Rock Island/Bartlett Grain SW8 Locomotive

This SW8 model locomotive was built for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway (Rock Island) in 1952 by General Motors at its Electro-Motive Division (EMD) plant in the Chicago suburb of La Grange, Ill. It was numbered 835 when working for the Rock Island, which purchased 28 SW8s (811 - 838) from 1950 to 1953 for use across its system. Rock Island operated 835 in Wichita. After decades of service it was sold and eventually worked for Bartlett Grain in Wichita before being retired and donated to our museum in 2024.

 

From 1950 through 1953 EMD produced 310 SW8s for U.S. railroads, in addition to 65 assembled in Canada for Canadian railroads. They weigh 230,000 pounds (115 tons), are 44-feet, 5-inches long, generate 800 horsepower from 8-cylinder 567B, 567BC or 567C diesel engines (567-inch displacement-per-cylinder), and have a top speed of 65 m.p.h.

 

Rock Island’s origin dates back to 1847. In subsequent decades, Chicago-headquartered Rock Island expanded into a system with lines that stretched to Minneapolis, Minn.; Omaha, Neb.; Denver, Colo.; Dallas, Texas; Kansas City and St. Louis, Mo.; Des Moines, Iowa; Oklahoma City, Okla.; Memphis, Tenn.; Little Rock, Ark.; and into Louisiana. 

 

Rock Island served Wichita, Kan., on its line from Herrington, Kan., to Texas. Southern Pacific (SP) and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) railroads acquired Rock Island Lines in Kansas when the latter went bankrupt in 1980. MKT was purchased by Union Pacific (UP) in 1988 and SP was acquired by UP in 1996. UP operates on former Rock Island and Missouri Pacific (MoPac) lines in the Wichita area. MoPac was acquired by UP in 1982.

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