Soo Line Iron Ore Cars Set Out at McGregor, Minnesota July 1968
Every once in a while I bump into someone who is over the top, nice. Skip Nelson was one of those kind of people and before he passed he gave me this shot with his blessings to use it in my projects. Skip shot this one at McGregor, MN. way back in 1968.
So what's so special about this photo?
Special might not be the right identifier. Cuz what we see here is something that happened at McGregor ALL THE TIME. The special thing is that Skip bothered to photograph it. I'm not convinced that anyone else ever did. So technically, if there is anything special about this shot, then I believe it's SKIP.
These are old friction bearing cars. Hot boxes happened all the time during this period of railroading. When an axle end or bearing became overheated beyond the ability of the rear-end brakeman to fix it (under direction of the conductor of course) then that car got set out at the next convenient location. McGregor was the perfect spot to get rid of hot box cars between the Cuyuna Range and the NP ore dock at Superior.
This shot shows two such ore cars set out on two separate occasions so that someone else could deal with it. The agent at McGregor would notify the car department on the Soo Line and soon enough they would be out to repair these cars, before the next joint-NP-SOO ore train would stop to pick them up so that these ore loads could get loaded into the dock for trans-shipment to the lower lakes and a waiting steel mill.
If you haven't yet picked up my CD on the NP Lake Superior Division I still have a few of these left and have them in my eBay Store. It's about 150 images altogether and everything in this CD is a print file at 300dpi. There's a large section covering the joint NP-Soo ore operation on the Cuyuna Iron Range during the 1960s. There are wonderful images of the mining and tipples, trains, depots and men that made this place happen back in that time. Here's a link in case you want to help support this effort, every donation in this regard is sincerely appreciated: stores.ebay.com/coolstuff201
Soo Line Iron Ore Cars Set Out at McGregor, Minnesota July 1968
Every once in a while I bump into someone who is over the top, nice. Skip Nelson was one of those kind of people and before he passed he gave me this shot with his blessings to use it in my projects. Skip shot this one at McGregor, MN. way back in 1968.
So what's so special about this photo?
Special might not be the right identifier. Cuz what we see here is something that happened at McGregor ALL THE TIME. The special thing is that Skip bothered to photograph it. I'm not convinced that anyone else ever did. So technically, if there is anything special about this shot, then I believe it's SKIP.
These are old friction bearing cars. Hot boxes happened all the time during this period of railroading. When an axle end or bearing became overheated beyond the ability of the rear-end brakeman to fix it (under direction of the conductor of course) then that car got set out at the next convenient location. McGregor was the perfect spot to get rid of hot box cars between the Cuyuna Range and the NP ore dock at Superior.
This shot shows two such ore cars set out on two separate occasions so that someone else could deal with it. The agent at McGregor would notify the car department on the Soo Line and soon enough they would be out to repair these cars, before the next joint-NP-SOO ore train would stop to pick them up so that these ore loads could get loaded into the dock for trans-shipment to the lower lakes and a waiting steel mill.
If you haven't yet picked up my CD on the NP Lake Superior Division I still have a few of these left and have them in my eBay Store. It's about 150 images altogether and everything in this CD is a print file at 300dpi. There's a large section covering the joint NP-Soo ore operation on the Cuyuna Iron Range during the 1960s. There are wonderful images of the mining and tipples, trains, depots and men that made this place happen back in that time. Here's a link in case you want to help support this effort, every donation in this regard is sincerely appreciated: stores.ebay.com/coolstuff201