19 September 2007
Steaming Out of the Past
The Canadian Pacific Railway's "Empress" rolled
through Douglas County Sunday - the first steam-powered locomotive to chug along the Soo Line tracks near Carlos in
decades.
Alexandria Minnesota USA - Brad Berning was outside his
home near West Lake Burgen Road Sunday afternoon when he heard the train a comin'.
Not just any train.
The whistle from this train came from another era - a time when locomotives ran on steam.
Berning, a train buff, couldn't see the train but he knew from its whistle what it was. He ran into his house to tell his wife, Jodi,
who grabbed a camera.
Because they knew the north-bound train would already be passing through Alexandria, the Bernings tried to get ahead of
it.
"We made a bee line to Carlos," Jodi said.
Minutes later, the train rolled through.
"It was going at a good clip," Jodi said. "I thought it would just be a steam engine, but there were passenger cars too
and people waving out of the windows... It was kind of cool."
The train was the Canadian Pacific Railroad's (Editor: Damn it... get the name right!)"Empress" 2816 - a
resurrected locomotive that re-entered active service in 2001 as a "roving ambassador" for the railroad.
The train is finishing up a month-long steam tour of Western Canada and the Midwest. It's been making
round-trip excursions along former Soo Line routes out of Minneapolis to Glenwood.
Built in 1930, the Empress is one of only a handful of preserved and operating Canadian Pacific steam locomotives in North America.
Initially, the locomotive ran westward out of Winnipeg to Calgary and eastward to William, (That's Fort William.) Ontario, ( now part
of Thunder Bay ). Before it was restored, its last assignment was at the front of a Montreal-Rigaud commuter train.
After making its final revenue run in 1960 and logging more than 2 million miles in active service, the locomotive's fires were
extinguished. For 35 years, it sat idle and neglected.
It took three years to restore the train to its original specifications, including external details from the 1940s and 1950s, according
to railroad officials.
For more information about the Empress, including simulated downloads of the locomotive in action, go to the web site
cpr.ca.
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