Benjamin Sipiorski

By This Author:

Photograph of a steam train engine on a rail road.

OBJECT HISTORY: Soo Line Engine #1003

The first Mikado (2-8-2) Soo Line engine was inherited by the Soo Line when it merged with the Bismarck, Great Falls, and Washburn Railway Company in 1904. In 1912, the Soo Line ordered ten more Mikados from the American Locomotive Company, which were built in 1913 (these Engines number from Soo Line #1001 to #1010).

An illustrated map showing the routes of the various railroads, to demonstrate that these lines converge at Sault Ste. Marie, and then further east at Toronto and eventually Halifax on the Atlantic Ocean.

The Soo Line

In the second half of the nineteenth century, railroads remade the geography of the Midwest. In Wisconsin, the Chicago and Northwestern, The Milwaukee Road, and the Soo Line were the major railroads. They crossed the state and connected the produce of farmers and miners and lumberyards to port cities on the Great Lakes, the barges on the Mississippi, and most importantly, to the commercial markets in Chicago.