Along the Rail Line

Southern Minnesota. One of my favorite town names....

The crew in the caboose. Connersville, Indiana, in 1993. I'm thinking the train was arriving from Metamora and that we were on the grounds of the local Masonic temple (which was more like a big house). 'Twas a long time ago, now.... We'd soon board the train ourselves. Enjoyed the ride, but weren't much impressed with Metamora, though we liked the barge on the canal. The trains still run; information here . I'm pretty sure I took this photo with a Chinon Genesis III.

The backside of Mulliken's Main Street in the background, shot from Railroad Street. That's the CSX (formerly Pere Marquette) mainline running off toward the horizon. After a (necessary) break I'm starting to take photography seriously again. I can tell because I've started thinking of photos as technical problems, even with the fairly limiting camera that took this photo. (FWIW: That's a reaction to the light-colored stripe at the bottom of the sky....) And early on my framing turns weird for a while.

I ducked by CN's Cory Yard this morning--it serves the large General Motors assembly plant in Delta Township, near Lansing--and found only this locomotive and a single car on the property. In contrast, the yard within the auto plant's boundaries seemed to be full. I suspect there's a problem with the exiled car.... Regardless, the loco's Illinois Central (IC) 9637, a GP38, of which there are plenty of photographs on the web in a variety of paint schemes. When Cory Yard was new we'd mostly see switchers wearing IC and GTW garb, but CN's apparently unified most everything since. I perhaps should mention Cory's not the world's most interesting rail yard--it serves one facility, and that plant does the sorting of the "goods" before the trains are loaded. It's next door to where I worked, and for me it's been an occasional subject since it was built.

Soo Line couldn't be bothered to fully repaint the Milwaukee Road locos they acquired in their 1987 merger. So they just splashed black paint over the MILW identifiers and added their own. The result was ugly back then--nearly three decades ago, now--and it's still ugly. ( Here's a 1987 photo , with the "bandit" paintjob fresh.) As you can see, CP hasn't repainted this one, either. Downtown DeForest, Wisconsin.

Portland's really quite proud of its old bridges.

Wisconsin Central 598 and Duluth, Missabe, & Iron Range 170 at Sault Ste. Marie, June, 1992. 170 is a perfectly typical Missabe SD-9, acquired by the railroad in 1959 and sold off-line in 1998. Fallen flag, falling flag. This photo was taken a few hundred yards from the Soo Locks and was the next I took after the Kinsman series; this is at Wisconsin Central's staging yard for building trains to cross the Saint Mary's River on the long railroad bridge. The DMIR's a physically compact system at the distant end of Lake Superior; this loco was a long way from Minnesota's Arrowhead region. At the time, WC was a new railway, and hadn't completed repainting the equipment it had inherited from the Soo Line--thus the box car in the background. A decade later, the Canadian National Railway has absorbed the Wisconsin Central, and is in the process of absorbing the Missabe. A sad time for Missabe's fans--a group which includes me. Sadder still for Missabe's employees in Duluth and Proctor....

Two bridges named "International"--the high bridge carries the highway across the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie, while the low bridge carries the railroad. (I've mentioned this before .) Taken from the Soo Locks Tour Boat. The weather, as you can see, was terrific.

Missabe Railroad's Duluth Docks. Now Kaye E. Barker. (Thanks, NIN) I love Duluth. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Marquette has two ore docks; the long-abandoned downtown dock and the Upper Harbor (commonly called Presque Isle, or LS&I) dock pictured here. This is a grainy picture, but it shows good detail about the operation of this old gravity dock. As you can see, there are excellent vantages for watching that labor at this dock. The photo dates from around 1990. When the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad built the Presque Isle dock in 1912, this was a state-of-the-art structure. It's now well past its prime, but it's a great place to watch ships. And trains. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

Another picture from Painesdale's Champion Mine on a beautiful autumn day in 1990. Since I was there with a railfan group, the Copper Range boxcars naturally drew some comment, and some speculation about the efforts which might be required to preserve them. There should have been some follow-through, as the cars were eventually sold for scrap. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

About the time I moved here, the Soo Line abandoned its Upper Peninsula heritage, sold the track to Wisconsin Central, and started running trains on CSX's old Pere Marquette mainline between Chicago and Detroit--and on to Canada. Emotionally I didn't like the move, but it did bring Soo Line locomotives into my daily life. The occasional old Alco which showed up in those years was a bonus for my railfan tendencies. Then the Soo Line was fully absorbed by parent line Canadian Pacific, and most of the locomotives were repainted to CP's red. This photo--with Soo Line locomotives!--was captured a couple days ago. The road must be running near capacity, and pulling old locos out of mothballs.... Photo taken from Mulliken's Main Street, looking west, under far from ideal conditions. Looks kinda like a Monet in the larger size, if you can imagine Monet in Michigan and chasing trains. I confess it's a bit of a stretch.

June 1995: I drove downtown to check the mail after work and noticed this interesting train parked behind the Mulliken Elevator. Grabbed the camera, wasted a roll of film, went home. Joan, who'd just joined the household a few days before, was a little curious about why it took half an hour to check the mail.... Regarding that crane: It's CSX (nee L&N) 41422, built by American Crane and Equipment (they apparently now go by ACECO). Seems to me they were using this big crane for bridge repairs, but it's a distant memory at this point. All the buildings (silos) in this photo are now gone. The siding's still there, but overgrown and mostly unused.... Camera: Chinon Genesis III

Rails, of course: The Pere Marquette mainline from Mulliken, Michigan. Long since part of the Chessie system, and now also in regular use by Canadian Pacific

Wisconsin Central 582 returns to the United States on the International Rail Bridge in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, sometime in August of 1990. The high bridge is the other, now more famous, International Bridge between the Twin Saults. I was disappointed with this photo when I got the print back; it's a little blurry, the angle's odd, and the crewman's not really visible. Like it better, now....

Same loco, same train, same bridges: Wisconsin Central 582 at Sault Ste. Marie in August, 1990. Both bridges cross the Saint Marys River to Canada, above the falls and the locks. 582 was built by GM's Electromotive Division as a "Light" SD39--a power source intended for locations with weight limits; apparently the only customer for these units was the Milwaukee Road. When the Soo Line absorbed the Milwaukee, they " blackbearded " this one, then passed it to WC when the Lake States Division was spun off. Apparently this loco and its kindern had the same numbers on all three roads. While the long railroad bridge between the Saults was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1887, when WC was formed it was a century old . An ideal use for this (relatively) lightweight loco. Told you before: I'm a reformed railfan. It's an addiction. Like all addictions, there's always some danger of a relapse.

August 1990: The ship named Presque Isle beside the ore dock called Presque Isle in Marquette, Michigan. Beyond the dock is Marquette's Presque Isle Park, which may explain something. But the ship's probably named after Erie's Presque Isle. I posted another photo of this ship some time ago, with a comment on the mixed paint job the ship would be sporting a couple years hence. This photo shows the original paint scheme. The ship is unloading coal into the conveyor system known as the Presque Isle Coal Dock. A piece of that facility clips the upper right corner of the photo. The conveyor moves the coal to piles around Wisconsin Electric Power's generating plant (still another facility named Presque Isle). Strangely, the (ship) Presque Isle is too wide for the ore dock to reach the hold's center, so she'll head elsewhere for an ore load. Properly speaking, Presque Isle is not a ship at all; she's a barge with a tug boat built into her stern. If you study the details in this photo, you'll see how they fit together.