Too Cold for Steam

Last week we discovered that the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul Railroad electrified part of its route in the Cascade mountains of Washington. Today we see that the idea was borrowed from farther east on the same line. Operating conditions in the mountain regions of Montana proved difficult. Winter temperatures of −40°C made it challenging for steam locomotives to generate sufficient steam. The line snaked through mountainous areas, resulting in "long steep grades and sharp curves." Electrification provided an answer, especially with abundant hydroelectric power in the mountains. Between 1914 and 1916, the Milwaukee implemented a 3,000 volt direct current overhead system between Harlowton, Montana, and Avery, Idaho, a distance of 705 kilometers.

The post card for today shows one of the second generation locomotives that traversed these mountains. The locomotive is of a different class than the two engines of the previous two weeks' posts. This one looks to be the second generation of electrical locomotives used by the railroad. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road) classes EP-1 and EF-1 comprised 42 box-cab electric locomotives built by the American Locomotive Company (Alco) in 1915. Electrical components were from General Electric. The locomotives were composed of two half-units semi-permanently coupled back-to-back, and numbered as one unit with 'A' and 'B' suffixes. As built, 30 locomotives were assigned to freight service, classified as EF-1 and numbered 10200–10229. The remaining twelve locomotives were assigned to passenger service as class EP-1, numbered 10100–10111, with higher-speed passenger gearing. The design was highly successful, replacing a much larger number of steam locomotives, cutting costs and improving schedules. General Electric self-proclaimed this electric locomotive to be the “King of the Rails” in a silent promotional film from 1915. From Wikipedia

In 1919, with the arrival of a newer generation of passenger power, the EP-1 locomotives were converted to EF-1 freight locomotives, and renumbered 10230–10241. The picture of the train in the post two weeks ago had the engine number 10294 - so close!! These numbers In this role, they served until the 1950s, when the arrival of the Little Joe locomotives began to replace them in freight service. More about these replacements next week.

The post card was published by a company owned by Curt Otto Teich. He and his company were both innovators and prolific in post card publishing. In business from 1893 to 1978. It's hard to date early Curt Teich postcards as they were not well documented. After 1913, dates began to appear occasionally in the order books kept by the company and from 1922 on, production dates were well documented. Their U.S. factories turned out more cards in quantity than any other printer. They published a wide range of national view-cards of America and Canada. Many consider them one of the finest producers of White Border Cards. The Linen Type postcard came about through their innovations as they pioneered the use of offset lithography. In 1974 the Teich Company was sold to Regensteiner Publishers also in Chicago. The Teich Company continued to operate in the same building and continued printing Teich postcards until 1978 when the plant closed.