Nostalgia & History > A date in MILW hisotry

First power applied to the MILW trolley lines, just completed earlier in the same month. The substations aren't complete yet, but I guess they either have some transformers or M-G units in place at this point, though more are on the way.

The 2300V value suggests that they tapped into the B.A.&P. lines for power. This will be used to provide heat for drying out the transformer windings and oil, and I assume for general checkout. Only one substation at this point, but they are all in place on the East end, the wire strung, and much of the track bounding work completed. Probably not a lot longer until they get the 100KV up.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/14 23:23 by lwilton.

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Very cool, thank you for sharing! I recall reading about 85% of the original wires remained in 1974. It lasted quite a while.

Al Seever
Phoenix, AZ

So let's figure that connection was made in the area of the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific passenger station. That is the passenger station the CM&PS was using at the time. Later the first boxcabs would be on display on those tracks. The BA&P probably had facilities there to feed the lines up on the hill where the mines were and tracks west to Rocker and Silver Bow so the MILW could tap out of those circuits.

Later the MILW and BA&P would share steel towers and spans to support overhead wires in the area. You could see insulators to isolate the two systems so the BA&P could be 2300 vdc and the CM&PS could be 3300 vdc.

I have never seen photos of a BA&P substation. There must have been something on the mine or smelter properties with mg sets to search for in the ACM archives sometime.

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