Escanaba & Lake Superior boxcar shipping soon

Looking good John!

The link to the order form pulls up a PDF for the 2011 club model.

Order form link from the NMRRC website is working fine for me.

Try it again, it also worked for me.

John

What is the history of the E&LS?  Is it a shortline or a subsidiary...I was just running

around in the U.P. last week, looking for RR sites and ghost towns....Fayette, a

preserved iron mining and smelting town is in best condition with some interesting

structures, Victory is a few cabins and one roofless building, and Pequaming only has

its "Ford" lettered water tower with other Ford? buildings in private hands and is now mostly a pleasure boat dock.  I had a book on U.P. ghost towns but most were

indistinguishable, or just looked today like any small town.  I got photos of the Manistique and Ironwood RR stations, and otherwise did the tourist things. There are mines, one looked to be in operation, up on the bluff above Houghton.  Guess

there is a map out there of RR's in the area, say, 1900?

The E&LS is independently owned. Its website provides a lot of information, including a map and its history:http://www.elsrr.com/

I think you mean old Victoria, which is right next to Rockland the town I model.

MichRR714:  Right...Old Victoria...and I must have driven through Rockland on the

way to it...was a very interesting trip, to a part of the country I had not before

visited...wish I'd had more time to use the U.P. ghost town book to track down some

others of the dozens mentioned...hard to believe all that mining activity is dormant.

Order form pulls up the correct car - thanks!

The Quincy mine, the one on the hill above Houghton, is now part of the National Park Service and is open for tours.  If you didn't go up there you missed the remains of a narrow gauge mining railroad, the Quincy & Torch Lake.  There are two steam locos and some derelict ore cars right by the mine, along with a water tower and a roundhouse.

There are a couple of books out on the railroads there with maps.  They can be found at most of the book stores and gift shops in the area.

I'll be back up there in a week, doing a fall color tour.  Did you have a good trip?

To Portland Rose, hope you enjoy your E&LS boxcar!

John

John...I drove into the Quincy mine parking lot, took pictures, didn't SEE any RR

rolling stock, which I had read about, and wasn't interested in a mine tour or

underground trip, and drove on, trying to see as much as possible, finding what looked like? an operating mine north a very short distance toward Copper Harbor and on the other side of the road.  I did not realize that Quincy is now part of the National Park system, which my Golden Passport would have probably gotten me into free.  I hope to wander back into the area another time.  The fall leaves were beautiful, and

turned before local ones, with aspen and birch among the maples and oaks.  The

Copper Harbor road, U.S. 41, deadends, but not, continuing as an unpaved road,

presumably to the end of the peninsula?  With no 4WD, I turned around.

I've driven that dirt road with my truck.  It does get you out towards the end of the peninsula.  Schlatter lake and Manitou Island sit out at the very end of the Keweenaw.

The two 3 ft gauge locos are near the hoist house, right by the cog rail train tracks.  Some ore cars are right under the shaft house, and a few more are on the other side of the cog rail line.  You ride the cog rail train to get to the mine tour.  The roundhouse and water tank are down a path from behind the shaft house.  You can also drive there by taking the last street to the right before the Quincy mine property, as you go up the hill on US-41.  There is a operating 3' gauge tank engine at the Houghton County Historical Museum, along with a Soo Line caboose.

That newer mine that you saw has been shut down since 1969.  It looks in good shape from the road.

John

That newer mine, which I drove off the road and into the parking lot a little west from

U.S. 41, had a lot of cars, trucks, and guys around it, with a pickup coming in to

pass me as I parked back from the shaft house to take a photo from the driveway.   Dunno if that is part of the park, and all traffic part of that, but it looked like a work site in my brief visit.  I drove past it a short distance until the road was closed, and back toward the Ouincy, but on this same side of the road I thought I saw another shaft house in the distance...(facing south from this mine on the west side of 41)

Coincidentally, local paper just ran a travel article today on Marquette and Lake Superior sites.

I don't think that mine is part of the park.  Very interesting, with copper prices way up maybe someone is considering reopening that mine.  I think there are two or three other surviving shafthouses in the area.

John