GE 57-ton gas-electric boxcab

Before Diesel engines had been perfected in the early 1900s, many companies chose to use the gasoline engine for rail motive power. The first GE Locomotive was a series of four-axle (B-B) boxcab gasoline-electric machines closely related to their "doodlebugs", a line of self-propelled passenger cars built in the early 1900s.

One of their first major customers was the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester & Dubuque Electric Traction Company, better known as the Dan Patch Electric Lines after the owner's prize horse of the same name. Founded on the principle of not using steam power if they could avoid it, they asked GE to make them a series of locomotives based on their doodlebugs. GE complied, and created a number of locomotives originally claimed to be the first engines using an engine to drive a generator for traction motors. However, historians later determined that a narrow-gauge diesel-electric locomotive had been built in 1912.

As-built specifications for No. 100

• Serial Number: 3763
• Build Date: June 1913
• Engines (2): GM-16C4 V-8
• Motors (4): GE 205 D
• Dimensions:
  • Weight: 57 tons
  • Overall length: 36 ft 4 in
  • Cab length: 27 ft 0 in
  • Width: 10 ft 5.775 in
  • Height: 14 ft 6.75 in
• Starting tractive effort: 30,000 lbf
• Rated top speed: 38 mph
  • Actual top speed: 51 mph light, 45 mph with a 5-car train

Survivors

No. 100, still survives. After the Dan Patch Line went into bankruptcy, its sisters went to a California traction company while 100 was sold first to the Central Warehouse Company of St. Paul, MN in 1917, who converted it to a simple electric locomotive. It was then sold to the Minneapolis, Anoka, & Cuyuna Range Railroad in 1922 for $12,000. The MA&CR owned the locomotive until that railroad was bought by the Great Northern Railway in 1966. In the meantime, the MA&CR had removed its trolley wire and converted 100 to a diesel-electric system, using a Waukesha diesel engine.

In 1967, the Great Northern donated Dan Patch #100 to the Minnesota Transportation Museum of St. Paul, MN. It is currently on display at their Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul.

References

• Olson, Russell L. (1976). The Electric Railways of Minnesota. Minnesota Transportation Museum, Hopkins/H. M. Smyth Co., St. Paul.
• Dan Patch Electric Lines 100 - Boxcab Gas-Electric