70 to 90 tons. Cars 5955 and
5957 were equipped with Brandon cast steel adjustable tie anchors and
chain assemblies. A single kit, for car no. 5959, also arrived in 1968
and was slightly different with a 48'-6" distance between the bulkheads
and wood-lined, 10-foot high bulkheads. The cars lasted well into the
‘90s, and at least one car was converted to a standard flat car
by removing the bulkheads, possibly for work service. |
The Soo’s coach-buffet cars 2111 and 2112
These coaches provided limited food service from 1942 to 1953
by Dennis Storzek
At one time the Soo Line had an extensive passenger service,
and until WWI was actively expanding this service, offering premier name
trains between all the major cities in the territory they served; Chicago
to Ashland, Duluth, and the Twin Cities; Twin Cities–Duluth; Twin
Cities–Sault Ste. Marie; Twin Cities–Winnipeg; and Chicago
to western Canada via, again, the Twin Cities. Right up until the First
War, the Soo was buying new passenger cars, upgrading the trains with
all-steel equipment. Then reality set in. The Soo bought its last new
coach in 1914, last new diners and sleepers in the early twenties, and
last new revenue passenger car of any kind (excluding baggage and business
cars) in 1929. At that time, every route named above also had a separate
all-coach day train to handle the local
business.
Soon after the stock market crash in late 1929, ridership
plummeted. By the end of the thirties, all the locals that duplicated
the service of the name trains were gone, and those premier trains were
reduced in status to essentially long-distance locals. In addition, food
service was severely curtailed on these remaining trains. A perusal of
the services listed in
The Official Guide of the Railways and Steamship Companies
for various years illustrates this trend. In 1920, Chicago–Twin
Cities trains 1 and 2 carried a full dining car. This was replaced by
a café-observation car in the 1925 listing, but was back to the
full dining car in the 1931 listing. In a 1932 “Guide,” dining
car service was only shown on No. 1, the westbound train. By 1935, all
mention of food service was gone altogether for trains 1 and 2. |
Modeling Soo passenger cars
Part one: Body modifications
By Dennis Storzek
Construction tips and techniques for modeling the details found on specific
cars, from the designer of the SLHTS’s brass passenger car kits.
Now that the society has made kits available that allow the conversion
of the common HO scale Rivarossi 1920 Coach into an accurate representation
of the Soo Line’s cars, I decided to get to work building the consists
of specific trains that would have been found in the territory I’m
modeling on my 1951-era Soo Line layout. Two of the trains that will figure
prominently in my operations are nos. 1 and 2, the Chicago–Twin
Cities day locals.
Photos of these two trains taken during my modeling era always show the
same cars bringing up the markers; coach-buffet cars 2111 and 2112. These
are standard coaches fitted with air conditioning and small kitchens that
were installed specifically for this run. I just had to have models of
them, and decided to start one, and write an article in the process. With
the help of Ken Soroos, I began researching what details I would need
to add to the society Standard Coach kit to make it an exact replica of
these cars. When Ken came up with the E. Bruce Miller photo on page 38,
I realized that this car would always be at the end of the train, and
so decided to install marker lamps, and add as much detail to the end
of the car as I possibly could, since it would always show.
SLHTS offers new version of coach kit
When Ken Soroos was helping me research the equipment used on the Coach-Buffet
car kits, it became apparent that the coach kits previously released by
the society left a gaping hole in one’s ability to model the Soo
Line’s coach fleet as it appeared over the years. The Soo didn’t
rebuild the cars depicted by our Modernized Coach kits directly from non-air
conditioned Standard Coaches; rather it was a two part process, with air
conditioning installed prior to WWII, and the window arrangements changing
when reclining seats were installed in the years following the war. To
properly model the cars as they appeared during the WWII years and into
the early fifties, air conditioning equipment should be available with
our Standard Coach kit. The board of directors agreed, and the result
is a new version of the kit, the Air Conditioned Standard Coach. The kit
consists of the same brass car sides with ten pairs of windows on each
side, but includes all the detail parts to install full Waukesha a/c equipment
on them. In addition, it includes custom resin castings for two items
previously not commercially available; the Waukesha system sub-cooler,
and the gas bottle carrier with the single rectangular cover, both of
which were used on some of the cars. With this kit, any of the cars that
received Waukesha air conditioning can be modeled as they appeared after
1939, with some cars, such as Coach-Buffet cars 2111 and 2112, featured
elsewhere in this issue, keeping this appearance as late
as 1953.
Order the Air Conditioned Standard Coach from:
Soo Line Passenger Cars
2761 Raritan Rd.
Madison, WI 53711
The kits are $45 each, same as the Modernized Coach kits, and require
the
roof and trucks from a Rivarossi (or AHM) 1920 Coach to complete. Please
include $5 postage and handling for the first kit, and an additional $1
for
each additional kit—Dennis Storzek.
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Reflections on my railroad years
Part two: Working out of Neenah, the Twin Ports and Rhinelander
by Clifford L.“Bud” Newquist
For the winters of 1950 and 1951 I went to Neenah, Wisconsin to work
off the Gladstone, Michigan board. I picked Neenah because the engineers
and firemen owned joint bunkhouses at Neenah, Shawano and Argonne, Wisconsin.
They were equipped with a kitchen with all appliances. The cost was only
fifty cents a night—later raised to seventy-five cents. The money
was put into a fund and used for clean linen and radios. Later they bought
television sets.
My first job at Neenah was the 7:00 a.m. switch engine, but I was soon
able to hold a way freight to Shawano. Shawano was only forty-five miles
from Neenah, and we went up one day and came back the next. We did have
a lot of switching to do on this job. Some days we switched over eight
hours at Appleton alone, namely paper mills and paper product plants.
During the winter of 1951 I was able to hold no. 66 and no. 67, which
was a time freight between Neenah and Argonne. This was a seven-day job.
I liked that because I could always get my miles in for the month, and
then have some time off. On time freights we were allowed 3,600 miles
per month. My mileage date was the 2nd of the month, so if I got my miles
in by the 25th, I was off until the 2nd of the next month. The reason
for the mileage regulations was that they would give a man on the extra
board some work. |
Night Departure /Thief River Falls by
Larry Fisher
© Heritage Art Editions |
Questions about the content
of the SOO? Contact:
Rick Johnson, Editor
2216 Allen Lane
Waukesha, WI 53186-1651
or E-mail.
Questions about reselling the SOO in your store? Contact:
Joe Lallensack, Commercial Accounts Manager
3818 Mangin St.
Manitowoc, WI 54220
or E-mail. |
