General
AE&FRE #5 is a 45-ton diesel-electric industrial locomotive built by General Electric in 1946. It is one of two pieces of rolling stock in the Museum’s collection that are original to our museum’s railroad line.
History
Upon the conversion of Elgin-Aurora passenger trolley service on the Aurora Elgin and Fox River Electric (AE&FRE) to buses after March 31st, 1935, most of the trolley line was scrapped except for the 3.5 miles of track between the Illinois Central Railroad interchange at Coleman and the Illinois Mental Hospital on the southside of Elgin along Route 31. This branch was retained to provide coal from southern Illinois mines to the hospital’s power plant which supplied electricity and steam for heat to the multi-building hospital complex.
The railroad’s two electric freight motors (#23 and #49) handled the freight service at first, however the source of 600 volts DC was going to be eliminated as the Chicago Aurora and Elgin’s substations were being revised and the electric units were worn out. Locomotive #5 was ordered as a replacement from General Electric in 1946. It was delivered in June with a light blue paint scheme and was in service when Bob DeYoung purchased the railroad company in 1948. Since it was no longer needed, the overhead trolley wire was removed, although the right-of-way still hosted Commonwealth Edison utility power lines. By the mid 1950s, Mr. DeYoung repainted the locomotive into the orange scheme we see it in today.
With the advent of the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s, the State of Illinois converted the hospital’s power plant to natural gas and the railroad lost its last freight customer (although the original RELIC museum operation was operating on the southern portion of the railroad with restored trolley wire and would eventually purchase the railroad). Mr. DeYoung first leased and then sold #5 to the Chicago Gravel Company in Spaulding, Illinois on the east side of the Fox River. It continued in this industrial service until 2000 when the gravel pit was closed and the developer that purchased the property donated the locomotive to the Fox River Trolley Museum in 2001 with it returning to home rails via lowboy highway trailer.
Narrative
As the diesel-electric locomotive was being developed in the mid 1920’s and 1930’s the issue of the fireman’s job arouse between railroad management and the enginemen’s union. The issue was finally resolved with the 90,000-pound (45-tons) rule with locomotives at that weight requiring a two-man engine crew. 44-ton diesel locomotives became popular for railroad branch lines. However industrial service locomotives, such as #5, which could not operate over 20 miles per hour, were marketed directly to private companies and were intended to be operated by company employees, not railroad crews and thus were exempt from the 90,000-pound rule. Industrial locomotives are sized from 23-tons to 70 tons or more. The 45-ton locomotive became very popular with industries and military bases. Since the AE&FRE railroad was an owner operated railroad, #5 was the perfect locomotive for the operation which rarely moved more than five cars at a time from Coleman up to the hospital.
Author: Joseph Hazinski, Curator