Class I ‘bandit’: Milwaukee Road painted locomotive
Locomotive rosters are constantly in a state of flux. Power is being returned off lease, sold, or scrapped in house. CPKC did the latter recently with a group of locomotives stored at its St. Paul, Minn., diesel shop. The group included the last Milwaukee Road “bandit”-painted locomotive on CPKC’s roster. The Milwaukee Road began its slow demise in 1980 when it shed its western extension from Montana to the Pacific Northwest.
Five years later, the balance of the trackage was sold to Soo Line in the mid-1980s. Many of Milwaukee Road’s locomotive models never ran on Soo Line, while the power that was retained for service receiving large areas of black paint on the long hood, cab and nose, covering all Milwaukee Road lettering and numbers.
They were nicknamed “bandits” by railfans due to their appearance of wearing a mask over their true identity. While some former Milwaukee Road units would be painted by Soo Line and Canadian Pacific over the years, many retained its “bandit” appearance until retirement.
Milwaukee’s GP40 fleet was one of the largest group of units to make it onto Soo Line’s active roster and saw service all over the Midwest. Keeping their Milwaukee Road numbers and getting new ‘SOO’ reporting marks, age and mother nature took its toll on both the original paint and the bandit patches applied to them.
Soo Line GP40 No. 2010 would become the sole bandit on CP at the time of the CPKC merger. Its last revenue run for Canadian Pacific in 2015 would mean CPKC would simply roster but not operate a bandit-painted locomotive. Soo Line No. 2010 was built for Milwaukee Road in 1966 and would wear its original paint for over a half century before being parted out for scrap in June 2024.
