Great Northern Railway Class C-1 0-8-0 No. 810 at KD Station in Kelly Lake, Minnesota 1953

            Arriving at Kelly Lake by car generally put you in the vicinity of the small KD Station building and the adjacent walkway overpass. Engines and men congregated here to move empties about and line the wye switch for a variety of train and engine movements. Here's a great example of the action you could see here. This is one of the largest switch locomotives on the Great Northern, a Baldwin-built Class C-1 0-8-0.

No. 810 was a regular at Kelly Lake and has been converted to oil after the coal strikes of 1943 were settled. When it wasn't operating here in Minnesota it was being used in Wisconsin at either Allouez or Superior. The open cab door reveals that GN steam power had green paint on the interior. The bridge over the locomotive is the pedestrian walkway at KD Station in Kelly Lake. It stretched over 10 tracks so that men could come and go between KD station and the shops at Kelly Lake without having to cross through busy tracks. 

According to time books used by the switch men of this day the last two C-1s to operate here during the 1953 season were the 849 and the 818 respectively. Engine 849 was last used in switching service on November 25, 1953 on a 4:30AM switch job that was on duty for 9 hours and 5 minutes. Engine 818 was used twice in December, and both on the 4:30AM switch job. The first one happened on December 4th, operating a 8 hour 30 minute shift that ended at 1:00PM. The last one happened December 7th, operating a 9 hour 10 minutes shift that ended at 1:40PM. 

Only a handful of steam engines continued to work here in 1954 and 1955 as the new diesels continued to push steam off the roster and to the brink of their very existence. On mine transfers, a handful of the GN's O-1 Class 2-8-2 Mikes lasted to the end. In 1955 those included the 3119, 3138, 3142, and the very last of them was the 3130 that worked October 20, 1955 as the 10:30PM Yard Switcher for a straight 8 hours, ending her final shift at 6:30AM. 

The last record that I could find in the time books of a C-1 0-8-0 operating here was No. 822 that pulled the 10:30PM Kelly Lake Switch Job on November 19, 1955. That one ended exactly 8 hours later at 6:30AM on November 20, 1955, just a few days prior to Thanksgiving. After men came back from their holiday celebrations, the only motive power to be found at the engine house would be diesel-electric locomotives in the form of ABA sets of EMD F7s that replaced the big N-3 2-8-8-0s, a few extra single-unit F3 and F7s to round out the road fleet, the new SD7s that replaced the C-1 0-8-0s and M-2 2-6-8-0s, and a handful of 600 series GP7s and GP9s that were used in yard and mine run transfer service. When the first batch of SD9s arrived these early GPs were reassigned elsewhere. 

Locomotive-wise, at Kelly Lake things didn't change much at all for quite a few years. The turbocharged GP20s were tested on the ore trains in the early 1960s but found to be "too slippery". What that means is that the engines were a tad too light for their higher horsepower and slipped their wheels too much to be used regularly here. Things settled down again through the BN merger in 1970 but then a variety of motive power changes began to take shape in 1971 as the original units assigned here began to wear out. This included GP35s, a variety of ex-NP covered wagons, GE U-boats, and even some foreign power began to show up here to run off miles in road ore train service. I'll save those shots for 2017.

Special thanks to Don Larson and Lee Thompson for helping me to find and use this image. It's my pleasure to showcase this kind of picture in this digital format for others to enjoy—because frankly—I can't think of a better way to do it.

Long live the Great Northern!

Taken on: November 13, 2016

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