Along the Rail Line

Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range locomotive 314 at Two Harbors, Minnesota, in August of 1990. Taken on a yard visit with the Missabe Railroad Historical Society. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

One last look at Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range locomotive 314 at Two Harbors, Minnesota, in 1990. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100

One last Two Harbors photograph, for now. I have many more from this visit, and will post them at a later date. This is the usual view of the harbor at Two Harbors, Minnesota. The Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range docks dominate the view. Camera: Minolta Freedom 100. 1990.

Not what you expect to find on a dirt road, out in the middle of nowhere. I was standing in the old Lake Shore & Michigan Southern (New York Central) right of way when I took this photo--since those tracks were removed in 1940, this building's at least 70 years old. Wonder what it was used for originally. Wonder what it's been used for since.... Camera: Minolta SR-T 101. North of Eaton Rapids, Michigan.

For nearly seventy years the New York Central Railroad--well, technically the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern--ran trains down this path. The Central pulled up the rails in 1940, but another sixty-five years later their route still shows through the fields. Taken with my Minolta SR-T 101 from beside the warehouse I've shown the past couple weeks.

The C&O (CSX, now, but this is a location where the C&O context is really important) crosses the New River below Hawks Nest. Ansted, West Virginia; 1997. Camera: Chinon Genesis III. This is an not-particularly-good old scan. I'll post a rescan when I locate the original....

Let's recap earlier discussion: This building's in the middle of a field , north of Eaton Rapids, Michigan. It's on the abandoned right-of-way of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad , which was a component of the New York Central System. The track beside this building was pulled up in 1940. I don't know what the original function of the building was, nor much about subsequent use. Closer examination reveals that this warehouse is actually an array of buildings, and includes a couple of mysterious peripheral structures.

Ironworld Museum, Chisholm, Minnesota, 1990.

A very different view of the loader at Soudan Mine Underground State Park, Tower, Minnesota. The Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range railroad line ran beneath this structure; these tracks moved the ore from the crusher to the loader. Really a marvelous artifact. Photo taken in 1990 with a Minolta Freedom 100.

Just across the blue ridge, where the high meadows lay And the galax spreads through the new mown hay, There’s a rusty iron bridge, cross a shady ravine Where the hard road ends and turns to clay. With a suitcase in his hand there the lonesome boy stands, Gazing at the river sliding by beneath his feet, But the dark water springs from the black rocks and flows Out of sight where the twisted laurel grows. – Tommy Thompson , 1976 ============== The Chessie line crosses the New River just above the Hawks Nest dam (and just below Hawks Nest proper); Ansted, West Virginia, September 25, 1998.

Explored! #477 on Friday, October 19, 2007, but no longer in the top 500. Thanks! The Narrow Gauge Trail at West Virginia's Babock State Park, in the New River gorge. The tracks were pulled up decades ago, and the trestles have collapsed, but the ties remain.... The Babcock Coal and Lumber Company's Manns Creek Railway carried coal down to the Chessie at the bottom of the Gorge, and lumber to the mill at Landisburg. This track was the coal line from Clifftop; the lumber mainly travelled on the higher track. Photo taken in September, 1998, with my Nikon N90s.

Explored! #184 on Friday, January 18, 2008. Thanks! Both the taconite processing plant and the F9 (Covered Wagon) are apparently functional, but unused, near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. This photo posted just to make my brother jealous.... We're back from vacation. More tomorrow.

NP's dock is/was right next to the Great Northern's ore dock complex at Allouez (Superior), Wisconsin. GN's Dock Three, which was wooden, has been removed and the only dock which is currently in use is Dock Five, which is newer and which was built to move ore with conveyors, not trains. The others in the set, including this one, are no longer attached to the tracks. The GN dock is now a BNSF facility, of course. Shot from the parking lot of a gas station. I didn't know you could get this close to the dock, or I'd have photographed it before....

By the mid-1950s, ore supplier Pickands-Mather had extensive experience with iron ore shipping. Since they were building a new facility at the top of the lakes, they applied all that experience and built the perfect ore dock. This is it. Right at the moment it's not in use, but that is apparently just a temporary situation--perfect or no, the dock's worthless without something to ship. The trains came down from the Erie Mining Taconite plant and followed an oval trestle over the dock, rather than waiting while cars were shuffled on and off the deck. The operation was sufficiently automated that the train would never completely stop moving, and the enormous switching effort required atop a more conventional dock was no longer essential. More recent docks have addressed the same problem with conveyors , and the Missabe Road has converted two of its conventional docks into conveyor shiploaders . BNSF's Dock Five, mentioned in my previous writeup , has always struck me as a compromise solution.

The long-abandoned Soo Line dock, built for the (original) Wisconsin Central, at Ashland, Wisconsin. Ashland was the nearest port to the Gogebic (or Penokee; what you call it depends more on where you live than any objective reality) Range in Wisconsin and Michigan so the Gogebic iron mines generally shipped through this town. The last mine closed in 1965, and the last shipment occurred at that time; since then, this dock's been just sitting there. The wooden trestle approach still stands but is obviously unsafe. I was expecting they'd have torn it down by now. For the first half of the twentieth century, this town generally had three ore docks; this is the only survivor because the others were built of wood.

Erie Mining Company, Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. LTV filed for bankruptcy early in 2001, and this mine kind of stopped in place at that time....

This is the crusher building at LTV's large open pit mine near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota--the place goes by a variety of (historical) names, the most recent of which is Cliffs-Erie (Cliffs being the mine's manager; Erie being the mine's name). The Hoyt Lakes plant is the oldest taconite processing plant in existence, dating from the mid-1950s. The processing plant's been optioned to Polymet; the rest of the complex is available.... This photo really doesn't give a proper perspective; that building would be huge in any setting. Taken during a tour with the Missabe Railroad Historical Society.

At the Cliffs-Erie complex, Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota, during last month's convention of the Missabe Railroad Historical Society.