http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=345207

The caption says these "captive service" ore cars date back to the steam era, with 200 or so left. Would it be smart for a museum to grab a cut of several of these cars for preservation? One isn't really enough, except for a pedestal display in a lineside town. The visual impact of seeing a long string of 100+ of these short and very heavy cars in a train in Michigan's Upper Peninsula will be with me forever. (Okay, it wasn't these specific cars, but you get the idea.)

Couldn't agree with you more about these old ore cars and that they should be saved. Wish we all had the money and space for them.

Bought an old book or the iron ore carriers of the great lakes with most emphisis on the Northern Wi, MN and upper MI {UP}. The book is great as it not only covers the Missabe, but most of the common carriers big and small. Interesting how many orders of ore cars there were. The heavy service they saw took it's toll on them. Mid Continent has an older Soo ore car but only one. CN&W, LS&I, GN, NP, Soo, DSS&A all had a presence and fleets of ore cars. I think the Milw Road as well. The sight of ore trains is alike to seeing a steam locomotive to me. Just awe inspiring. The sheer mass of ore loads and the whole mining history is inspiring. With the demise of the steel industry in the US midwest the ore trains are not nearly the common sight anymore, obviously. Now your lucky to see rock {ballest} trains rolling by. Thanks for sharing the picture, reminds me once again of the need to get up north for a walk around.

Cheers, John.

Given the fleet of exPL&E hoppers scrapped this year, one could say that we "should" have a complete vintage coal train and a complete vintage ore train. Of course, I know of no one with the space store such a beast, no less the money or the time. It would be cool, but...

I agree about the special appeal of ore cars. Most members of the entire genre of ore cars are especially handsome, from the latest steel cars all the way back to the wood/composite car era.

The Greenville, PA Railroad Park has a B&LE ore jenny, coupled to an 0-10-2 built to move them. Sure would be nice to have a train of them, but at least its possible to compare the size of the car with the humongous tender coupled to it.

The UK's Great Central Railway managed to latch onto a set of 18 or so "Windcutter" 16-tonne coal wagons many years ago:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHSmZPld10w&NR=1

As I recall, they found these cars at a colliery, and rounded up a "syndicate" of people to buy the wagons at something like £250 or £500 each back around 1995 or so. Unfortunately, neglect set in, and the last I actually heard of this trainset was that they were threatened with break-up/scrapping due to aging and lack of interest.....

Consider what the East Broad Top would look like bereft of all those hopper cars, or the Cumbres & Toltec without its wooden stock cars.

The obvious candidate for a cut of ten to twenty ore cars would be the Lake Superior Museum of Transportation. Can these cars be delivered there by the DM&IR/CN without interchange, and can the LSMOT find a siding to put them in?

The Lake Superior Railroad Museum (new name several years ago) currently has one ore car, a 50 ton steel example dating to 1907 from the Duluth Missabe and Northern. It lives inside, coupled to the tender of the Yellowstone for the same visual contrast mentioned above.

Yes, they could take cars from CN at Two Harbors, where the line the North Shore Scenic operates on touches the former DM&IR. No, they do not have any free track on the museum campus, and so would have to lease storage track somewhere else.

Having a whole string of cars for photo charters sounds like a good idea, but to my mind the funds would be better spent buying passenger equipment more in keeping with both the area and era they are trying to portray; double deck gallery cars just don't do it (gack!)