View allAll Photos Tagged 6260
Proctor Hill has been relatively busy lately as one of the conveyor belts failed in Two Harbors again this past week. That means most of CN's pellets have been moving just through Duluth. Many of the ore consists lately out of Proctor have been trios of Dash 8s or mixed EMD/GE sets so I was happy to catch this EMD set on the way home from work Tuesday.
Here IC 6260, 6253, and DMIR 400 work up the hill at Spirit Mt. with 137 empties. Once they reach Proctor, the engines will stay on the train on the north end of the yard and be refueled as this set will head up to the Range a couple of hours later.
A Deathstar SD40-2 drags a load of steaming ore through a light drizzle. Quite possibly one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time.
With about 12 hours of planning, Ryan and I decided a weekend trip to the Iron Range was due. Our first day was killer. Our first train had an IC on lead and we caught the BLE trio not long after. Here, U717 is headed back to Proctor with a steaming load of taconite.
Thanks to a morning "top of the hill" frost report from KMad I went to Proctor to check it out. There were some really nice pockets of frosted trees but by the time the PRS (R921) left for Duluth the sun had melted quite a bit. Still made for a nice scene at milepost 6.6. This was an all-IC set with 6263, 6260 and 6251. Two trainees on the PRS made for a 5-man crew, just like the old days.
At Proctor CN C40-8s 2033 and 2004 were together, possibly the first GE ore set assembled (reports are CN wants to try a pair of the straight air C40s on ore trains out of Proctor versus three EMDs).
IC 6260 and 6254 lead CN's U717 south out of Burnett towards Saginaw, Mn on the Missabe Sub. The two SD40-3s are working hard to keep the 141 Utac loads up to the 30 MPH speed limit for the old Missabe cars.
Reminded me of chasing a Missabe ore train along here as the DM&IR usually used two SD40-3s on their ore runs out of Fairlane. Pole line is gone here, but those scrub trees keep growing, taking away many spots in this area, including Bear Trap Curve.
20118 & 20132 running over 120 minutes late pass Defford with 5X20 Eastleigh - Long Marston.
13/04/2021
The big bang started the re-enactment that was going to happen. Fort Wellington, Prescott, Ontario, Canada
Three former BN SD40-2s lead a loaded UTAC pellet train south near Munger on a code blue morning. Shoot the older EMDs in ore service while you can as C40-8s are knocking on the door.