I’m going to model N scale, which should be quite fun, considering I can do more with my 4x8 now. I’ve always had a secrete love for Soo Line, and my friend’s and eveyone else thought I was an ATSF-oholic for life, but they were stunned. I wanted, before I do anything, to find resources for the Soo Line. I was overwhelemed, and i had some trouble finding reliable links. I was wondering if anyone could suggest great links to visit, and interesting projects of any Soo Line custom locomotives.
What info you need depends on what part of the Soo you’re modelling…urban railroading in the Twin Cities or Chicago, a granger line in North Dakota, iron ore trains in the U.P. or northern Minnesota…???
I’m not sure. I wanted to ask something, and it’s important. What branch of Soo Line involved inter-town switching with some routes embeded in streets and weaving around every-day structures. What railroads did said route interchange with, if any? What peroids was this route used?
I’m trying to stay in the 1960s, and I don’t mind to change.
Well I’m not sure what you mean by “inter-town switching”?? Are you talking about wayfreights going from town to town picking up and dropping off cars?? As far as street running I’m not sure the Soo did much of that. Since the area it served was generally being developed at the same time as the railroad, they were able to separate the railroad from the streets. Street running is more common in areas like the east I think, where the city was built first and then later the railroad had to squeeze it’s way in wherever it could.
The Soo was involved in ‘big city’ operations in the Twin Cities, running transfer cuts of cars to and from other railroads (like from it’s Shoreham yard to next-door-neighbor NP’s Northtown yard) and serving industries like huge flour mills / grain elevators.
The most famous street running on the Soo Line had to be in Oshkosh, Wisconsin where the main line ran along front yards.
The Neenah-Manitowoc line would be interesting to model. In the 1960’s there was not only local freight for the towns along the way but also overhead traffic to the Ann Arbor and C&O ferries in Manitowoc. Passengers were hauled in what was basically a caboose.
Be interesting to do the early-mid sixties when Soo still ran passenger trains. At some point the Soo realized it wasn’t going to pay to run passenger trains forever so it began buying GP’s with ‘torpedo tubes’ on the roof that could be used in passenger service. The Soo passenger cars kept their maroon color even after introduction of the red and white scheme in 1962.
I have a MILW GP9 with the tubes. I don’t like it, doesn’t look right. Will either convert it to normal 9 standard tank and air tank placement or do something else with it. Maybe make my own loco. Chop down the long hood a bit, chop off the short hood and replace the facing cab wall with one from an SW series. Would have a really big “porch” by the cab but heck may look interesting. I did think of making it a cabless booster unit, but then decided to model a time era when boosters weren’t really around unless you had an full cowl-body loco.
I guess it depends on what you’re used to seeing. I regularly saw “torpedo tube” SOO engines in the eighties and nineties running on the line in front of my house so I guess it doesn’t bother me. Several midwest railroads (MILW, SOO, CNW) did that, partly as a hedge against buying passenger diesels like E-units at a time it was becoming clear that passenger train ridership was declining.
One of the reasons that the Soo Line might not have invested in new Passenger equipment after 1955 is because the competing Great Northern might have been taking away much of the passenger business. GN continued to improve its passenger service long after the Soo Line passenger service was declining.
I doubt that passenger service was ever a high priority for the Soo Line and in the final years there was clearly no incentive for improvement, even on the south end of the system. The railroad was “odd man out” when it came to providing direct passenger service to the most populated areas between Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul. By the 1950’s it was down to two trains each way and before the end, it truncated trains 1 and 2 at Stevens Point, leaving only #17 and #18 to cover the entire distance. From Chicago to the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin, the Soo bypassed Kenosha and Racine far to the west. The closest stop to Milwaukee was Waukesha, which had nowhere near the population it does today. Once it got to Fond du Lac and the Valley, it was in direct competition with the C&NW which offered far more service from Chicago, as well as a direct route from Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha, through to Oshkosh, Neenah-Menasha, Appleton and Green Bay. The Soo, on the other hand, swung to the west at Appleton, avoiding Green Bay entirely. The only city of any size between Appleton and the Twin Cities was Stevens Point. There was a stop at Chippewa Falls, but again, the C&NW provided direct and more frequent service to the larger city of Eau Claire. And this doesn’t even take into account the Milwaukee Road which was always a hard competitor for Chicago-Twin Cities passengers. Bottom line, the Soo Line passenger service was quaint to see and fun to ride while it lasted, but freight was what paid the bills. John Timm
Once ridership on Soo’s Chicago-Winnepeg “Mountaineer” (which connected with the CP to the west coast) started to slide in the fifties, I think they saw the handwriting was on the wall for passenger service. How much money can you make running passenger trains from Chicago to Superior WI, if you don’t have the mail contract (which I think CNW held)??
