Nostalgia & History > Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad

I found a nice picture of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad steam engine 93 and crew on the following website,

http://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/?s=Railroad&searchsubmit=Find+%C2%BB

Picture 1, “Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad steam engine 93 and crew.”

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I did a Google Search for the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railroad and among the results I found the website to the Gutenberg ebook, “The Railroad Problem,” by Edward Hungerford April, 1917.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40125/40125-h/40125-h.htm

The following website is for Project Gutenburg. "Project Gutenberg offers over 40,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. No fee or registration is required, but if you find Project Gutenberg useful, we kindly ask you to donate a small amount so we can buy and digitize more books."

http://www.gutenberg.org

Picture 2 is from page 244 of “The Railroad Problem.” “THE ROYAL GORGE, GRAND CANYON OF THE ARKANSAS, COLORADO. The most remarkable chasm in the world traversed by a railroad.”



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/12 10:52 by flynn.

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Also among the results of the above Google Search was the following, “DAKOTA RAILS: ORAL HISTORIES OF MILWAUKEE ROAD EMPLOYEES IN SOUTH DAKOTA AND NORTHWEST IOWA” by Todd S. Schultz.

http://railroad.ml1.net/docs/schultz_thesis.pdf

The following excerpt is from pages 36, 37 and 38.

“Leach begins by talking about working in the roundhouse, its support facilities, and the tasks he learned. The descriptions he gives of working with steam locomotives are valuable as documentation of a craft not often recorded due to most enthusiasts’ focus on trains, not shop facilities. Leach describes many tasks. He wiped down boiler jackets. He helped the hostler move locomotives in and out of the roundhouse and stock them with necessities like lanterns, fusees, and torpedoes. He operated the apparatus that dried sand for the locomotives to carry as a traction aid (it was blown under the wheels with compressed air). He sometimes helped the coal tower operator unload cars of coal, including once when they used dynamite to loosen coal frozen into the cars. He assisted every type of craftsman within the roundhouse.

Leach’s descriptions of his tasks not only preserve the procedures of the work—interesting enough in themselves, because without his description, no one would know how the sand drying apparatus was laid out at Sioux City, for example—but also the way work has changed over time. Nine-hour workdays and six-day workweeks have passed away. Dynamite is no longer casually used to aid in unloading coal cars. Regulations today would not permit entering a boiler so hot, despite having its fire dropped, that it took two pairs of gloves, two shirts, two pairs of pants, and coveralls to insulate against the heat. Attitudes towards work have changed, too. Leach describes one worker, a fire knocker, who maintained a logbook of his hours and wages. The man refused to pay taxes, so he worked each year until he reached the income tax threshold, and then laid off for the rest of the year.

Another aspect of work in the shops was protection of one’s trade. Leach described how tradesmen were vehemently protective of their craft. Leach sometimes worked as a box packer’s helper, handing the packer his tools, helping him lift the heavy bearing blocks into place, and swinging the hammer to seat the bearings while the packer monitored their progress. Once he reached to hand a tool to one of the box packers before the man asked for it. The man gave Leach a heavy reprimand; despite having helped many times, Leach was to do nothing until the packer told him to. The reason, Leach said, was that the man did not want Leach to learn the fine points of bearing work because he then might threaten the box packer’s job. The craftsmen, Leach said, would gladly teach you everything they knew, once you became an apprentice in that craft, but until then, you were competition and must be kept in the dark.

The late 1940s were the last hurrah of steam locomotives on the railroad, and Leach’s career ended with the coming of diesel locomotives. Leach says, accurately, that a diesel requires much less maintenance than a steam engine. Steamers, after a 200-mile run, had to be examined and maintained by boilermakers, box packers, electricians, pipe fitters, and other roundhouse crew. A diesel could run 2000 miles and receive a light servicing. The crew at the shops could see the change coming. He went downtown one day to install a fueling stand for the first diesels to arrive in Sioux City. The pipe fitter he was working with predicted that within five years neither of them would be working with the railroad. He was right. When Leach worked there, the roundhouse had up to 30 men on the day shift, with an evening and night shift as well. By the time the roundhouse closed in 1979, only the roundhouse foreman and two helpers worked there.”

Among the results of the above Google Search was a website for Minnesota Reflections.

http://reflections.mndigital.org/cdm/search/searchterm/Locomotives/mode/exact/page/1

The website was the 153 results of a Keyword Search of Minnesota Reflections for the word Locomotive. The website Minnesota Reflections has Zoom.

Picture 3, enlarged 40% “Title. Chicago and Northwestern Railroad locomotive, Rochester, Minnesota. Creator: Flanders. Description: Two men are posed by the front of a Chicago and North Western train engine. A hand operated turntable is visible in the rear. A wooden pilot (cow catcher) is attached to the front of the engine. The man in dark clothes on the right is Joe Bell. Date of Creation: 1900?”

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Picture 4, enlarged 35%. “Title: Locomotive Engine Number 1, Worthington, Minnesota. Creator: Buchan, Edward F., 1858-1941. Description: Train engine number 1 of the Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Omaha Railroad. Guy Otis an engineer from Bigelow is one of the men in the photograph. Date of Creation: 1900-07-25.”

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Picture 5, enlarged 40%. “Title: Railroad Engine No. 201, Big Stone County, Minnesota. Description: View of the Railroad Engine Number 201. Date of Creation: 1909?”

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Picture 6, enlarged 40%. “Title: William Crooks locomotive, Morris, Minnesota. Description: View of the William Crooks Locomotive, the first railroad engine in Minnesota. Left to right, #2 Wm. E Litchfield, #3 Col. Wm. Crooks (namesake for the locomotive), #4 Mr. Willmar, #5 Charles A. F. Morris (namesake for Morris, MN). Date of Creation: 1905-05-24.”

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Picture 7, enlarged 30%. “Title: Train in the snow, Rapidan Township, Minnesota. Creator: Bartsch, Emil. Description: View of the train and two children in the snow. Date of Creation: 1936. “

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