page_title: Milwaukee Road class EP-3
section_title: In service
hierarchical_section_title: Milwaukee Road class EP-3 / In service
context_page_description: The Milwaukee Road's class EP-3 comprised ten electric locomotives built in 1919 by Baldwin and Westinghouse. They were nicknamed Quills because of their use of a quill drive. Although they were good haulers and well liked by engineers, poor design and constant mechanical problems plagued them for their entire lives and they were the first of the Milwaukee Road's electric locomotives to be retired.
context_section_description: The "Quills" never really met the standards set by their GE-designed counterparts.  They were constant headaches for the Milwaukee Road mechanical department and were rebuilt five times during their service lives.  They were very heavy and the large drivers were suspected of contributing to frame breakage.  They were prone to derailing and their weight tended to increase the severity of such derailments.  Locomotive E13 (the "Quills" were renumbered E10–E19 in 1939) was destroyed in a derailment at Soudan, Montana in 1947.
  In the late 1940s, with the Little Joes entering service and the older electric locomotives worn out from heavy use during World War II, the Electrification Department initiated a program to rebuild the Milwaukee Road's electric locomotives for continued service.  The "Quills" were not included in the program.  Instead, the seven remaining locomotives (three had already been retired due to wrecks) were gradually retired and scrapped between 1952 and 1957.
caption: U.S. President Harding in the cab of EP-3 number 10305
exif: {}