In Minnesota, F units scrapped, saved NEWSWIRE

HOYT LAKES, Minn. – In Minnesota this month, followers of Electro-Motive F units can rejoice that two of the classic cab units will be preserved, while mourning the loss of three former LTV Steel/Erie Mining Co. F9 B units.

The three B units, Nos. 4223, 4224, and 4225, were scrapped earlier this month at the former Erie Mining plant site in Hoyt Lakes. According to Erie Mining historian and long-time employee Doug Buell, their prime movers, generators, and most of their trucks were shipped out of the plant by flatbed truck, while any remaining scrap from the units is being cut up and will be shipped off for recycling. The units were last used in 2008 by Cliffs Erie Mining, which purchased the assets of LTV Steel Mining in 2002.

Erie Mining Co. purchased 11 F9s – five A units and six B units – to haul taconite pellets from its mine and plant at Hoyt Lakes over a 72-mile private railroad to its ore dock on the North Shore of Lake Superior at Taconite Harbor. Operations began in 1957, and the fleet of F9s remained intact even after LTV Steel acquired Erie Mining in 1986. Four F9s, two A units and two B units, were destroyed in a runaway derailment at Taconite Harbor in January 1997. LTV shuttered the taconite plant in 2001.

There followed two revivals of the railroad. In 2004 Cliffs Erie hired a contractor to claim leftover chips and pellets from the mine due to the high iron prices, and used the Fs to move them to Taconite Harbor. In 2008, No. 4210 and the three B units were used to haul cars of pellet remains and fines from Taconite Harbor to Hoyt Lakes where it was shipped out by rail. The units had been stored at Hoyt Lakes ever since. F9A Nos. 4210 and 4214 remain intact at Hoyt Lakes, while former F9A No. 4211 and F9B 4222 have been preserved by the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth.

The news is happier in southern Minnesota, where two former Minnesota Zephyr F7s will begin their journey from Stillwater to Alamosa, Colo. Nos. 787 and 788 have been sold to Heritage Rail Leasing, a subsidiary of Iowa Pacific Holdings. Crews will begin loading the locomotives onto flatbed trucks Monday. They will be trucked to Progressive Rail’s facility at Randolph and loaded onto flatcars. They will then be moved to Northfield and interchanged to Union Pacific for the trip to Alamosa. Iowa Pacific has no current plans for the locomotives, so they will be stored after their arrival in Colorado.

The two Minnesota Zephyr units are No. 787, built in 1953 as Spokane, Portland & Seattle No. 804, later Burlington Northern Nos. 9756 and 716, and No. 788, ex-Chicago & Northern Western No. 4082A, then No. 410, built in 1949. The units were last used in December 2008 when the dinner train made its last run. Its six-mile route has since been converted to a trail.