Northern Pacific Railway Ore Cars Heading Back to the Iron Range at Shoreham in 1970
This shot or a similar one has been published a few times but the captions always seemed to miss the mark for me. So let's revisit it. The obvious part of this view is that it's early in 1970 and Northern Pacific Railway SW1200 167 (soon to be renumbered Burlington Northern 226) leads a string of MTY ore cars at Shoreham.
Most of us are familiar with long strings or ore cars heading from one of Minnesota's great iron ranges to the docks along Lake Superior. Some of us know about the winter-time all-rail movements to Gary and Granite City; even Pueblo, CO. And we might even know how these little ore cars were used in coal service during steam days, and in ballast and gravel service throughout their service lives too.
But these are "odd-lot ore service cars" heading back to the Range after having delivered their ore loads to a relatively small operation; not some gigantic steel mill. The fact of the matter is that not all ore trains were long and heavy. Many were small blocks of cars destined for tiny-to-small-sized furnaces located throughout the USA.
Even smaller groups of cars (sometimes just one or two at a time) were destined for paint plants, such as Sherwin-Willams. North American barns were painted "barn red" for good reason. Red was the least expensive paint that farmers could buy because it was the least expensive to manufacture. Red paint pigment came from an inexpensive and readily available supply source: Minnesota iron ore. This view shows us MTY ore cars heading back after one of these trips where the reddish ore was used for one of its smaller but nevertheless important purposes at North American industry.
Today, concentrated natural ore still flows to these small mills and paint plants, but usually the ore is loaded into open top gondolas instead of ore cars, as the ore cars are all but gone now. I have samples of this clay-like-stuff that I scooped from gondolas coming out of the State of Michigan. The "messy redness" of this material is almost beyond description. Imagine 75 tons of melted iron red colored Crayola crayons mixed with another 25 tons of sand and dirt, then plopped into a gondola car. It might be the messiest stuff on earth. There's almost no way to wash it off your skin if you're not wearing gloves. And if it gets on your gloves, you immediately throw them in the trash, then go get a fresh pair of gloves from the closest PPE machine. It is horrible stuff.
As one Minnesota mining professional told me, "Iron ore mining is the art of knowing how to turn mud, into money". Indeed.
P.S. Note the fresh Cascade Green BN covered hopper on the left side of this image. The first few years of Burlington Northern were a delight to photograph. This new image on the railroad landscape stood out like a sore thumb, but wasn't too bright, and in my mind gave us photographers both something new to get excited about all the while making us aware of the fact that the old roads were slipping away now. Pictures of these early BN Green cars are fairly rare as most of us spent film money on the old stuff; not the green stuff. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the fresh BN cars, but frankly, I couldn't afford to do it at that time. There was only so much time, film, and money—available for this hobby.
Northern Pacific Railway Ore Cars Heading Back to the Iron Range at Shoreham in 1970
This shot or a similar one has been published a few times but the captions always seemed to miss the mark for me. So let's revisit it. The obvious part of this view is that it's early in 1970 and Northern Pacific Railway SW1200 167 (soon to be renumbered Burlington Northern 226) leads a string of MTY ore cars at Shoreham.
Most of us are familiar with long strings or ore cars heading from one of Minnesota's great iron ranges to the docks along Lake Superior. Some of us know about the winter-time all-rail movements to Gary and Granite City; even Pueblo, CO. And we might even know how these little ore cars were used in coal service during steam days, and in ballast and gravel service throughout their service lives too.
But these are "odd-lot ore service cars" heading back to the Range after having delivered their ore loads to a relatively small operation; not some gigantic steel mill. The fact of the matter is that not all ore trains were long and heavy. Many were small blocks of cars destined for tiny-to-small-sized furnaces located throughout the USA.
Even smaller groups of cars (sometimes just one or two at a time) were destined for paint plants, such as Sherwin-Willams. North American barns were painted "barn red" for good reason. Red was the least expensive paint that farmers could buy because it was the least expensive to manufacture. Red paint pigment came from an inexpensive and readily available supply source: Minnesota iron ore. This view shows us MTY ore cars heading back after one of these trips where the reddish ore was used for one of its smaller but nevertheless important purposes at North American industry.
Today, concentrated natural ore still flows to these small mills and paint plants, but usually the ore is loaded into open top gondolas instead of ore cars, as the ore cars are all but gone now. I have samples of this clay-like-stuff that I scooped from gondolas coming out of the State of Michigan. The "messy redness" of this material is almost beyond description. Imagine 75 tons of melted iron red colored Crayola crayons mixed with another 25 tons of sand and dirt, then plopped into a gondola car. It might be the messiest stuff on earth. There's almost no way to wash it off your skin if you're not wearing gloves. And if it gets on your gloves, you immediately throw them in the trash, then go get a fresh pair of gloves from the closest PPE machine. It is horrible stuff.
As one Minnesota mining professional told me, "Iron ore mining is the art of knowing how to turn mud, into money". Indeed.
P.S. Note the fresh Cascade Green BN covered hopper on the left side of this image. The first few years of Burlington Northern were a delight to photograph. This new image on the railroad landscape stood out like a sore thumb, but wasn't too bright, and in my mind gave us photographers both something new to get excited about all the while making us aware of the fact that the old roads were slipping away now. Pictures of these early BN Green cars are fairly rare as most of us spent film money on the old stuff; not the green stuff. I wish I would have taken more pictures of the fresh BN cars, but frankly, I couldn't afford to do it at that time. There was only so much time, film, and money—available for this hobby.