Nomad of Mid-America
Signs of Life
Cold, dark, quiet. Dawn breaks on the wilderness of the Upper Peninsula. It's a few days short of Christmas, winter's bitter wrath solidly in effect, in a snow-capped landscape devoid of sound, save for the anomalous (for these times anyway) chanting and chugging, drawling and droning, low-noted gargling of industrial machinery. Peering around a sharp bend wedged tightly between two crudely-carved walls of solid rock, that familiar pattern of three distinct points of light reveals the source of the clatter--32 cylinders of 4-stroke FDLs sheathed in faded cascade exoskeletons reminiscent of a fallen northwestern giant. So emerges Lake Superior & Ishpeming's 7-Weigher, on this daybreak in charge of empty steel hoppers interchanged sometime in the previous night's darkness from the CN, shuttling this "all-rail" movement from Eagle Mills to the Tilden Mine for loading with a fresh batch of taconite pellets. The Weigher's pair of horses are quite venerable: a -7 and a U-boat each in service since the seventies when they rolled out of the factory doors in Erie, more pack mules than derby winners throughout their days spent lugging whatever bulky raw materials their masters could drum up for them to pull. Their habitat now confined to a measly 10 route miles, more or less, engaged in a repetitive, perpetual line of work hauling the product out of the last iron ore mine in Michigan, these pug-nosed brutes are undoubtedly not living out their golden years in glamour. But they are among the last of their respective types still in existence, serving with two brethren on a fleet comprising one of the last thin threads upholding a species dangling dangerously close to extinction.
Signs of Life
Cold, dark, quiet. Dawn breaks on the wilderness of the Upper Peninsula. It's a few days short of Christmas, winter's bitter wrath solidly in effect, in a snow-capped landscape devoid of sound, save for the anomalous (for these times anyway) chanting and chugging, drawling and droning, low-noted gargling of industrial machinery. Peering around a sharp bend wedged tightly between two crudely-carved walls of solid rock, that familiar pattern of three distinct points of light reveals the source of the clatter--32 cylinders of 4-stroke FDLs sheathed in faded cascade exoskeletons reminiscent of a fallen northwestern giant. So emerges Lake Superior & Ishpeming's 7-Weigher, on this daybreak in charge of empty steel hoppers interchanged sometime in the previous night's darkness from the CN, shuttling this "all-rail" movement from Eagle Mills to the Tilden Mine for loading with a fresh batch of taconite pellets. The Weigher's pair of horses are quite venerable: a -7 and a U-boat each in service since the seventies when they rolled out of the factory doors in Erie, more pack mules than derby winners throughout their days spent lugging whatever bulky raw materials their masters could drum up for them to pull. Their habitat now confined to a measly 10 route miles, more or less, engaged in a repetitive, perpetual line of work hauling the product out of the last iron ore mine in Michigan, these pug-nosed brutes are undoubtedly not living out their golden years in glamour. But they are among the last of their respective types still in existence, serving with two brethren on a fleet comprising one of the last thin threads upholding a species dangling dangerously close to extinction.