Where did the CNW have their major repair and construction shops like the Milwaukee Road’s West Milwaukee shops?
Oelwein, Iowa
IINM, C&NW’s major backshop was in Oelwein, Iowa…
After the 1968 merger/takeover of the Chicago Great Western, that is (Oelwein was CGW’s big hub). Prior to 1968, wasn’t Clinton, IA a major engine and car repair facility?
I always thought C&NW had its major locomotive backshops in Chicago.
Not sure about pre-1968 as I mentioned in my reply, but Zardoz and the other poster are correct in that after the CGW merger CNW used the massive Oelwein shops for a lot of their repair work.
Before the Oelwein shops were acquired in the merger with CGW and after the Oelwein shops were sold, the C&NW did most of its major locomotive maintenance at Marshalltown, IA.
While the facitities at Proviso and M19A are considerable, the major heavy-duty stuff had to be done in Oelwein.
I’m not sure where it was done pre-CGW merger.
Yep.
I imagne that there major passenger car repair facility was in Chicago right?
Freight car rebuilding and major repairs were done at Clinton, Iowa, from the 1960s right up until UP shut the shops down.
Passenger car work was done at California Avenue in Chicago–still is, for Metra’s UP operations.
Locomotives: Marshalltown was a fairly recent development, as far as consolidated major shops go. Proviso has been, if I’m not mistaken, upgraded in the types of repairs it can handle, though it pales in comparison to shops like North Platte and North Little Rock. But there were an awful lot of facilities at CNW’s Chicago Shops before our days with the railroad. Keep in mind that M19A was numbered as an addition to the 19th building in the shops complex dealing with motive power. There were also a series of “C”-prefixed buildings for cars, and I think serveral other groups as well. When I hired out, some of the vacant land where these buildings had stood was occupied by the City of Chicago’s new Northwest Incinerator; a beer warehouse was later built on another portion. The 40th Street Yard was also in this area; most of that is now long gone.
This is in a way sort of a loaded question- CNW’s mergers did in fact make many changes to the CNW’s shopping locations, but I’ll take a stab at keeping it relatively simple.
For the most part prior to the CGW takeover- heavy locomotive repairs were done at the 40th street shops- there are excellent photos in the Flickr commons you can see taken in during World War II of the repair facilities that were once there. There were other immediate repair facilities as well (Chadron, NE was the Western Division repair facility, Huron, SD handled the Dakota Division, etc.)- when the CNW merged the MSTL they acquired the Marshalltown and Cedar Lake shops for locomotive repair, and the Oskaloosa shops for freight cars. Cedar Lake was like Oelwein in size and capacity, while Marshalltown was smaller.
Speaking freight cars the CNW had quite a few major shops that handled major car repairs before they were consolidated at Clinton in the late 1960s. These included Cudahy, WI, Hudson, WI, Winona, MN and the 40th Street shops in Chicago. The NWX shops for the refrigerator car fleet was in Baraboo, Wisconsin. After the CGW merger, Oelwein was incorporated as the main heavy repair facility and Cedar Lake and 40th Street were phased out (40th having passed on to RTA Metra). Clinton became the main car repair shop although Cudahy continued to do contract work on coal hoppers and the CNW’s autorack fleet until the merger. I will have to look and see where the main heavy repair work transferred to when Oelwein closed.
Marshalltown was a mid-size repair shop (which in fact had been MSTL predecessor Iowa Central’s main shop complex), comparable to the work that Chadron and Huron did- late in the CNW era it was make one of two contract shops on the CNW that handled maintenance work on the GE fleet (the other being Council Bluffs, IA). Having toured both Oelwein and Marshalltown when they were still active shops, I can tell you that Marshalltown was nowhere near equipped to do the work that Oelwein could
Huron is still active as a DM&E shop, complete with operating turntable. If the PRB project goes through a new yard and I presume shops will be built west of town.
Anybody know the reasoning behind closing the Oelwein shops?
Jeff
Yep. At 40th Street. Also, CNW passenger locomotive maintenance was at M19A in Chicago.
Someone asked why the Oelwein shops were closed. After UP acquired CNW back in 1995, it decided to concentrate system locomotive heavy maintenance at North Little Rock, AR (edit – ex-MoP). UP’s North Little Rock Shop was newer and more modern, and Oelwein duplicated what it did, needlessly, and at greater expense, in the minds of CNW management. So Oelwein got the axe. Such a facilities consolidation is common in railway mergers.
Last time I was in Oelwein, the yard looked almost like the CGW had been reincarnated. Transco had many, many cars, mostly auto-racks but various other types too parked in the yard for repair. Business certainly seemed good.
The Chicago area had the big C&NW shops. Marshalltown was a M&StL shop complex that was upgraded by the C&NW after the 1960 buyout of the M&StL. The 1968 buyout of the CGW gained the C&NW the very large Oelwein shops.
IIRC, the M19A shop in Chicago is the only engine shop left on the former C&NW lines.
Jim
Thanks Carl! I assumed it was.
Jim, I’m pretty sure Proviso does more, and heavier, work than does M19A. UP has assigned a number of locomotives to M19A for maintenance, though, so it isn’t all Metra.
In 1984 the ex-CGW mainline from the Twin Cities to Oelwein Iowa was abandoned primarily because of C&NW"s aquiring the Rock Island spine line between the Twin Cities and Kansas City. The Rock Island trackage was much better engineered than the CGW and in better shape physically. This also meant that the ex M&StL line between Cedar Lake and Marshalltown Iowa was also redundant and was downgraded in 1980 and now mostly abandoned. The C&NW did keep the line from Oelwein to Waterloo for a few years to access the Oelwein shops. About the only CGW line open today is the line so that UP can access Clarion Iowa.
In the 1970’s both the ex-CGW and M&StL mainlines were a wonderful place to watch trains. It was a hotbed of F units.
&nbs
This is incorrect- the Chicago and North Western announced the closing of Oelwein in 1993 and officially closed the doors at the shops on May 13, 1994- one full year before the UP takeover. (Even though UP was in the process of buying a controlling interest in CNW- they did not play into the equation.) Employees were offered positions at Proviso, Clinton, and Marshalltown upon the announced closing. Hospital trains of derelict and junk locomotives began ferrying out of Oelwein in the summer of 1993 and were complete by closing time in May 1994. The reasons for closing the shop were two-fold- one, the shops were located at the end of one of CNW’s “Island” lines from Waterloo. All cars and locomotives bound for Oelwein had to be intermediately handled by the Iowa Northern between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo for CNW interchange. Two- the CNW was no longer doing any heavy rebuilds on it’s locomotive fleet, and the remaining repair work could be covered by the existing shops at Proviso and Marshalltown.
As for the Marshalltown shops- they were built by the MSTL in 1950 as a diesel shop. In 1956 the work done there was transferred to Cedar Lake and Marshalltown became a car shop until the CNW merger when they converted it back to a diesel shop.