page_title: Little Joe (electric locomotive)
section_title: Milwaukee Road
hierarchical_section_title: Little Joe (electric locomotive) / History / Milwaukee Road
caption_attribution_description: Milwaukee Road "Little Joe" electric locomotive E70.
context_page_description: The Little Joe is a type of railroad electric locomotive built by General Electric for export to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. The locomotives had twelve axles, eight of them powered, in a 2-D+D-2 arrangement. They were originally designed to operate on Soviet Railways 3,300-volt DC overhead line system.
context_section_description: The Milwaukee Road had offered to buy all twenty of these locomotives, plus their spare parts, for $1 million. That was little more than scrap value, but GE accepted. However, the Milwaukee's Board of Directors would not release the money. Nonetheless, unit 29927 was tested on 24 December 1948 on the Milwaukee Road, but it revealed some issues during trials.
  Demand during the Korean War boosted the Milwaukee's need for locomotives on their electrified mainline; the railroad was also beset by a coal strike that required sending most diesels back East (Milwaukee Lines East steam engines still burned coal, unlike the oil-burning Lines West steamers). So the Board of Directors returned to GE, only to discover that eight locomotives and all the spare parts had been sold.  Three had gone to the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad (the South Shore Line), and five to the Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro of Brazil.
  Still, the Milwaukee Road bought the remaining 12 locomotives for $1 million. The railroad designated its new locomotives as "class EF-4", denoting them as the line's fourth model of electric freight engine.  Two units were modified before delivery for passenger service; these were designated "class EP-4".  The Milwaukee's operating employees referred to the EF-4/EP-4 units as Little Joe Stalin's locomotives, which was eventually shortened to simply Little Joe.
caption: A Little Joe on the Milwaukee Road in Montana in 1970
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