Nostalgia & History > The Saga of SN wood motors 404 and 405...

During the Great Depression, business fell off pretty badly on the Sacramento Northern. Most smaller and older equipment ended up on the Chico deadline, including 403, 404 and 405. Numbers 404 and 405 were officially retired at the end of July 1941. It was fortunate that they were still on the property (slowly being stripped for parts), because within a few months the SN would be flooded with military traffic. The two motors were returned to service in June 1942 to assist with the war effort. At that time, 404 lost her Hedley trucks, and was again mounted on Baldwin MCBs.

The Oakland Terminal Railway, a former Key System subsidiary sold to the WP and Santa Fe in 1943, served the huge Oakland Army Terminal. Millions of tons of military supplies were shipped from here to the Pacific Theater during World War II. The OTRY was simply swamped, and leased several of SN's 600 volt motors, including 404 and 405 beginning in 1943. The SN pantographs and towers were removed and Key System pans were mounted at roof level so they could squeeze through the subway under the SP mainline but still reach the wire other places. The wooden motors were underpowered and too slow to keep out of the way of the Key System's zippy bridge trains. In 1943, the locomotives were rebuilt with Baldwin MCB trucks mounting Westinghouse 557A motors saved from scrapped combines 131 and 132. Motor 405 served the OTRY only until 1945, and 404 came home in 1947. Their places were taken by SN Baldwin motors 440 and 442 which served the OTRY until the line was dieselized in 1955.
With a return to normal traffic after the war and dieselization of parts of the North End, the SN began retiring its older electric motors. Numbers 402 and 403 were sold for scrap to Pollack Wrecking and Steel at the end of 1946. They remained on the Chico deadline for several years, though this time there would be no recall to service. Motor 404 had its SN tower and pantograph restored, and switched around Chico for several years. In 1948, GE steeple cab 654 ruined its traction motors in a collision with a fire truck at Concord, and 404's 557A motors were used as replacements. It is not clear whether 404 remained in service for a few months with some other motors or went straight to the dead line. In any case, 404 was was sold for scrap in June 1950.

This left only 405 in service. It was assigned to the isolated switching stub at Oroville in 1947 (possibly as early as 1945), still sporting its Key System pantograph. About 1950, 405 was repainted with orange scare stripes, the only wooden motor to wear this striking paint scheme. Finally the motor was retired in January 1954, though this wasn't quite the end of 405.
The motor was sold to Caldor Lumber Company who used her as a parts source to build a diesel-electric for use at their mill at Diamond Springs, California. She bore the number 1002 and served alongside a similar home-built numbered 1001. The rebuilt engines looked very much like 44-ton Porter center-cabs, though 1002 still rode on her Baldwin trucks. After Caldor Lumber Company went out of business in the late 1950s, both locomotives worked for Winton Lumber Company at Martel, California. Her last known use was in a scrap yard in Portland in the early 1960s.

KRK

Ken, do you know of any photographs showing 405 working in Oakland? I've read that article about the former Northern Electric flat motors on Sacramento Northern On-line ( http://www.wplives.org/sn/flat.html ), and Garth Groff tells me that Don Olson was the source of much of the Oakland info. I've dug around in the archives at the Western Railway Museum looking for some confirmation that 405 went to Oakland, but all I've found so far are documents showing 404 and 405 retired, and then reinstated. Many photos exist of 404 and 405 stored dead, faded, and without pantographs at Chico, and several more show a restored 404 with a wartime headlight shroud, both in Chico and in Oakland. The 405, though, seems to have fallen off the map until it turned up in Oroville with its orange stripes. The bottom-most photo on Garth's site clearly shows the taller, towerless pantograph on 405, but that's the only photographic hint I've found so far that it worked for the OTR.

I found these two photos, Evan.. 404 at Oakland and 405 at Chico.

KRK

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KeyRouteKen Wrote:

> I found these two photos, Evan.. 404 at Oakland
> and 405 at Chico.

Neat! That's a nice angle on 404 - not too many roof shots of that beast around. Sounds like I'll have to keep looking for photos of 405 in Oakland. Fans in the 1940's took a lot of roster shots, even during the war years, which is why the absence of even one shot of 405, pan-down, tied up in the lower yard like that one of 404 really has me wondering if 405 ever actually made it to Oakland.