Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway
The Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway ( BAP ) is a regional ( shortline ) railroad company in the USA . It was created on October 1, 1892 and still operates in the state of Montana to this day . Their main job was to transport copper ore for the Anaconda Copper Mining Company from Butte for smelting to Anaconda . Since the company was founded as a general transport company, it also operated passenger and other freight trains.
Route network
The main line leads from Butte at an altitude of almost 1700 meters, first along the Silver Bow Creek downstream and follows the course of the former Northern Pacific main line, which today belongs to BNSF . Until 1980, the railway shared the station at the Butte railway junction with the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad ( Milwaukee Road ), which also ran parallel to the west. In Silver Bow , a neighborhood belonging to Butte, the route from the direction of Pocatello, which has always belonged to Union Pacific , approaches from the south . After about five kilometers, the narrow valley of Silver Bow Creek is crossed and the routes of Milwaukee Road and the Northern Pacific are crossed on a steel bridge. After all three routes have turned north and have dropped to around 1560 meters above sea level, the main route of the BAP branches off to the northwest and runs slightly uphill again to Anaconda at 1627 meters above sea level. In Anaconda a branch line leads west to Browns, another branch line formerly led east to the tracks of the Northern Pacific.
history
The railway company opened its line on January 1, 1894. Together with the mining and smelting works , it belonged to the businessman Marcus Daly, known as the Copper King . The main route from Butte to Anaconda to the Washoe ironworks was 25.7 miles long (about 42 kilometers) according to the timetable , a later branch line from Anaconda further west to Browns was 6.2 miles long (about 9 kilometers). The total length of the tracks in the marshalling yards , junctions and factory tracks was 135 miles (about 220 kilometers). 51% of the company was owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and 49% by the Great Northern Railway.
At the start of operations, the company used steam locomotives with the 1'D and 2'D wheel arrangement.
BA&P was a pioneer in the field of electric train conveyance . Benefiting from the experience of the sister company operating in the mining industry with electric motors, she introduced electric train operations in 1913 as the first railway company in the USA mainly active in freight transport. It was also the first electric train operation in the USA to be introduced for purely economic reasons. Furthermore, a possible use of the extracted and transported copper could be shown practically to the world. The decision was favored by a contract with the Great Falls Power Company, which not only built the necessary power plant, but also provided the electricity on more favorable terms than with a company's own power plant.
The contract with General Electric was signed in December 1911 and included the construction of the necessary transformer stations, the delivery of the locomotives and the electrification of around 144 kilometers of track. The power supply was carried out with direct current of 2,400 volts voltage , the creation of equipment and catenary were made by General Electric and the railway's own labor. The overhead line consisted of a single line on masts made of giant tree of life wood at a distance of 45.72 meters (150 feet). Electricity was fed into the overhead line every 304.8 meters (1000 feet). At the same distance there were discharges on the tracks. Individual sections could be isolated by interrupting certain sections. The substation was built in Butte and Anaconda. Each station housed a 1000 kW system. The 2400 V three-phase alternating current provided was converted into the desired 2400 V direct current by means of a 1450 kVA synchronous motor and two series-connected, 500 kW 1200 V direct current generators.
17 locomotives of the type 80-ton Boxcab were delivered in 1913 and were given the running numbers 50 to 66. The locomotives 65 and 66 were provided for the passenger, and therefore received a different transmission - translation . The first electric locomotive was on the line on May 14, 1913, and regular electric operation began two weeks later. At the beginning of October 1913, all operations on the main line were switched to electric train transport.
By changing the traction, three electric locomotives and the corresponding crew could achieve the same performance as before with four steam locomotives. Between 1913 and 1914 the railway company was able to reduce the cost of the locomotives by 40%, the labor costs for the crew by 21% and the total costs by 36%. At the same time, the freight volume rose by 8.8%. With savings of approximately $ 242,000 annually and a total investment cost of $ 1,211,000, it was expected to pay for itself within five years. Due to the higher efficiency on the route, it was possible to dispense with the transport of around 3,000 tons of ore to a smelting works in Great Falls and this could be transported directly to Anaconda. In order to enable this 25 percent increase in transport volume, a second transformer station was built in Anaconda in 1914/1915 and another four locomotives were acquired. In addition, four so-called "tractor trucks" were acquired. These two-axle vehicles corresponded to one of the bogies of the locomotives and were weighted with appropriate weights. With this additional powered vehicle, the starting tractive effort could be increased by 50%. In 1915/1916 another seven locomotives were acquired. In addition, another transformer station was built in Butte and Anaconda. In the end, an output of 3000 kW was installed in Butte and 4000 kW in Anaconda. Due to the gradient, two locomotives could transport 5600 tons westwards, but only 2000 tons eastwards. Since the ore trains to the east mostly drove empty to be reloaded in Butte, this circumstance was not so important.
In 1957, the electric vehicle fleet, which originally consisted of 28 locomotives, was supplemented by two GE 125-ton Electric locomotives . In addition, an automatic 2500 kW Ignitron rectifier substation was built in Dawson . For operation on the non-electrified sections, the last steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locomotives a few years earlier . After an agreement on the route usage rights, the BA&P began in 1958 with the operation on the route of the Northern Pacific Railway between Butte and Durant . In 1967, the electrical operation on the house line was discontinued, as the construction of a new ore processing plant in Butte greatly reduced the necessary traffic on the main line and the shunting trips and the use of diesel locomotives - three GP7 and four GP9 - was thus cheaper.
After the Anaconda smelting works closed, the railway company lost most of its transportation business and was sold to the state of Montana in 1985. A consortium of regional investors founded the Rarus Railway (RARW) to operate and acquired ownership of the railway company in 1990. On July 19, 2007, the holding company Patriot Rail Corporation, which bought the Rarus Railway in May 2007, announced that it would rename the company back to Butte, Anaconda and Pacific Railway.
Locomotives
| Company number | Vehicle type | Manufacturer | Construction year | Working time | comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | Steam locomotive 2'B | ALCO - Brooks | 1893 | 1893– approx. 1900 | Taken over from Great Northern in 1893 as no. 31, renumbered "10" in 1898, sold to Columbia Southern Ry around 1900 |
| 10 | Steam locomotive 2'C | ALCO - Brooks | 1906 | 1906-1953 | second occupation of No. 10 |
| 24 | Steam locomotive 2'D | ALCO - Schenectady | 1906 | 1906-1917 | 1917 sold to General Equipment Co |
| T-1 through T-3 | Slug | General Electric | 1914/1915 | 1914-1967 | |
| 39-66 | 80-ton boxcab | General Electric | 1913-1917 | 1913-1967 | |
| 100 | SW1000 | EMD | 1955 | 1972-1981 | |
| 101-103 | GP7 | EMD | 1952/1953 | 1952– | |
| 104-107 | GP9 | EMD | 1957 | 1957– | |
| 108 + 109 | GP 38-2 | EMD | 1977/1978 | 1977– | |
| 201 + 202 | 125-ton Electric | General Electric | 1957 | 1957-1967 | |
| 201-203 | GP9 | EMD | 1957 | 2005– | Second occupation by Rarus Railroad |
| 301 | GP7 | EMD | 1953 | 1991– | |
| 302 | GP9 | EMD | 1957 | 1992– | |
| 1010 + 1011 | GP39-2 | EMD | 1976/1980 | 2007– | |
| 2010 + 2011 | GP38-2 | EMD | 1973 | 2007– |
literature
- Charles V. Mutschler: Wired for Success: The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway, 1892-1985 . Washington State University Press, Pullman (Washington) 2002.
- William D. Middleton : When the steam railroads electrified . 2nd revised edition. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2001, ISBN 978-0-253-33979-9 (American English).
Web links
- Patriot Rail website
- Collection of images for the (historical) vehicle fleet
- Vehicle inventory BAP until 1985
- Vehicle inventory RARW 1985-2007
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Butte, Anaconda And Pacific Railway ( Memento from February 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Poor's manual of railroads 1903
- ^ A b c George H. Drury: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads . 2nd Edition. Kalmbach Publishing Co., Waukesha 1999, ISBN 0-89024-356-5 , pp. 61-62 .
- ↑ Donald Sims: Copper Hauler . In: Railroad Magazine . March 1954, p. 87 ( PDF ).
- ^ Rarus Railway Brings Rail History to Life, Changes Name to Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway Company. (No longer available online.) Patriot Rail Corporation, July 19, 2007, archived from the original on September 30, 2007 ; accessed on August 31, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
