Joel Dinda's photos with the keyword: soo line

Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.

The long-abandoned Soo Line dock, built for the (original) Wisconsin Central, at Ashland, Wisconsin. Ashland was the nearest port to the Gogebic (or Penokee; what you call it depends more on where you live than any objective reality) Range in Wisconsin and Michigan so the Gogebic iron mines generally shipped through this town. The last mine closed in 1965, and the last shipment occurred at that time; since then, this dock's been just sitting there. The wooden trestle approach still stands but is obviously unsafe. I was expecting they'd have torn it down by now. For the first half of the twentieth century, this town generally had three ore docks; this is the only survivor because the others were built of wood.

Wisconsin Central 598 and Duluth, Missabe, & Iron Range 170 at Sault Ste. Marie, June, 1992. 170 is a perfectly typical Missabe SD-9, acquired by the railroad in 1959 and sold off-line in 1998. Fallen flag, falling flag. This photo was taken a few hundred yards from the Soo Locks and was the next I took after the Kinsman series; this is at Wisconsin Central's staging yard for building trains to cross the Saint Mary's River on the long railroad bridge. The DMIR's a physically compact system at the distant end of Lake Superior; this loco was a long way from Minnesota's Arrowhead region. At the time, WC was a new railway, and hadn't completed repainting the equipment it had inherited from the Soo Line--thus the box car in the background. A decade later, the Canadian National Railway has absorbed the Wisconsin Central, and is in the process of absorbing the Missabe. A sad time for Missabe's fans--a group which includes me. Sadder still for Missabe's employees in Duluth and Proctor....

About the time I moved here, the Soo Line abandoned its Upper Peninsula heritage, sold the track to Wisconsin Central, and started running trains on CSX's old Pere Marquette mainline between Chicago and Detroit--and on to Canada. Emotionally I didn't like the move, but it did bring Soo Line locomotives into my daily life. The occasional old Alco which showed up in those years was a bonus for my railfan tendencies. Then the Soo Line was fully absorbed by parent line Canadian Pacific, and most of the locomotives were repainted to CP's red. This photo--with Soo Line locomotives!--was captured a couple days ago. The road must be running near capacity, and pulling old locos out of mothballs.... Photo taken from Mulliken's Main Street, looking west, under far from ideal conditions. Looks kinda like a Monet in the larger size, if you can imagine Monet in Michigan and chasing trains. I confess it's a bit of a stretch.

Soo Line couldn't be bothered to fully repaint the Milwaukee Road locos they acquired in their 1987 merger. So they just splashed black paint over the MILW identifiers and added their own. The result was ugly back then--nearly three decades ago, now--and it's still ugly. ( Here's a 1987 photo , with the "bandit" paintjob fresh.) As you can see, CP hasn't repainted this one, either. Downtown DeForest, Wisconsin.