Little in Name Only

Little in Name Only. . , [Cyrillic text] , (Little Joes, The Locomotives Big Joe Stalin Never Got!), Made for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, the United States embargoed these magnificent locomotives as strategic material at the start of the “Cold War”., The Milwaukee Road bought twelve of these 586,00 pound giants in 1950 and they quickly became known as, “Little Joes”. The test locomotive still had its Russian/Cyrillic labels., The 5,530 horsepower EP/EF-4 Little Joe engines were the most powerful and efficient single unit electric engines used on the Milwaukee Road. In one authority’s opinion, it was “the greatest machine any railroad ever coupled onto a train”., In the late 1950s the railroad decided to haul heavier freight trains over the electrified parts of its line by putting controls in the Little Joes to operate diesel boosters., By 1960 the usual practice was to run a diesel booster behind two Little Joes. Later a single Little Joe would often lead a long line of diesels over the western mountains., (sidebar) , Dieselization, Glamorous and dependable steam locomotives couldn’t match the efficiency of diesel locomotives. Diesels saved 70 to 80 percent on fuel costs over oil or coal fired steam engines, required less maintenance and needed fewer men to operate., The Milwaukee road started buying diesels in 1941 and by 1955 its entire steam fleet was gone. For a while, diesel and electric locomotives worked together over the Milwaukee’s Pacific Extension. But, by 1974, the diesels pushed out the electrics too.