A Day on the Minnesota Iron Range

I took Labor Day weekend to visit a friend of mine in Minnesota and was able to make it up for a day to the Iron Range on CN's Missabe Sub to see some ore trains. We left around 6am from the Twin Cities to get to Forbes where the train originates. The chase is roughly 50 rail miles from Forbes to Proctor Yard where the trip terminates. The weather was decent, with a nice fall feel in the air, and unfortunately some clouds making it hard to get sun in every spot, but I can't complain too much. I did switch between taking video and pictures so this doesn't capture every location that we went to. The train left the Taconite mine at Forbes with 3 SD40-3's and roughly 130 jennies for the days trip south. We paralleled them for a few miles on HWY 7 and ducked into a few spots off the beaten path. We eventually made it to Proctor where we watched the train yard then went over to Duluth to check out the docks where they load the ships with the iron ore. When we got into town, there was an empty train on the dock ready to bring empties to Proctor so we went to a small side street to get them climbing the grade out of town (seen at 5:00). The action slowed down for a couple hours after seeing that but around 6pm, there was an empty ore train ready to go back north with the same power that we chased the loaded one down with. The sun cooperated with us for the trip north, I opted to photographed at Adolph and Munger just outside of the yard instead of video due to the incredible light that golden hour provided us with. As the sun set, we ended at Kelsey where the train rolled off into the distance back toward Forbes.