Along the Rail Line

Lake O's tiny railroad station was built by an ancestor of the Pere Marquette line in 1888. A century later it was dwarfed by the grain silos along the tracks, and PM's successor Chessie donated (or perhaps sold) the building to the local historical society. So the building was moved away from the tracks to its present location near the fairgrounds. There's a bit more information, including some fine speculation about the architectural details, here . A gorgeous building.

Joel's been playing with Photoshop Elements again; they call this effect Rubber Stamp...

A southbound CN train (probably it's officially westbound) hurrying down Michigan's Grand Trunk mainline north of Potterville, Michigan. As you can see, there are signals on the tracks, for the trains--but the Windsor Highway crossing is a locally-rare unprotected crossing, so I wasn't really prepared when I and the train arrived more or less simultaneously. Lucky I got any pictures at all; rather pleased with this one.

Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

Best LARGE , methinks; shows off my fancy camera, anyway. Canadian National Railway's Cory Yard, just south of Billwood Highway near Dimondale and Potterville, Michigan. This location's on my route to work; it's an easy walk from my office. Cory's not an exciting yard, operationally; all the sorting is done at the GM Delta Assembly Plant's loading facility, which is a couple hundred yards north from where I took this photo. This yard's purpose is to break long trains into shorter segments for GM's purposes, then to reassemble the train after the the cars have been filled with small vans. I presume the yard's named after CN Vice President Mike Cory , who was running their Michigan operations when construction of this facility began.

This is the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Duluth Docks ore loading complex in Duluth, Minnesota, around 1990. Taken from a cruise ship around the Duluth/Superior harbor. Better LARGE . Not bad for a cheap camera.

We spent a couple days in Duluth, last week. This photo taken from the Vista Queen .

Something about that paint scheme.... A GE D9-44CW (Dash-9, which is sort of a generation indicator; 4400 HP, 6-wheel trucks, wide cab). I see that the original paint job on this unit was famously bad . Better, now, but needs a bath. This big feller was parked where I work--State of Michigan Secondary Complex, near Dimondale--on the old Grand Trunk mainline's passing track. Even a decade ago the only "foreign" paint we'd see on GT was CN, which hardly counts, and an occasional IC; nowadays we see virtually everything. Far from ideal shooting conditions, as you can perhaps tell, but I couldn't resist the opportunity. Just a gorgeous loco.

Near Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. From a Missabe Railroad Historical Society convention fan trip, in 2006.

Former B&O bridge across the Muskingum River in Marietta, Ohio; now a footbridge. The leftmost span is a turnstile. The Ohio River (and West Virginia) in the background; the barges are at the Corps of Engineers landing. Shot (of course) from the Valley Gem.

The Knox and Kane Railroad 's Marienville, Pennsylvania, roundhouse, taken on July 22, 1999. Reportedly, and unfortunately, it's much deteriorated these days.

Knox & Kane Railroad 's Marienville (PA) Yard featured this fairly rare Alco RS36 on the day we visited. No. 70 was built for the Nickel Plate road. She was later property of Norfolk and Western, then Gettysburg, and finally KKRR. As you can see, the 70 still sported Gettysburg colors in 1999; later they'd paint the name over but would leave the color scheme intact. K&K was a mixed tourist and freight line, with the main tourist attraction being the very tall Kinzua bridge . When a 2003 tornado effectively destroyed the trestle, it also undermined the railroad's viability. The road limped on until 2006, and an arsonist put an end to any hope of a revival of the line's fortunes early in 2008. Everything was sold off late in that year, and much of the track has been pulled up by the scrappers. #70 has also been scrapped. The right-of-way will become a trail, which isn't a bad fate, but is a sad end to one of the more interesting short line operations. For a railfan, as opposed to a casual tourist, the road's glory was its small but diverse collection of locomotive power. Besides this Alco, the road owned two steamers--an old Baldwin 2-8-0 and a Chinese-built 2-8-2 . And, apparently, this .

Although we didn't ride the K&K railway excursion (a timing issue, mostly), a few days later we boarded a train in Titusville and rode along the Oil Creek valley (PDF). This is a truly historic area--the petroleum industry was born here--and the tour did a decent job of introducing that history. It's rather like a mining area's saga, with boom towns and speculators and colorful characters. Now mostly wilderness, and ruins. George Bissell, after whom the car is named, was an oil industry pioneer. The photo was taken, I believe, at the tour's Petroleum Centre stop.

An interior shot from our 1999 trip on Pennsylvania's Oil Creek and Titusville Railroad .

Taken in August of 1992 on a trip from Duluth to Mountain Iron and back. The excursion was to celebrate the centennial of the founding of Mountain Iron , and many of the passengers had Merritt family connections. We attended as members of the Missabe Railroad Historical Society . Mountain Iron threw a nice party. I'm glad I went.

From the Nixon Road end. With lots of sky, and quite a bit of swamp.

Another photo from my day in Portland. Press "L"