Nostalgia & History > When F units Die

They must get scrapped and sent to the Milwaukee Road for another 10 years of service.

Should that be the case, Dale Fee in 1979 caught sets in Green Bay that looked as good as the Packers do this year.

Living in WI, 30 miles south of the holy grail, I can say that. ;-)

K64 slide, again photo by Dale Fee, RJS Collection

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SDL39 Wrote:
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> They must get scrapped and sent to the Milwaukee
> Road for another 10 years of service.
>
> Should that be the case, Dale Fee in 1979 caught
> sets in Green Bay that looked as good as the
> Packers do this year.
>
> Living in WI, 30 miles south of the holy grail, I
> can say that. ;-)
>
> K64 slide, again photo by Dale Fee, RJS Collection

Bob,

The MILW just kept running and running and running them almost to rust. If the prime mover put out enough power to turn the wheels they ran them. And the amazing thing was they kept it up right to the day the Soo took over. The Milwaukee was amazing it what it could continue to do.

J.

SDL39 Wrote: Fee in 1979 caught
> sets in Green Bay that looked as good as the
> Packers do this year.
>
> Living in WI, 30 miles south of the holy grail, I
> can say that. ;-)
>
> K64 slide, again photo by Dale Fee, RJS Collection

Be nice to my Packers. We're still technically in it!

My Vikings are in first, and it feels like we're in last. Anybody need a head coach? Great photos by the way. I wish the Milwaukee would have invested in rebuilding more F's instead of all those expensive SD40-2s and unreliable U boats.

Al Seever
Minneapolis, MN

And the Bungals have a chance at the super bowl in 2008.........

I know. I'm a huge Milwaukee fan in a sea of Soo liner friends here in town. It is amazing what they did with them, yes. With no resources to boot. One must understand my sarcastic humor.

Only several hundred at least Milw Road images to go...

Ok To be technically legal:

GO PACK GO!


...Hopefully FWD...

Then there is this Minnesoata team which we won't mention here! ;-)

RJS

It could be worse...you could be a Lion's fan ;)
(Luckily I'm not...actually, I don't watch football)

Whatever happened to Dale Fee? Used to see his byline in the old MIDWESTERN RAILS magazine out of Geneseo, IL in the late 70's and early 80's.

MILW86A

J.Ferris Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SDL39 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > They must get scrapped and sent to the
> Milwaukee
> > Road for another 10 years of service.
>
> The MILW just kept running and running and running
> them almost to rust. If the prime mover put out
> enough power to turn the wheels they ran them. And
> the amazing thing was they kept it up right to the
> day the Soo took over. The Milwaukee was amazing
> it what it could continue to do.
>
> J.

I think I'm going to quibble with this. At least
where I was, the F units, and they were the standard
power for the area at the time, vanished when the
Milwaukee abandoned the Pacific Extension in roughly
1978. Now, they may have found homes elsewhere, but
I haven't heard about that. By the time, 1985, the
Soo got the Milwauke, I believe all the F's were gone.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

IIRC, the Milwaukee got rid of Lines West in March 1980. The final Milwaukee F's owned by the company may have run into 1981 on the Escanaba & Lake Superior, along with a Soo Line F or two. Several F unit carbodies remained MILW owned and were used as power units for rotary snow plows. I do recall seeing on F7A or FP7A at Soo Line's Shoreham Yard in early 1986. It was painted up MOW brown, with Milwaukee Road lettering. Some kind of MOW power unit I think.

Al Seever
Minneapolis, MN

Home of the first place Minnesota Vikings?

By 1982 most, if not all, of the old stuff was gone from the Milwaukee. The motive power fleet consisted entirely of EMD products: SD40-2, GP40 (many rebuilt to GP40-2 equivalents), GP38-2, MP15AC, SD10 (rebuilt SD7/9s, GP20 (rebuilt GP9s) and a few SWs. There was still some retired GE and EMD stuff on the property waiting for disposition but it wasn't operating.