After wrapping up my chase of the Union Pacific at Itasca then catching CN L564 I headed off in search of BNSF action for the afternoon and boy did they deliver flushing 4 westbound trains out of Superior on the Lakes Sub in the span of an hour. Throw in a work train and an opposing westbound coal train and I just couldn't get them all!
The BNSF is the other behemoth in the Twin Ports owing to it's Great Northern and Northern Pacific legacy. In addition to countless unit coal and grain trains and a healthy manifest business the BNSF also serves the Iron Ore trade through its ex GN ore dock at Allouez. They generally run 2 to 3 trains in a 24 hr period serving Cleveland-Cliffs Hibbing Taconite plant (Hibtac) and US Steel's Keewatin Taconite plant (Keetac) each of which ship out around 6 million tons of iron ore pellets a year.
Not as busy and nowhere near as popular as CN's ex Missabe ore operations, most visiting fans eschew BNSF's ore trains. Though they use run of the mill power they are still a unique operation by Class 1 standards with their captive fleet of ore gons many of which are still adorned with large Burlington Northern logos.
After the work train cleared up in the remains of the old Carlton Yard on the Brainerd Sub (ex NP) side the railroad let loose and they fleeted three westbounds in perfect light in the span of 35 min...in fact there was a fourth that came through here but I missed it since I moved on to Cloquet and that fourth train was an empty coal that swung west here and didn't follow the other three north. Here again is the UALLBRM2 25T with 180 empty ore hoppers for Hibtac crusing through the interlocking at West Chub Lake, the opposite end of the 9700 ft controlled siding occupied by that empty coal train.
The train is at MP 35 on the Lakes Sub which they will continue on thru Cloquet to Brookston twenty miles away where they will swing north onto the Casco Sub and head up to Kelly Lake Yard in the Iron Range. The empty Keetac train 20 minutes behind them will take the same route, and then the Rapids Local will chase them west with work in Cloquet before continuing out the Lakes Sub to their namesake destination of Grand Rapids.
Historically the trackage they are operating on is former Great Northern dating to 1898 when predecessor Duluth, Superior and Western built from Cloquet to Superior and abandoned their original line from the former to Duluth. However Carlton was known much more as an NP town in days of old, and a large sign a mile or so behind me still proudly proclaims the spot where on February 15, 1870 groundbreaking took place for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Thirteen years later the NP would be completed (sort of by way of the Oregon, Railway and Navigation along the Columbia River from Pasco) as the second transcontinental railroad (though it would be another five years until they possessed their own route to Puget Sound at Tacoma by way of Stampede Pass).
As noteworthy as all that is, Carlton was also on the route of Jay Cooke's Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad which was the first railroad to enter Duluth when it was completed north from St. Paul in 1870. Later reorganized as the St. Paul and Duluth it would ultimately be purchased by the NP in 1900. Additionally in 1879 the St.P&D built a branch from Carlton to Cloquet and then in 1882 the NP would push a line east from Carlton to Superior.
So all told by 1898 the NP had lines in five directions here in Carlton all of which were crossed by the GN! These routes would remain largely intact until the Burlington Northern merger of 1970 and then rationalization would come quickly over the next decade, such that today instead of lines radiating in seven directions trains now only travel in three. The track peeling off in the foreground is the original NP mainline to the west and the only ex NP route still intact as modern day BNSF's Brainerd Sub. The rail served industry in the background uses a short stub of what was once the pioneering LS&M route to Thomson and then down along the St. Louis River into Duluth.
Carlton, Minnesota
Thursday September 12, 2024
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