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Southern Pacific Motive Power Annual 1971 by Strapac Soft Cover
Southern Pacific Motive Power Annual 1971 by Joseph A Strapac
Soft Cover stapled
64 pages.
Christmas was in the air in Minnesota. The year was 1916; America stood poised on the brink of a great crusade to make the World Safe for Democracy; and in the Federal Bankruptcy Court in Minneapolis, the holdings of a small railroad were being parceled out at auction to satisfy the claims of creditors. Although too common, there was great significance behind an obscure courtroom drama.
The railroad was the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester & Duluth Electric Traction Company, more commonly known as the Dan Patch Electric Lines (after the famous pacer, owned by the railroad's builder, Col. M. W. Savage). The Dan Patch was the first serious attempt by an American common carrier to do without both overhead wires and waterplugs. Thomas Edison's outfit, the General Electric Company, had equipped the line with a fleet of stylish gas-electric motor cars for passengers and a quartet of boxy little locomotives which were little more than double the mechanical equipment of the motor cars.
Dan Patch's misfortune was Southern Pacific's gain. A representative of the latter was present in court that day, with instructions from San Francisco to purchase as much of the rolling stock as possible. In the ensuing auction, he bought a quartet of gas-electric coaches, Dan Patch numbers 7, 9, 10, and 11, and a trio of locomotives numbered 101 thru 103. All of this equipment was to be assigned to Southern Pacific subsidiaries with special needs in equipment; the coaches became San Diego & Southeastern Nos. 41 and 42, Northwestern Pacific No. 901, and Visalia Electric No. 450; the locomotives were assigned Pacific Electric No. 1501 and Visalia Electric Nos. 401 and 402.
There were no railroad-size internal-combustion locomotives in the United States prior to General Electric building four for the Dan Patch. The very first G. E. locomotive to be built
with an internal-combustion prime mover was Dan Patch No. 100, a gasoline-electric built in July, 1913. This particular unit remained in Minnesota (and is now on display at the Minnesota Transportation Museum) after the dissolution of the M. St. P. R. & D. E. T. Co., while the three which went to Southern Pacific were built in June and August of 1915. Although innumerable details differed, these four gas-electrics set the pattern for the much better known diesel-electrics introduced. by General Electric in 1924 and 1925. General Electric did all the pioneering in this field, and Southern Pacific can justify a claim of partnership in this early era - with internal-combustion locomotives operating on subsidiaries before World War I.
General Electric began commercial sales of locomotives in the 1890's. As far as can be determined from existing records, GE's first delivery to a customer in the Western states was in 1900, when a mine trammer was sold to the Utah Fuel Company, operating coal mines near Provo. This firm ordered a duplicate the following year. In 1906, the Utah Copper Company, a predecessor of today's Kennecott Copper Corporation, acquired the eleventh General Electric locomotive delivered in the West. The first railroad-standard electric locomotives delivered west of the Rockies were a pair of forty-ton electric units sold to the Portland Railway, Light & Power Company as No. 1404 and 1405 in September, 1907. Ten somewhat larger units were built for Jim Hill's Oregon Electric between 1907 and 1912. The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific purchased twenty-two 75- and 81-ton locomotives in 1913 and 1914, while in 1915 the Milwaukee Road began its electrification program using General Electric units.
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