Monday, February 16, 2015

Alco DL-107 on the 'Hiawatha' train of the Milwaukee Road art, late 1940s


The railroad's A and B units. Not as impressive as the streamlined steam locomotives (was it ever the case that diesels were?), but a sign of progress at the time.

Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad purchased 2 DL-107’s: 14A & 14B. The units on the Milwaukee logged over 3 million miles by 1953, and were overhauled. The motors and prime movers were sent to Alco for rebuilding, and the shop men at the Milwaukee Road's Menomonee Valley shops rebuilt the locomotives. They came out of the shops with facelifts, which the addition of EMD bulldog noses, and changed appearance which made them look like an EMD locomotive. The units then worked on secondary lines to Canton, South Dakota Green Bay, Wisconsin and Madison-Chicago trains until retirement; #14B was finally scrapped at Jones Island in Milwaukee in May 1964. The Milwaukee employees called #14A "Old Maude." (source)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

According to "the 2nd diesel spotter's guide' Milwaukee's 14A AND 14B were DL-109 models.

transpress nz said...

The DL-107 model was an earlier version of the DL-109. Perhaps for the author of that book the differences were not enough to treat it as a separate model.