The rising sun has just crested above the treetops soaking this wintery scene in a yellow glow as Northshore Mining's daily 0600 job with three of their 50+ year old ex-CN grey SD40s powering 80 loads of ore lean into a small curve at "Pond Crossing" road on Valentines Day 2020. Tucked deep in the remote backwoods of Minnesota's Superior National Forest, the NSM operates a single, 47-mile long stretch of railroad running trainloads of crude Mesabi ore between the mines at Babbitt to their processing plant and shipping port in Silver Bay off the banks of Lake Superior. Once arrvied, these rotary dump hoppers will be unloaded and this low grade ore will be processed into taconite pellets before being loaded onto a ship for transportation across the waters of the Great Lakes to a steel mill. Currently, the ship season is closed but trains don't stop running as the product is stockpiled and stored at the docks in Silver Bay until the freighters resume normal shipping operations in late March. The temperature on this morning was rather chilly, -30 with a -44 degree wind chill to be exact, and that cold air carried the roar of these three EMDs for miles and their sounds climbing upgrade blissed the ears for a near 10 minutes before their arrival to our location at this seldom used road crossing. Normally running at 150 cars in length, due to the severe cold, consist sizes were cut nearly in half to 80 cars in favor the train's air brake system.
