(The following story appeared on the Duluth News Tribune website on May 22, 2009.)
DULUTH, Minn. — A train of empty freight cars made its way back to Duluth today after spending the past two-plus months at the end of the North Shore Scenic Railroad line.
“We removed the first of the two trains of coal cars this morning,” Ken Buehler, scenic railroad executive director, said. “They interchanged with BNSF (Burlington Northern Sante Fe). They’re taking them and will put them back into service.”
The cars will be brought back into service and travel to Powder River in western Montana to be filled after being inspected by BNSF Railway. The cars were idle due to a low demand
The train will start trips between Midwest Energy in Superior and the Powder River in western Montana.
On Wednesday at 7 or 7:30 a.m., there will be a crew call and they’ll go out and pick up the second train of cars for planned interchanged at 11 a.m. with BNSF at Rice’s Point.
Today’s interchange took place around 11:30 a.m.
At the last minute, one engine had to be swapped for another one.
“We want to have two [engines],” Buehler said. “We don’t need the power of two, but we need the reliability of two engines.”
They’ll bring back 60 empty Detroit Edison coal cars, which look a lot like Wisconsin Public Service coal cars.
siding at marbles just before two harbors
When a train came barreling through Judy Gibbs’ yard this week, she hardly believed her eyes.
A good foot of snow masked the tracks that run through her property due south of Knife River. The line belongs to the North Shore Scenic Railroad — a seasonal tourist operation that’s usually idle in the winter.
“It was a quiet, calm, beautiful winter day. And then I started to hear a rumbling,” she recalled.
Gibbs looked out at the lake, suspecting the noise might be emanating from the ice. But then the locomotive came into view, and it was pulling not passenger cars but coal hoppers.
“It was an absolute shock to me. A train? I’ve lived here nine years and I’ve never seen a train in the winter,” she said. Gibbs isn’t the only one surprised to see coal cars rumbling down the tracks of the North Shore Scenic Railroad.
Until this week, the line hadn’t seen freight-car traffic since the late 1980s, when it was owned by the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range Railway, according to Ken Buehler, the scenic railroad’s executive director.
He suspects the last freight to travel the tracks was logs or natural iron ore.
That’s still the case, as the coal cars recently rolling across the North Shore’s rails are empty.
Wisconsin Public Service Corp. is paying the North Shore Scenic Railroad to temporarily store about 250 of the coal cars, which are unneeded.
Electric demand is lower than usual this year because many industries have throttled back operations, so coal demand is lower, too.
“With the economic slowdown, a lot of coal trains across the country are parking,” said Karen Kollmann, director of fuels management for WPS.
Kollmann said more coal cars probably will be needed come June as much of the Midwest moves into air-conditioning season.
WPS has idled about half of its fleet of coal trains, parking about 700 cars.
About 40 of those coal cars were hauled Wednesday to the north end of the North Shore Scenic Railroad’s line in Two Harbors. Another 40 cars moved Thursday, and 43 will make the trip from Duluth to Two Harbors on Friday.
Another 126-car coal train is expected to arrive next week. After delivering coal to Midwest Energy Resources in Superior, the empty WPS railcars will be delivered to North Shore Scenic Railroad in Duluth, which will transport them to the end of its line.
Buehler said there’s a possibility of still a third similar-sized train delivering coal cars to the North Shore in the near future.
The idled cars will be allowed to sit parked on the line until the end of May, but Buehler said they will then need to move on to allow train tours of the line to commence.
Buehler said the offseason revenues the North Shore Scenic Railroad receives from helping WPS store the railcars should really help his ledger.
“I guess this is one upside of a down economy,” he said. “It’s probably going to save our butts.”