Stephen -

Thanks for this additional photo. I finally was able to find a couple of photos on the internet of similar Bessemer & Lake Erie cabooses with this unusual offset bay window configuration like this one. One was numbered 1955 and the other was 1967. I assume that there were others in the series. Anyway, looks like this was definitely built as a B&LE caboose.

Les

Oops! Another screwup by yours truly. AA cabooses 2830-2839 WERE built by the Decatur Shops of the Wabash Railroad for the Ann Arbor, but numbers 2840-2846 of the same design, were actually built by International Car Company. Sorry for the mistake.

Les

Just ran across this. Seems like it's in great shape and would make a great local museum. Don't be deterred by the site url, it is reputable.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewIt ... =307286122

It very much would be, save for the location: Niagara is/was a "company town" built around a now-closed paper mill on the Wisconsin/ U.P. Michigan border, served by its own spur and yard off the C&NW main from Iron Mountain to Escanaba, Michigan. Iron Mountain, literally "around the corner," has a much nicer, more "traditional" C&NW combination depot along what is now the Escanaba & Lake Superior. As I recall, all the rail lines in that area are on "life support" at best, following, just as examples, the closure of the Niagara paper mill in 2008, the closure of the Ford plant in nearby Kingsford (also the founding site for Kingsford Charcoal, made from wood scraps left over from wood-bodied Fords in the 1930s!), etc. The Quinnisec paper mill east of Iron Mountain is supposedly the only traffic source left on the CN (ex-WC, C&NW) west of Escanaba.

Not that they don't like history up there: http://hunts-upguide.com/iron_mountain. ... Gm5Lq40hPw

The track into Niagara itself came down from a yard on the Michigan side of the river on a 3.5% grade to the switching spurs right behind the station in this ad. The station was little more than a freight agency office and maybe an l.c.l. loadout/warehouse.

I think that there was an 0-8-0 on display in Iron Mountain at one time. We are having some remodelling done here at home and my wife has temporarily (at least I hope it's temporary) moved all of my railroad books so I can't find my J. David Conrad book right now to verify the engines location.

Les

No such loco listed anywhere in Michigan or Wisconsin in Conrad, Kean's 1974 guide, or the 1967 Koenigsberg directory. I should point out that U.P. Michigan had quite a few steamers liberally scattered across its northern shores, holdovers from the Lake Superior & Ishpeming/Marquette & Huron Mountain, Quincy & Torch Lake, a 2-6-2 in Ontonagon, and elsewhere. There also is an underground iron ore mine tour not too far east of Iron Mountain itself, using rail cars on mine tracks, but no 0-8-0 that I am aware of. Also, 0-8-0 tends to trip the "Northwestern Steel & Wire former GTW 0-8-0" detector; are you sure you're not thinking of a stray NWS&W/GTW 0-8-0 elsewhere in Michigan?

ADM4 -

I got to checking on the internet, and the 0-8-0 I was thinking about is located in Mountain Iron, MINNESOTA! I got the location name turned around! It is from the Oliver Iron Mining Company and was originally DM&N #64.

When I was checking the Steam Locomotive listings, I noticed that the 2-6-2 in Ontonagon that you just mentioned seemed to be missing. I wonder what happened to it? Moved or.......? Or maybe just an omission from their list.

Les

Thanks. The engine looks nicely painted. The other site I looked up, didn't have the engine. Glad it is still there.

Les

I saw that 2-6-2 in 1981 and thought it was a good engine for restoration, as far as being complete and maintained well over the years. It was bleeding white snow in the summer, so perhaps the lagging was a bit moist and the boiler corroded. I also recall a wye and one or two stall wood enginehouse in "downtown" on-TOE-noggin, where you could also buy #1 fuel oil at the gas station and lots of options for oil lamps and cast iron cookware in the hardware store. Pure heaven.

I was driving around outside Newtown (PA, also right next to where I live) last week for some errand and noticed out of the corner of my eye what appeared to be an ex-PRR, perhaps N-8, caboose squirreled away in someone's backyard. No lettering, but it had its trucks and was painted nicely in boxcar red, or at least that's what I could tell in the quarter-second I could see it. Hard to believe it took more than a decade of living here to notice that.

I also found a matched pair of two solid blue smoothside diners with their ends attached to the face of some building out in New nowheresville somewhere in the middle of the state a couple years ago... I wonder what road they came from. I know I have a picture somewhere.

Could that be the wood Jersey Central caboose in the vineyard along the East side of Durham Rd., Pa. Rte. 413, South of Buckingham Valley, Pa.? That would be North of Newtown, Bucks County, Pa. It had been owned by Trolley Valhalla.

http://www.landsofamerica.com/missouri/ ... id/1185674

This is outside Princeton, MO on a road called "Illinois Loop". Real estate agent says its a Union Pacific passenger car. He hopes to get a better picture to me, which I will post.

Interior photos show lots of room, bigger than a caboose. Aerial views are not good. Anyone have an idea which car this is?