IC 6252, IC 6251 and IC 6261 lead raw taconite down the Missabe sub through the small community of Iron Jct., MN coming from the mine heading towards the United Taconite processing plant at Forbes... (more)

DMIR 402, DMIR 404, and DMIR 408 (yes three former DMIR tunnel motors together pulling vintage DMIR ore cars in 2020) lead raw taconite down the Missabe sub from the mine heading towards the proce... (more)

The first snow of the season falls across northern Minnesota as a T-Bird train hauls 112 cars of taconite rock south towards the plant.

A TBird mine shuttle train with two veterans providing the power in the form of IC 6255 and DMIR 404 and a string of old DMIR ore cars following along passes through Wolf on the return trip to the... (more)

It seems that lately the CN power desk has been assigning anything and everything for power on the T-Bird job. Today is this pair of GE ET44AC units ( CN 3023, CN 3042) this spring and winter was... (more)

The latest pair to the CN ore pool are these two ES44AC units replacing a pair of Dash 8's. Here they are after a crew change waiting for the mine to green light them allowing them to shove back u... (more)

A CN crude ore train using two BNSF horsepower payback units pulls 118 cars south towards the Fairlane plant and meets it's empty counterpart with two CN Dash 8's heading back to the mine at the h... (more)

BNSF 6320 waits for a green light from the mine control room before shoving under the coarse crusher to load.

A CN crude ore train using two BNSF horsepower payback units pulls 118 cars south towards the Fairlane plant on a nice spring afternoon.

BNSF locomotives working on CN for horsepower payback handle an ore train at United Taconite while the plant's contract switcher moves a car.

CN is temporarily receiving a number of Union Pacific and BNSF locomotives for horsepower payback and two of those BNSF units have found their way to northern Minnesota to be used for the T-Bird s... (more)

CN is temporarily receiving a number of Union Pacific and BNSF AC locomotives for horsepower payback and two of those BNSF units have found their way to northern Minnesota to be used on T-Bird ser... (more)

CN is temporarily receiving a number of Union Pacific and BNSF AC locomotives for horsepower payback and two of those BNSF units have found their way to northern Minnesota to be used on T-Bird ser... (more)

CN is temporarily receiving a number of Union Pacific and BNSF AC locomotives for horsepower payback and two of those units have found their way to northern Minnesota to be used on T-Bird service.... (more)

CN had been using sets of EMD power on the Thunderbird crude ore trains this past winter/early spring while the C40-8s usually marked for this job received PTC equipment. That equipment has been ... (more)