TwinPortsRail.com

Not to neglect other railroads in town, here are a few shots from the neighborhood I grew up in, and am back in these days.
My parents house was in the SE quadrant of Newton Ave where the C&NW crossed the BN. A trained teenage ear got me running out the door many times.
If I heard the BN I could bolt across the neighbors yard for a shot like this.

Or if I was fast enough I could catch the Old Town yard job, via a foot path through the field.

Back in the early 80's I got my first SLR. I hadn't been steered towards slide film so I shot a lot of print film back then. The BN roundhouse was a favorite haunt of mine, I knew one of the electricians and would stop by and visit him on occasion, not that it was hard to get permission to be on the property back in 1981. The F's ended up here near the end of their careers. 1st up is a shot of 4 rows of them by the roundhouse.

With all the rumors about the Barron sub potentially coming back into service, Scott Carney, Kent Rengo and I decided to head South to see what is happening. We started in Rice Lake. Lots of new 2 bay covered hoppers stored there. On the Soo East of Cameron there are quite a few cars stored by the WN. We met up with a SW1500 headed to Cameron to grab some of those cars just South of Cameron.

We decided to go South to check out the rest of the Wisconsin Northern Operation. At Bloomer we met up with the night job sorting cars just South of town before they headed to Norma.

When Cliffs Erie and the LSRM ran weekend trips over the former Erie Mining mainline from Knox to Taconite Harbor in 2002 I
had the opportunity to ride in Milwaukee Road Skytop lounge Cedar Rapids. The best part for me was rolling over the dock as
the sun came out - a great trip.

While we have had a dusting of snow this season that wasn't the case in 2001. Here BNSF employs one of their snow dozers to clear the flanges of hard packed snow near Boylston.

Rebuilt NSM (former Reserve Mining) SD28 1236 is shown on CN train A403 climbing Steelton Hill. I think they now call this an SD28-3 but not 100% sure.

Well maybe not right at this second but it was trailing A403's power out of Stevens Point WI early this morning. The train should be arriving Superior early this afternoon. Nice set of power on 403 too. 15th Anniversary painted Dash 8 (2109?) and another new used GE trailing. With the new ways of operations out of Pokegama and Proctor they should be heading north to Proctor in short order after arrival. To bad the weather is turning cloudy, the 1236 looks good in fresh paint.

Haven't shot anything the past couple of weeks, but still pass through Proctor on many weekdays.

This week I have noticed:

DM&IR 403 has been the north leader on the "straight air" set bringing taconite to Dock 6. It is paired with DM&IR 402 and a CN 6000 series.

Lots of Bessemer orange around Proctor this week with at least three different pumpkins on power sets.

When the black IC trio was broken up, 6252 and 6250 saw shop time. The 6250 actually emerged with a bath and looks a more glossy shade of
black, but now has a fresh yellow frame stripe over the worn white one. Looks like the 6259 that ran around here before the Highland head on.

With both Hibtac and Keetac running at full capacity along with Mexico-bound all-rails from Unitac and Magnetation plus Minntac CN moves that level of traffic makes for a very happy BNSF. Yesterday at Carlton I caught a meet between a loaded Hibtac Dock train and an empty Mexico all-rail for loading at Unitac. Some essence of snow on the ground helps lighten the scene.