The Range on a Frosty Sunday

Faced with the prospect of a return to work following a 10 day hiatus over the Christmas holiday, a railfanning trip seemed in order. After casting a trained eye on the weather forecast a couple of days ago, Dan Mackey had contacted me with the idea of heading out on Sunday morning to hunt for some loads of steaming pellets under code blue skies. Who could turn down such an offer? Certainly not me. And so it came to pass that I found myself in the passenger seat of a 4 wheel drive Ford headed north on roads that looked to have been treated by a Zamboni as the sun rose this morning. 

Before long a phone call from Scott Carney indicated that our party was about to get bigger. First things first, though, a southbound behind a CN SD40-2 was calling our name and fell under the spell of our lenses at the S-curve near Kelsey. I was disappointed that this wasn't a pellet train, but Dan encouraged me to hold out hope. 

Next stop was supposed to be the gas station at the junction of 7 and 37, but that was interrupted by the sound of a train somewhere close. After fits, starts, and u-turns, we managed to pin down this taconite train bound for Two Harbors. It was cold on the range, and the ice fog combined with steam from the pellets to obscure all but the power as they pounded the diamond at Ramshaw. 

That train was hardly moving when it passed us, due (we surmised) to some unknown speed restriction related to the cold. Surely there was time for a stop at the Lucky Seven in Biwabik, before heading on to catch the train in dandy light. 

Except....there wasn't. As we approached the overpass after a quick pause, the train flew under the road, much to the chagrin of a truckload of fans. Time to regroup and carry on, or as the Brits say, "Keep Calm and Rail Fan". We headed back to Iron Junction. 

Where we found a gaggle of trains. A manifest with an SD70 leader was waiting there, behind another manifest led by the squeaky clean GEVO shown below. 

The train in the photo above had no crew. After a short wait, a northbound led by yet another shiny GEVO passed by. The paint is so fresh it still reflects the other engine.

Next up was the EMD led train that had been waiting at Iron Junction. I got this one passing the crewless train at Keenan Road.

We headed south and stumbled across a T Bird that was just finishing the unloading process at U Tac. Power for this train was a pair of Dash 8's, with the 15 year anniversary graphics on their flanks. Mr. Carney grew quite excited at the sight of these former CNW units. 

After talking him off the ledge, we managed to make it to Alborn and witness a meet between the 2847 (the shiny southbound we had shot earlier with no crew) and limestone loads for the range. Needing to get home, we elected try one more shot south of there, and picked a crossing north of Bear Trap. The blue sky in these last two shots doesn't convey how cold it was by this time. The wind had picked up and a couple minutes outside was literally uncomfortable. But we GTS.

'Twas a great day, with lots of excellent memories. Thanks, men, for the tour. Let's do it again on another clear, cold winter day when the ghost of the DMIR is busy once more. 

An Hour at Iron Junction

While I've never had the opportunity to do a lot of railfanning of the DMIR, my occasional trips to the range area are always interesting. I lived in Virginia when I was just a youth, and can clearly remember high nose SD's and beautiful wide vision cabooses working the industrial area, sometimes delivering coal hoppers to the municipal power plant across the street from the Junior High and Roosevelt High School. Oh to have had a digicam in those days!

Iron Junction is also the site of the first real railfan trip I ever took, which lasted a total of about 2 hours due to other commitments that same day. But I was lucky as the Missabe put on a show, with one of the then fairly fresh tunnel motors teaming with a pair of SD-M's on Minntac loads bound for Two Harbors. I still have that photo somewhere.

So when work takes me to the range area these days, I always try to find a little time to visit the Iron Junction area again. Today was one of those times, as I finished up with my responsibilites in Hibbing about 3:30 and left the building to an actual sunny spring day. I was off.

My wait for a first train was short as I soon heard a horn to the north. A short three car train behind a pair of units came off the Two Harbors main (I can never remember what is what in that area, sorry) and crossed over to the west main at Iron Junction. Hey, a GT unit and a CN unit. No maroon here.


It was only about a 15 minute wait for the next train. This one was a loaded T-Bird, with an IC "death star" up front and the 403 trailing, still in maroon! So far I've seen four engines, in four different paint schemes.


If you take a close look at those two pictures, you can see that a northbound green signal lit up between the appearance of the two trains. I figured I would soon see more action, and sure enough, here came a T-Bird empty behind a pair of repainted tunnel motors. Backlit, but there was some dust being kicked up. I've barely been there a half hour and already have three trains bagged.


For some reason (actually, because I had work waiting in my hotel room), I decided to head out. Just as I crossed the tracks on Highway 7, another headlight showed up. Off I went, to shoot my first J-ball, the EJ&E 674, on the point of some morphodite train. A few gondolas, three covered hoppers, and a long string of old low-side ore cars. There weren't enough for a whole train, though. I wondered if they were being taken to a scrapyard somewhere, given that new cars are showing up.



And with that, I did head for the hotel, albeit with a short detour to Shelton Junction in the hopes a southbound CN Manifest would roll through. No such luck, so back to Chisholm it was. And now that I have done my preparation for tomorrow, I found enough time to sort-of edit a few photos and make this post. It was a great evening, with less than an hour between the first shot and last. Now you know my story of an hour at Iron Junction.

Jim

Range Report-Missing the Maroon

After work Monday evening, I managed to sneak in an hour or so of railfanning in the Virginia area. Whenever the opportunity presents itself, I head out to Iron Junction as that seems to be the most likely place to intercept a train without any inside info to direct you.

I hadn't even finished changing clthes when the strong west wind carried the sound of a locomotive horn across Silver Lake to my hotel. It was off to the races. I found the junction of CR 7 and CR 101 blocked by a southbound manifest. After it cleared, I raced to the Highway 37 overpass to shoot this train as he headed south. While there was a great sucker hole as I heard him approach, the sun snuggled in behind a cloud as soon as the train came into sight.





I haven't shot this location before, but I like it. It's a bit sidelit, but should get better later in the year. The old code line poles add to the shot.

This train was moving fairly slowly, and the sun was darting in and out, so the chase south began. This next shot is from Townline Road, south of Keenan Yard. The sun had peeked out again. Sidelit, but nice anyway. And, the second unit is a Draper! I like them, they remind me of the years I spent in Ranier watching the DWP and CN.


I left him off here, and headed back north. Wanting to catch something in good light, I investigated the line to Fayal, but found nothing. The RTC (Dispatcher in CN lingo, I guess) soon was talking to someone and 909 crept into the conversation. Knowing this was probably the BLE 909, I swung back to Iron Junction just in time to catch a northbound T-bird led by an ex-IC SD40-2. The 909 was trailing, so I don't know why I heard him mentioned on the radio.



By now the clouds were really starting to build in from the west, and I wanted something to eat. There was also work to do, so it was off to the hotel. It ended up being an entertaining little outing, but I think this is the first time I have been to Iron Junction and not seen a maroon unit. That seemed a little sad, and reminded me of the changes on other railroads. Another good reminder to shoot them while we can.

Jim