TwinPortsRail.com

With fresh snow and a few hour window of sunshine in Superior I headed out in search of the Grand Rapids local today, never found it, judging by the power at Belknap it will be late today. So with the scanner on I headed to South Superior, got a coal load at Hwy 105 with a DPU facing the right way.

The Milwaukee Road was only a small player here in the Twin Ports, not sure why I didn't shoot them more. Here is one of their trains just out of Duluth crossing Winter street. Trackage ran right next to the wooden ramp that is still there.

Thinking the "Old Town" might run late morning again this Sunday I went out in search of it, never found it. The odd part is the yard in East End was completely empty of cars, not sure if it is a sign of things to come with the new yard at Calumet or just a fluke, haven't heard the Old Town yet this evening either.
Drove around Superior, noticed some of the new BNSF Tac cars in 60 yard.

I was looking at one of Max's photos of this power set on the Brainerd local on Friday and a comment was posted about the lettering on the 2804 being different on both sides, fortunately I got both sides today and sure enough they are considerably different.

Engineers side.

Fireman's side.

Dan Mackey
Superior, WI

Another sunny snowless day in the Twin Ports, Living near Newton Ave has a few advantages, like today when I happened to step out of the yard and peer down the tracks when I heard the BNSF. They have a pair of GP39E's working the job this week, one in BN paint and one in BNSF paint. Seeing the light was nice I headed down to the yard to catch them putting together today's cut of tank cars for Calumet.

Scott & George Carney and I gave chase to the Grand Rapids local on Saturday. A true sign that we don't do this enough was that both of experienced camera trouble at some point. I had trouble with focus at Cloquet so I have no shot from there. With a pair of 40-2's leading, we decided to give chase and beat them to Brookston. With no snow this winter I thought it would be good to include a boat in the shot.

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.

Back in June 1995 there was a lot of Algoma Central power showing up here in the Twin Ports. Here an SD40-2 waits at Parkland/South Itasca for it's next job.