Erie Mining Company 4211 preserved at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in 2014.
(Keon McGarvey, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
CLIFFS ERIE RAILROAD
The Cliffs Erie Railroad (reporting mark LTVX) was a railroad that operated from Hoyt Lakes to Taconite Harbor, Minnesota. The railroad opened in 1956 by Erie Mining Company to transport taconite from Hoyt Lakes to Taconite Harbor. In 1989, LTV Steel purchased Erie Mining and the railroad was renamed LTV Mining Railroad. The railroad closed in early 2001 when the LTV company ended the operations of the harbor. In 2002 Cleveland Cliffs bought the plant, and again renamed the railroad The Cliffs Erie Railroad (combining the names Erie Mining and Cleveland Cliffs). In 2004 Cliffs Erie hired a contractor to claim leftover chips and pellets from the mine due to the high iron prices. They used the only unsold locomotives, EMD F9s (borrowing one from Lake Superior Railroad Museum). The cleanup trains ran until 2008 when the last train ran. In 2014, the F9s were sold off. The railroad is now sitting, unlikely to ever see activity again.
Two former Erie Mining Company ALCO RS-11 locomotives No. 7201 and No. 7202, ex-301 and No. 302 respectively, are located near Newport, NJ among other retired rolling stock on a private railroad siding.
Erie Mining Company 301 and 302 (Renumbered to 7201 and 7202 by Algoma Steel ALGX)
sadly rotting away on a Winchester and Western Deadline in Dividing Creek, NJ in 2022.
(EpicstormchaserSWF, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Features
The railroad was the last to use F9 units in revenue service in the United States, until Indiana Boxcar Corporation purchased two F9s for use on the Vermilion Valley Railroad in western Indiana/eastern Illinois. It also had some of the last few Griswold rotating signals in full operation (now removed). It also featured a 100-foot-long trestle and the Cramer Tunnel.
Cliffs Erie Railroad: The Historic Final Days - Featuring A-B-B-B-A F9 Diesels
In this video, C. Vision Productions returns to the former LTV Mining Railroad to view the final days of train operations on the Cliffs Erie Railroad in 2008. Cliffs Erie’s popular F9 diesels were called upon one last time to move taconite fines from the dock at Taconite Harbor to Hoyt Lakes, for eventual shipment to the Severstal Steel plant near Baltimore, Maryland. Only a handful of these trains were operated, and C. Vision was granted special access to ride in the cab between Taconite Harbor and the Cramer Tunnel. Not only will you get a chance to view the scenic beauty of northeastern Minnesota from the cab, but you’ll also see trackside footage captured between Taconite Harbor and Hoyt Lakes, including scenes of the very last train that ran on October 28, 2008.
The sound of this A-B-B-B-A set of F9s grinding up the grade out of Taconite Harbor won’t soon be forgotten.
