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THIS IS HIGH TECHNOLOGY, 1928 style. At the time these were the longest, heaviest and most powerful electric locomotives in the world. They were powered from an llkVAC 25Hz overhead wire but used a large motor generator on board to develop around 500 volts DC for the traction motors. THE EVOLUTION OF ELECTRIC RAILWAYS In this episode we tell the story of the Burlington Northern Railroad which is now the biggest railroad company in the USA and possibly the w~>rld. It started as the Great Northern which was very much a pioneering railroad company. By BRYAN MAHER Like a blast of thunder, two powerful electric locomotives burst forth from a tunnel in the rugged Cascade mountains in Washington State, USA. They were pulling a heavy 16-car express train carrying over 400 passengers, tended by a small army of porters, dining-car staff, guards and brakemen. The time was 1929, in midwinter, the scene the eastern portal of the new Cascade Tunnel, the longest tunnel in North America, straight as a gun barrel, almost 13 kilometres long and almost 900 metres above sea level. Twice as long as any Australian tunnel, this new tunnel replaced the old 4.Zkmlong Cascade tunnel of 1900 vintage and many kilometres of twisting climbing mountain track. The old Cascade tunnel, in opera- PT.19: THE BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD 84 SILICON CHIP BUILT BY GENERAL ELECTRIC IN THE 1940s, this was the longest and heaviest electric locomotive ever built. Weighing 362 tonnes and measuring over 30 metres (101 feet) long, it developed 5000 horsepower. Such a long locomotive was practical on the Great Northern tracks which employed long straight runs and very gen.t ie curves. tion for a few years under steam locomotives, gave passengers an awful journey. They had to endure loco smoke and exhaust fumes as the powerful steamers battled up the steep 1 in 45 grade for the whole length of the tunnel. 3-phase electrification With passengers fainting and grown men succumbing to the lack of air, the then-owner, the Great Northern Railroad, electrified the old Cascade tunnel in 1909. They used a 3-phase high voltage supply with two overhead conductors. This meant that the traction motors were 3-phase induction types which were difficult to control, giving jerky acceleration and an uncomfortable ride for passengers. This was because the speed of induction motors was then only controllable by crude pole-switching methods. To solve the problem of the old tunnel and its difficult route, the Great Northern Railroad embarked on the greatest mountain hard-rock bore ever attempted in North America. It was started in 1927 and by 1929 the new Cascade Tunnel was open for traffic and electrified, along with a section of mountain mainline at 11,000 volts 25Hz AC single phase. At the same time, the Great Northern introduced the longest, heaviest and most powerful singlecab (ie, not articulated) electric locomotives in the world at that time - a record that would stand for many years. (In the l 940s they introduced an even larger electric loco as shown in the photograph above). DC or AC While the Europeans had been using series motors with commutators on AC supplies, over in the USA the Great Northern engineers had observed that the series motor with commutator and brushes is naturally a DC machine. Furthermore, when running on DC, such a motor gives a greater starting torque and pulling power than any other type of motor. The loco's tractive effort is proportional to the square of the motor current in amps. This presented a problem because the engineers wanted to use a high-voltage (1 lkV AC) 25Hz supply for the new 214km-long Cascade section. Accordingly, the engineers came up with the 5000 class electrics, a design unique in big locomotives, even to this day. Instead of the usual large stepdown transformer, the 5001 to 5012 electric locos carried an 1 lkV AC single phase 3.4MW induction motor. This was shaft-coupled to a separately excited DC generator. This was why the locos were so heavy. They weighed close to 200 tonnes. Ward Leonard control The DC generator supplied low voltage in the 500V range to the six series DC motors. Motor control was provided simply by varying the 100 ampere generator field current, a very much simpler task than breaking the 5000 to 7000 amps MAY1989 85 AN ARRAY OF GREAT NORTHERN Railroad power: a 5000hp electric, a 5400hp four unit diesel electric and a 2-8-8-2 oil burning steam locomotive. Note how much larger the electric loco is in comparison to the diesel electrics. total traction motor current. And all the while the big AC-DC motorgenerator ran at full speed within the loco body. This control method is called "Ward Leonard" control. The total locomotive tractive power was 2.46MW (3300hp) at a traction motor speed of 430 RPM. This very long 1-C-C-1 design used large diameter driving wheels in each of the two huge driving bogies and a massive single axle leading truck at each end to help guide the long locomotive around mountain curves at up to 75km/h. Expresses and large freights were all hauled at creditable speed through the electrified mountain section. During high traffic periods it was common to see a steam locomotive running through the electrified section, express passenger train in tow, with a 5000 class electric loco leading the lot. In these cases, the steam locomotive would idle through the tunnel to avoid the smoke menace, with the electric loco doing all the work. Such an 86 SILICON CHIP electric-steam combination had previously been used by another railroad, the B & 0, in the Baltimore city tunnel. The beginning But we have started our story of the mighty Burlington Northern Railroad in the middle. Let's go back to the beginning. The story began way back in 1849 at Aurora, 52km west of Chicago, Illinois, when a group of local businessmen met one night and formed the Aurora Branch Railroad. The new corporation's first president was Stephen F. Gale, who guided the fledgling railroad for the first three years, so beginning a line of 17 dynamic leaders, all far-sighted, innovative, progressive businessmen. Their first line was built of scrap rail purchased from the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad of New York State. This 9.6km stretch was laid from Batavia, Illinois to Turner Junction (now West Chicago), there to join up with the tracks of the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad which carried the tiny Aurora train on into Chicago. Because their order of secondhand locomotives and wagons did not arrive in time, the inaugural trip was made using borrowed rolling stock and motive power. This inauspicious beginning left the railroad world of the day totally underwhelmed. How could the other railroads guess at the time that they had witnessed the birth of the greatest railroad of the future United States? Expansion The baby corporation prospered, expanded, bought out opposing lines, changed its name and its aims, grew and never looked back. The line was purchased by a consortium of Boston men in 1852 and expansion accelerated. Its name was changed to the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company and by 1864 just over 640km of track had been laid throughout the state of Illinois. During the next 106 years, the C.B.& Q.R.R. (or the "Burlington" as it became affectionately known) spread its tracks beyond its native Illinois and also built its own highclass track from the original Aurora terminal right into Chicago. Spreading far and wide, 204 affiliate lines were added to the fold , tripling the Burlington's size. Two major acquisitions were the Burlington and Missouri RR and the Hannibal & St. Joseph RR Co. Hannibal RR The Hannibal Railroad began in 1852. One of its original purposes was to cross Missouri to connect with the Pony Express and exchange mail. This railroad was the first in the world to have a TPO or "travelling post office" for mail sorting on the move. As a result, this railroad was sometimes visited by Jesse James and other infamous train robbers. The Hannibal line also made Kansas City the great rail centre and south-west gateway it is today, and built the first bridge across the Missouri river at Kansas City. Opened on 4th of July 1869, this 425 metre long structure connected the railroad to St. Louis and the southern states. B & MR The other major early acqms1tion, the Burlington & Missouri RR Co, had begun in 1852 in the state of Iowa. Their first train ran in 1856, with c0nstruction reaching the Missouri river not far from Omaha in November, 1869. Once acquired by the Burlington, both these railroads continued building westward, reaching milehigh Denver in the Rocky Mountains in 1882. The Burlington was the progressive railroad, aggressively braving new lands, attacking new construction problems, and building new tracks ahead of the farmers and lumber workers. They actively promoted new settlers, even operating large offices in the eastern states of the US and in England, Scotland, Sweden and Germany to attract farming migrants. The railroad settled 20,000 farmers on their new lands THE NORTHERN PORTAL OF THE Cascades Tunnel in Washington state: this was the longest tunnel in North America and was originally electrified at llkV AC. Now it is fitted with ventilation shafts and diesel electrics power the trains through it. in a 10-year period from 1870 to 1880. The Burlington was always a leader in improvements and new technology. It re-ra iled many lines with heavier rail, relaying and straightening the original path in the process, and progressively introduced larger locomotives, longer cars and wagons. George Westinghouse conducted tests on his new air braking system on a Burlington train in 1886/87, so revolutionising train braking methods worldwide. Great Northern Naturally other progressive rail- road builders existed in the USA. One such empire builder of incredible foresight was James Jerome Hill. Without any government land grants, he built the Great Northern across the very north of the USA, from east to west. Using heavy rail and sound building design from the outset, the line today follows almost the original path from St.PaulMinnesota, Twin Cities, and Duluth on Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean at Seattle and Vancouver, Canada . Along the way the line had to cross the Rocky Mountains at Summit, Montana, and then pierce the Cascade Ranges between Berne MAY 1989 87 ed the railroad completion, allowing them all to become states by 1890. Large locomotives HANDSOME IS AS HANDSOME DOES goes the saying and this Northern class loco was certainly handsome. The loco weighed over 230 tonnes while the tender was 180 tonnes. It regularly pulled express trains at over 160km/h. and Scenic, in Washington State. And that's where our story for this month began. Outside the electrified area, for service in the mountain country, the Great Northern Railroad built some notable very large steam locomotives. The Northern Pacific The Great Northern was not the only east-west line in the northern reaches of the USA. Before the Great Northern was completed another railroad, the Northern Pacific RR, became the first northern transcontinental line. It had its birth in an Act of Congress signed by President Abraham Lincoln on 2nd July, 1864. Commissioned to build a railroad to open up western development, the Northern Pacific was to run from Duluth, Lake Superior to Puget Sound in Washington State. Land grants were provided in this virgin territory which was sold by the company to finance progressive building. Construction began simultaneously in Minnesota, at Portland, Oregon and Tacoma Washington, the latter using materials fetched by ship via Cape Horn. Throughout Montana Territory the railroad employed General Custer to protect construction crews from Indian attack. The company was bankrupt in the crash of 1873 but after a 5-year delay, construction was recommenced and completed in an eastwest track joining ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana Territory on 8th September, 1883. Rapid growth of the North West Territories follow- A switchback line was initially built to cross the difficult Cascade Range until completion of the 2.9km Stampede Tunnel section in 1888. While businessmen bought and sold the company, introducing a number of re-organisations and a technical name change , the Northern Pacific's engineers forged ahead in the development of heavier, longer and more powerful steam locomotives. One, the 2-8-8-4 Mallet 5000 class at 568 tonnes, was claimed to be the heaviest locomotive ever built [or likely to be). Built in 1928 by the American Locomotive Company [ALCO) this loco was 38.1 metres (125 feet) long and 4.98 metres (16 feet 4 inches) high. As an aside, readers may not realise that a loco of such height could not run anywhere in Australia where overhead electric wiring exists, as the loco would be higher than our minimum overhead contact wire height of 4.572 metres. This was a big loco. Another classic steamer was the No. 2760 4-8-4 express locomotive, regarded by many buffs as a beautiful example of heavy engineering. Made by Baldwin and called the "Northern" class, it was copied under that name by most other US railroads. At 231.8 tonnes, with two cylinders 710mm in diameter and 810mm stroke and fed with steam at 300psi, the "Northern" developed a tra ctive effort of 36.3 tonnes (80,000 lbs). On the flat prairie lands it regularly achieved 160km/h , at which speed it fHIS NORTHERN PACIFIC STEAM LOCO was the world's heaviest. Built in 1928, it weighed over 560 tonnes and was over 38 metres long (125 feet). Note the height of the man standing beside it. 88 SILICON CHIP AMERICAN LOCOMOTIVE POWER IN THE late 1960s: five Great Northern diesel electrics, developing 11,750hp, haul a long freight train across the 546-metre long Gassman Conlee trestle in North Dakota. developed a maximum 3.952MW (5300ihp). Three competitors These three railroads, the Burlington, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, simultaneously competed and co-operated with each other, as each fed the other business over their territories. And just as no public company is inviolate, these "big three" railroads bought and sold each others shares. In 1901, the Northern Pacific and Great Northern cojointly purchased on the stockmarket over 90% of Burlington's shares, giving them control, though all three continued competing while trading separately under their own names. During this period great technical advances were pushed forward by all three companies. The Burlington operated the first printing telegraph (which gave birth to the modern teletype) in 1910. In 1915 they were the first railway to use train-to-ground radio communication from a radio transmitter at Riverside. Of course this was still in the days of morse code operation. Centralised traffic control, using one central signal box to control long sections, was in use in 1927, one of the first in the world. By 195 7 over 2500km of track was controlled by this advanced signalling method. Pioneer Zephyr The Burlington was the first railroad outside Germany to use streamlined diesel electric express trains. The "Pioneer Zephyr" was placed in service on the Burlington Railroad in 1933 and subsequently, in January 1934 commenced a regular service from St.Paul to Min- neapolis and on to Chicago. As our photo of the original train shows it was a radical departure for trains of the time. The train's high speed diesel engine was directcoupled to a DC generator driving the head-end traction wheels. After only five months' operation, the Pioneer Zephyr train demonstrated its high speed endurance capabilities by running non-stop over the 1600km from Denver to Chicago, setting many world records. The top speed attained on that run was 180km/h and the cost of the diesel fuel used for the whole 1600km trip was only $14.64 (in 1934 US dollars). The Burlington introduced road freight diesel electric locomotives in 1944 and within nine years they had replaced 95 % of its steam locos. Cheap diesel oil in the early 1950s accelerated the demise of steam. The biggest ever electrics The Great Northern, pleased with its previous success with the M AY 1989 89 long Cascade tunnel. Ventilation shafts now allow modern diesel electrics to run through the tunnel and the whole mountain line. Northern Pacific developments THIS WAS THE BURLINGTON ZEPHYR which was the first high speed streamlined diesel electric in service in the USA. While it looks ugly today, it was regarded as the utlimate in streamlined styling in 1934. It ran at speeds up to 180km/h. In 1930 the Northern Pacific introduced petrol-electric passenger locomotives. Perhaps better called a "rail car", these unusual 86-tonne units had a petrol engine direct-coupled to a DC generator, with DC traction motors in the bogies. They were built at a cost of $80,000. Full diesel electric locomotives like the 2802 Co-Co class, generating 2.24MW (3000hp), and the larger 3611 class Co-Co units modernised the NP. These were a far cry from the very early days of lightweight steamers when on one occasion, in 1881 before the Missouri river bridge was built at Bismarck, Dakota, railtracks were laid directly across the frozen river ice. Burlington Northern ,.;:;;.~ . "'•' THIS UGLY-LOOKING BEAST was a petrol electric railcar cum loco put into service on the Northern Pacific railroad in 1930. 5012 class electric locomotives in the Cascade tunnel region, introduced the 5018 class in the 1940s. In the process, they set a still unbroken record for the longest and heaviest electric locomotive ever built. Built by General electric, these 31-metre long 362-tonne giants developed 3.73MW (5000hp) at their 16 driving wheels. Their 2-DD-2 wheel arrangement, though not unique, is unusual. They drew up to 540 amps from the 1 lkVAC 90 SILICON CHIP overhead conductor when starting a freight train. GN dieselisation The changeover to diesel locos came in the late 1940s and 1950s. This process eventually saw not only the demise of the beautiful examples of the steam builder's art but also ultimately killed off the electric locomotives. Sadly (perhaps unwisely?), all overhead wiring was torn down from the electrified section, including even the Our story comes to a climax in 1970 when all three railroads, the Burlington, the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, merged into one, forming the greatest single railroad in present-day America. The name chosen for this megalith was Burlington Northern. They run the longest lines in the USA, stretching from Seattle in Washington State to St. Louis to Chicago to Galveston, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico. Burlington Northern today caters for every kind of user, including shipping in the Atlantic and the Pacific. The shipping interests were originated by the Great Northern from its very beginning and continue today. They even have freight depots in every Australian capital city. ~ Acknowledgement: thanks to the Burlington Northern, to former staff of the Great Northern, Northern Pacific and the Burlington Railroads and especially to Pat Stafford of River Falls, USA for information and photos.