Richmond Locomotive Works was a steam locomotive manufacturing firm located in Richmond, Virginia .
33-523: It began operation in 1887, and produced upward of 4,500 engines during its 40 years of operation. The Richmond Locomotive Works was the largest and most significant manufacturer of locomotives in Virginia during its years of production. Its only contemporary in Virginia was the Roanoke Shops , which produced locomotives exclusively for Norfolk & Western . In 1901 the works merged with several others to form
66-550: A consolidating railroad market. Testifying in 1965, before the Interstate Commerce Commission in Chicago, President Reidy stated that although it was operating in the black it would not able to continue: The simple fact is that there is just too much transportation available between the principal cities we serve. The Great Western cannot long survive as an independent carrier under these conditions. The CGW, therefore,
99-506: A nationally known manufacturer of steam locomotive engines and an integral part of the industrial landscape of the city of Richmond. The engines it produced were shipped across America, as well as several countries in Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. Most Richmond Locomotive engines were sold to Southern carriers. Many were sold to Virginia lines, including Richmond City Railway , as well as
132-513: The 1893 Chicago World's Fair . One 4-6-0 locomotive was shipped to New Zealand in 1901 as a sample for the New Zealand Railways to try. It was classed in the 'Ub' family (along with a fellow ALCO product - a Brooks 4-6-0) and given the road number of #371. It was considered too light for mainline running, steaming poorly on New Zealand's ungraded coals but found a home on a local Canterbury Plains branchline serving it for 30 years. It
165-832: The Alameda and San Joaquin Railroad , Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe ; the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway ; the Rio Grande and Western Railroad ; the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad ; and the California and Northeastern Railway . Richmond locomotives also had a significant market in the Midwest as well. Midwestern purchasers included the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway ;
198-749: The American Locomotive Company , which continued production at the Richmond works until 1927. Among the locomotives Richmond produced was locomotive H2 293 for the Finnish State Railways , the locomotive that pulled Lenin 's train into Petrograd on the last leg of his return from exile during the Russian Revolution of 1917 , and Southern Railway 1401 , which pulled President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Funeral Train. The Richmond Locomotive Works grew out of Tredegar Iron Works to become
231-782: The Cincinnati, Richmond and Muncie Railroad ; the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad ; the Wabash Railroad ; the Chicago Great Western Railway ; the Brainerd and Northern Minnesota Railway ; the Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway ; and the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad . The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway purchased several engines, including two specifically constructed for carrying passengers to
264-877: The Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad ; the Savannah, Americus and Montgomery Railway ; the Southern Railroad ; the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad ; the Mississippi River and Bonne Terre Railway ; the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad ; and the Little Rock and Hot Spring Western Railroad . Richmond locomotives were delivered as far away as the Southwestern Arkansas and Indian Territory Railroad and
297-907: The Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad , the Richmond and Danville Railroad and the Seaboard Air Line . Other buyers included the Louisville and Nashville Railroad ; the Louisville Southern Railway ; the Wilmington, Onslow and East Carolina Railroad ; the Raleigh and Cape Fear Railway ; the Nashville and Tellico Railroad ; the Atlanta and Florida Railroad ; the Georgia Pacific Railway ;
330-820: The Virginia Museum of Transportation in downtown Roanoke. No. 611 has been restored to operating condition for excursion service again in 2015. On May 18, 2020, Norfolk Southern abandoned the Roanoke Shops and moved all operations to the Juniata Locomotive Shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania . In July 2023, Genesis Rail Services leased a portion of the Roanoke Shops. 37°16′27″N 79°55′55″W / 37.27405°N 79.93202°W / 37.27405; -79.93202 Chicago Great Western Railway The Chicago Great Western Railway ( reporting mark CGW )
363-572: The panic of 1907 caused Stickney to lose control of the railroad, and ownership passed to financier J. P. Morgan . In 1910, the CGW introduced four McKeen Motor Car Company self-propelled railcars, its first rolling stock powered by internal combustion engines. In the same year, the railroad also purchased ten large 2-6-6-2s from the Baldwin Locomotive Works . Two years later, the railroad acquired an experimental battery powered motorcar from
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#1732855753665396-585: The A-class for fast freight service. During World War II in the 1940s, the Roanoke Shops repaired more than 100 locomotives from the Atlantic Coast Line (ACL), Chicago and North Western (C&NW), Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac (RF&P), and Seaboard Air Line (SAL) railroads to assist with the war effort . Additionally, they manufactured components for Bailey bridges , marine cylinders, and other critical parts for war use. In December 1953,
429-678: The ALCO merger have been preserved. All locations are in the United States unless otherwise noted. The following preserved Richmond locomotives were built post-merger: Roanoke Shops The Roanoke Shops (comprising the main East End Shops and the West Roanoke Yard and shops at Shaffers Crossing) is a railroad workshop and maintenance facility in Roanoke, Virginia . Between 1884 and 1953,
462-484: The CGW began trial operations of trailer on flatcar trains, which were expanded the following year into regular service, initially between Chicago and St. Paul, but rapidly expanding across the system by 1940. In 1941, it was reorganized in bankruptcy, and late in the decade a group of investors, organized as the Kansas City Group, purchased the CGW. In 1946, a demonstrator EMD F3 diesel locomotive set operated on
495-483: The CGW's trackage. In 1835, the Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Airline railroad was chartered with the intent of building a railroad west out of Chicago. The railroad never began construction, and its rights to build were transferred in 1854 to a new company, the Minnesota & North Western (M&NW), which eventually began construction in 1884 of a line south from St. Paul, Minnesota to Dubuque, Iowa. In 1887,
528-408: The CGW, immediately prompting the company to purchase a wide variety of diesels, and by 1950 the railroad had converted completely to diesel motive power. In 1949, William N. Deramus III assumed the presidency, and began a program of rebuilding infrastructure and increasing efficiency, both by consolidating operations such as dispatching and accounting and by lengthening trains. In 1957, Deramus left
561-688: The CGW, the CNW abandoned most of the former CGW trackage. A 20 mile section of the railroad right of way from Des Moines, IA south to Martensdale, IA was used to create a mixed use trail with the name of Great Western Trail. In addition, a section of track was converted to trail usage, also known as the Great Western Trail , running intermittently between Villa Park, Illinois and West Chicago, Illinois in DuPage County, and then through Kane and DeKalb counties to Sycamore, Illinois. The Chicago Great Western
594-626: The Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City Railroad acquired the M&;NW, and by the end of the decade, under the leadership of St. Paul businessman A.B. Stickney , it had established routes west to Omaha, Nebraska, south to St. Joseph, Missouri, and east to Chicago, Illinois, via the Winston Tunnel near Dubuque. In 1892, the railroad was reorganized as the Chicago Great Western. The first repair shops for locomotives and freight cars were built at
627-621: The Federal Storage Battery Car Company. In 1916, the railroad began standardizing on 2-8-2 steam locomotives, which served through the 1920. In 1923 CGW purchased from the soon to be dominant company EMC, two of EMD's first gasoline-powered cars. During the 1920s, as ownership changed again to the Bremo Corporation, a group of investors led by Patrick Joyce, an executive at the Standard Steel Car Company ,
660-578: The Roanoke Shops built the class S-1a 0-8-0 switcher No. 244, which was also the last steam locomotive manufactured in the United States for domestic use. After the N&;W stopped using steam locomotives in May 1960, J-class No. 611 and A-class No. 1218 were used to pull excursion trains from the early 1980s until the early 1990s. No. 1218 is now on display near its birthplace in a specially constructed pavilion at
693-808: The Shops and Genesis Rail Services leased the property in July 2023. Before the locomotive shops were being built, Roanoke had been a quiet farming community of Big Lick and a small stop on the Atlantic, Mississippi & Ohio Railroad (AM&O). That changed in February 1881 when the owners of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad , building up the valley, purchased the AM&;O, renamed it the Norfolk and Western, and selected Big Lick as
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#1732855753665726-621: The company, and Edward Reidy assumed the presidency. As early as 1946, the first proposal was advanced to merge the Great Western with other railroads, this time with the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad . Upon the failure of a later merger opportunity with the Soo Line Railroad in 1963, the board of the Great Western grew increasingly anxious about its continued viability in
759-408: The following year the shops began building locomotives. Over the next nine years, the facility built 152 locomotives, all for the N&W, then suspended production. Antoine Sauter was one of its foremen. Production resumed in 1900 at the facility, which had been renamed the Roanoke Shops in 1897. Over the next 53 years, the shops built 295 locomotives (and re-boilered two more). From 1927 to 1952,
792-522: The new junction. In 1882, the town grew rapidly as the new center of the combined railroads and changed its name to Roanoke , becoming a city in just a short time. In October 1881, the Roanoke Machine Works was founded, a set of shops that would grow to massive size and become the major employer in the Roanoke Valley for a century. The shops came under the control of the N&W in 1883, and
825-580: The original terminus in St. Paul, Minnesota , known as the South Park Shops. In 1892 the city of Oelwein, Iowa was chosen as the headquarters and primary shop site due to its central location on the mainline. Construction was completed in 1899, and soon Oelwein became known as "Shop City" for its mammoth shop site. The two-story combination machine, boiler, and coach shop alone measured 700 feet (213 meters) long and had 27 pits for overhauling locomotives. In 1907,
858-547: The railroad expanded its use of self-propelled vehicles. At the end of the decade, 36 2-10-4 steam locomotives were purchased from Baldwin and the Lima Locomotive Works . During the Great Depression , the railroad trimmed operations by closing facilities and abandoning trackage. It purchased its first diesel-electric locomotive, an 800 horsepower (600 kW) yard switcher from Westinghouse , in 1934. In 1935,
891-575: The same territory, and developed a corporate culture of innovation and efficiency to survive. Nicknamed the Corn Belt Route because of its operating area in the midwestern United States , the railroad was sometimes called the Lucky Strike Road , due to the similarity in design between the herald of the CGW and the logo used for Lucky Strike cigarettes . In 1968 it merged with the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), which abandoned most of
924-432: The shops built every steam locomotive acquired by the N&W. During the 1930s, they employed over 6,000 workers, who were working on four steam locomotives and 20 freight cars on any given day. Products included locomotives of all sizes and of increasingly better technology, from switching engines to the famed streamlined class J passenger locomotives, the huge, articulated Y5 and Y6-classes for low-speed coal drags, and
957-515: The shops produced 447 steam locomotives, all for the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W). The Roanoke Shops built the N&W's famous Big Three class steam locomotives; the 4-8-4 class J , the 2-6-6-4 class A , and the 2-8-8-2 class Y6. In late 1953, the Shops built their final steam locomotive, making it last standard gauge steam locomotive built for revenue service in the United States. In 2020, N&W's successor, Norfolk Southern abandoned
990-600: Was a Class I railroad that linked Chicago , Minneapolis , Omaha , and Kansas City . It was founded by Alpheus Beede Stickney in 1885 as a regional line between St. Paul and the Iowa state line called the Minnesota and Northwestern Railroad . Through mergers and new construction, the railroad, named Chicago Great Western after 1892, quickly became a multi-state carrier. One of the last Class I railroads to be built, it competed against several other more well-established railroads in
1023-649: Was dumped in 1933 but has been rediscovered for possible restoration. In 1901, the Richmond Locomotive Works was purchased by Joseph Leiter for $ 3 million. At the time, the company employed about 1,600 workers and was producing two locomotives a day. Later that year, Richmond and seven other manufacturing companies merged to form American Locomotive Company (ALCO). Locomotive production at Richmond Locomotive Works ceased in September 1927. The following locomotives (in serial number order) built by Richmond before
Richmond Locomotive Works - Misplaced Pages Continue
1056-576: Was not known for its passenger trains, although it did operate several named trains, mostly running between Chicago and the Twin Cities. Despite the railroad's small size and meager passenger fleet, it looked for ways to more efficiently move passengers, such as employing all-electric (battery powered) and gas-electric motorcars on light branch lines, which were cheaper to operate than traditional steam or diesel-powered trains. Notable passenger trains from its major terminals included: On September 30, 1965,
1089-515: Was open to a merger with the Chicago and North Western Railway (CNW), first proposed in 1964. After a 4-year period of opposition by other competing railroads, on July 1, 1968, the Chicago Great Western merged with Chicago and North Western. At the time of the merger, the CGW operated a 1,411 miles (2,271 km) system, over which it transported 2,452 million ton-miles of freight in 1967, largely food and agricultural products, lumber, and chemicals, for $ 28.7 million of revenue. After taking control of
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