South Shore and Electric locomotives

Given the CSS&SB history and its use of Electric locomotives for freight handling, it now uses Diesels for its freight hauling.

Given today's fuel prices, and dependence on oil, how do you feel/think the South Shore could use/return to some use of the Electric locomotive?

While returning to electrified freight might be nice for the railfans, it's not very practical for the railroad and I don't think we'll see it happen.

- No locomotive builder offers a stock electric freight locomotive for American service. Without any other potential buyers to pool costs, the expense of designing and building an electric locomotive from scratch would be prohibitive.

- All of the South Shore's freight-only trackage these days is non-wired. To install catenary over all the freight trackage would be another major expense. Then consider the maintenance of that wire. SouthShore Freight is not equipped to maintain overhead wire and I doubt NICTD would want to take on that additional burden.

- Electric locomotives could be used only on NICTD trackage, but that would severely restrict the flexibility in routing that the diesels offer. Whenever a train would need to run on non-wired trackage or on another railroad such as CSX, the motive power would have to be changed.

Although electrified freight would reduce the railroad's dependency on petroleum, the upfront cost is just too high. It's the same reason we don't see mainline electrification on other freight railroads in this country.

Mike "Always a Downer" F.

Funny how they left the wires on freight trackage for years "just in case", and now that it's most needed it got ripped down - I'm not sure when, but I seem to remember wires over burnham yard, harbison walker, and other freight trackage in the early 90's. But the biggest hurdle, as mike notes, is availability of power - I'm not sure where the nearest high-voltage DC line is that hauls freight, if it even exists any more. In this day and age it's much harder to customize as the 700's and 800's were.

Also remember that the commuter and passenger operations are two different entities. So if the freight sector was to convert back to electric power, some kind of system would need to be set up to make sure both entities pay for their fair share of the electricity being used. Although not impossible, if new wires were put up on freight-only trackage, some sort of metering system would need to be put in place as well.

Tadman wrote:I'm not sure where the nearest high-voltage DC line is that hauls freight

That would be the Iowa Traction in Mason City, Iowa. Or if you want a "mainline" operation, I think there's one in Utah.

Byte brings up a good point about metering the power consumption for billing purposes. Although it would be trivial to determine the freight side's power usage on freight-only trackage, it would be very difficult to do so on shared trackage and I suspect the billing would have to be figured on paper rather than by the meters.

By the way, there is a broader discussion of mainline electrification ongoing in the general rolling stock forum here: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14432

The railroad you speak of is the Desert Power Railroad. Don't quote me, I believe they have 2 former N de M E-60's and 2 of their own E-60's. I know they run twice a day between a mine and a power station in the middle of nowhere. I have very little info on this road but I know it is currently in operation with electric units.

To the best of knowledge (traction lines aside like Mason City) there is virtually NO interchange freight powered by juice on any class 1/former "steam road" in North America anymore. The last gasps included the BCE's Tumbler Ridge line(ending fairly recently and the NdeM's long delayed then short lived trunk in the DF, shut down about 10 years ago?) For the US I believe it was Conrail in '82, though I'm not exactly sure when the Joes were pulled off either (early '80's?) There are some captive coal/lignite lines (BM&LP, TXU, Deseret etc.) but none of them handles regular interchange or even have connections in some cases. This is sad, and I think freight juice surely extinct on the CSS if not the rest of the continent barring some serious government investment as the capital markets/rail industry seem less likely to make the plunge now or in the near future then they ever have in the past. BTW, juice fans will enjoy the photos of some of those western conveyors mentioned above at this link http://www.trainweb.org/southwestshorts/home.html

To give you the answer on the Little Joes being retired; they were removed from service in January, 1981.

Locomotives 801 and 803 were retired in 1981; 802 was removed from service in the mid-'70s.

during the interurban heyday, the movement of freight by electric
was way more possible, but we all know by now where that sits...

It would have to take a resurgance of electric lines to bring back the reality the way we recall it to be.

You get little bits of hope like the talk of the SS expanding to Valporaiso and a little more, and thats good news for passenger service.

For a line that was almost the brink of abandonment, its carrying on beyond expectations.