That is a lot of Horsepower at Work

The picture on the front of this post card is another set of Fairbanks-Morse

4,800 horsepower “Train Master” locomotives. They are hauling iron ore from the open-pit mines near Ely-Biwabik to the loading docks at Two Harbors, Minnesota. This website https://www.american-rails.com/nylb.html offers us a fascinating history of how the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railroad came to be. Here is a very short excerpt from his article. I recommend that you go there and read it. Because of its unique nature the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range carries one of the most interesting histories of any railroad. The company's existence was tied directly, and almost exclusively, to iron ore. In many ways, it differed entirely from its counterparts. Its heritage, ironically, begins with gold. A gold rush hit Minnesota's Lake Vermilion region in 1865 when prospectors claimed they had stumbled upon the precious metal. This hope turned out to be unfounded, and the flurry of activity had ended by 1868. However, a few individuals stuck around after noticing the red soil appeared to contain rich sources of iron. The most notable was George Stuntz who set into motion efforts that later became the Duluth & Iron Range, DM&IR's earliest component. After studying samples, the ore was proven to be roughly 65% pure iron, an extremely exciting prospect. The Duluth & Iron Mountain Railroad (D&IM) was incorporated on January 29, 1881 by Charlemagne Tower of Philadelphia for the purpose of hauling the iron ore to market. After a route was surveyed for the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad, construction commenced northward from Agate Bay with a short segment initially opened at that location on August 28, 1883. After nearly a year of construction the entire 68-mile line was completed on July 31, 1884, serving two early docks at Two Harbors. A group of industrialists, which included oil mogul John D. Rockefeller, carried a nearly limitless stream of capital. Threatening to build a competing line of their own, Tower capitulated and sold his stakes in April of 1887 for a total of $6.4 million. The D&IR reached the western Mesabi Range in 1892 when it opened an 18-mile extension to McKinley via Wyman. This put it direct competition with a nearby road with which it would later merge, the Duluth, Missabe & Northern. On February 11, 1891 the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Railway was formed and by October of 1892 it was ready for service. The two railroads remained separate corporate entities until a series of transactions in the late 1930s; first, the DM&N and Spirit Lake Transfer Railway (formed in 1907, this DM&N subsidiary eventually constructed 11 miles in the West Duluth area to serve a steel mill owned by the Minnesota Steel Company) were merged on July 1, 1937 to form the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway.

This post card is another of the post cards in my collection from Audio Visual Designs. The photo is by Lewis A. Harlow.