While looking up material on early preserved locomotives, I came across this site:

http://www.pasty.com/copperrange/kmcollection.htm

Home page:

http://www.pasty.com/copperrange/index.html

Again, we must offer thanks to those who have the passion, time, money, and skills to share things like this.

Been a while since I visited this site, and I agree the folks that take the time to do this work deserve praise.

In about 1975 or so just before Christmas I went up to Houghton/Hancock, Mi and explored the Quincy Smelter and the Quincy and Torch Lake shops and other buildings. Much of it was fairly intact even at that late date. The machine shop was intact with part of the roof gone. It was cold and snowing when we were there and it got dark early, but we got to ramble around. The whole shop was overhead belt driven and quite a complete machine shop was intact, with all the tooling and parts sitting where they had been last used. Kind of spooky with it getting dark. Lots of ghosts. The Q&TL locomotive in the shop was in pieces in the middle of a major repair or rebuild. Sure wish I had taken pictures. It now doesn't look much like it did back then. I recall there being giant piles of slag and sand every where. What amazes me is that even a few years ago when so much has been scrapped and cleaned up, under every clump of weeds or overgrown patch of trees was more old iron from the mines, local RR or smelter. It is a paradise of history in the Copper Country.

When MCRM worked out the deal for the Copper Range #29 I had the privalidge to help get it ready to ship. Some older local historians came and visited us. They brought photo albums and share them with us. Stories from the last days of the Copper Range RR and the horrible scrapping of so much history. One thing that got me the first time up there and every time since is the hard life people have up there. Not a lot of work, down right hostile winters and short summers. A very inchanted land, but you had better be made of some tough material to exist up there year round.

Also some folks from MCRM put together a wonderful "Gazette" dedicated to the Copper Range RR. Vol. 37 no 4, December 2004. Pretty sure it could be bought for a small fee from the museum? I never get tired of reading it over again and keep it by my computer. I must be the only one who dreams of restoring the CR #29 to operating status. No allusions, she needs total rebuild and a better or more original stack than she wears now. Thanks for sharing those links. Cheers, John.

That area of Upper Michigan called the copper country, situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula, is impossibly rich in railroad and copper mining history. And this was some serious underground mining going down thousands of feet in hard rock. A lot of people do not realize how rugged, wild, and remote it is up there. Winters are known for snow. The average is 360” per winter. North of Houghton and Hancock, the winter average is around 35 feet of snow per season. But summers are glorious with deep blue skies and cool, crisp air.

The Quincy & Torch Lake RR is rather famous because it, along with the entire Quincy Mine plant, was left intact after being shut down in 1945. But the Quincy history is just the tip of the iceberg. The deep forests hide hundreds of mine sites and their ruins, some of which were abandoned before the Civil War. The town of Cliff was associated with the historic Cliff Mine. Cliff was a ghost town before 1900. Most of the copper country area has some type of an open, public use policy allowing people to wander around and explore freely.

The whole region up there has a left over feeling of profound wealth and industry that came to an end with nowhere to go next. People go up there and discover that place, and they are never quite the same.

To get a feel for the "Copper Country," take a look at this site: http://www.coppercountryexplorer.com/20 ... -walls-p1/

Copper Range locomotive #29 and passenger cars #25 and #60 are preserved and restored at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum (North Freedom, WI).

Bill Buhrmaster

Looking at the photos, yes, John, I understand how you would want to get 29 running again--and she would look so sweet with the cars she pulled in service. She's a good looker. . .

Somewhere, I can't recall where, I've seen a shot of 29 on a passenger train with that type of equipment, and if I'm remembering the photo correctly, it was at an interchange point with a Diesel streamliner also in the photo. The era contrast was almost comparable to a shot I've also seen at Reno with a V&T train meeting an early City series streamliner in the late 1930s.

About the most comparable thing I could think of today would be the Strasburg and Amtrak at Lehman Place.

A question: so much of the defunct copper business apparently was left in place for a very long time, but it largely got disposed of relatively recently. What changed things to make people go after stuff that had been around for years, undisturbed?

You'll find a bit of this going on in Arizona copper country as well. I would suggest it's a combination of recent rises in scrap prices making salvage a more attractive proposition, combined with copper prices going high enough for remaining ore and waste deposits/claims to be worth reconsidering again, although it's unlikely the environmentally-messy practices of smelting as practiced a century ago will ever come back.

Hi Guys; This may be a bit off topic, but what happened to the former CNW 4-6-0 that was a stable mate to Copper Range 29 on the Keweenaw Central? Thanks - David Notarius, London UK, ex New Hope PA

The perception that so much was left un-scrapped for so long up there is somewhat of an illusion because the Quincy Mining Company left everything intact upon shutting down in 1945, and they were one of the biggest players of all time in the copper country. So what they left intact amounted to a massive amount of infrastructure. Quincy shut down and left everything with the thought of possibly resuming operation at a later date. But that day never came.

The Calumet & Hecla continued in operation up until about 1968. They were another big player, so they also left a lot of infrastructure upon closing. It took them a few years to move into the scrapping phase in the early 1970s. About that same time, the Quincy decided to scrap their surface plant. And also at that time, the Copper Range RR quit and immediately scrapped everything. So there was a lot of scrapping going on in the first half of the 1970s.

But there were several hundred other mines; many with multiple shafts, each shaft with a shaft house and hoist house. Each mine had one or more boiler houses, pumping houses, air compressors. Most of these were associated with a stamp mill that was often situated away from the mine in order to be near the necessary water needed for milling. Most of this earlier infrastructure was scrapped long before the final days of the Quincy and the C&H. But a surprising amount of these earlier mine sites exist today, hidden in the forest, undisturbed since their salvage operations concluded. What remains are the rock and concrete foundations (oftentimes quite large and complex), ponds, dams, water channels, smokestacks, retaining walls, plus quite a bit of left over iron artifacts. And of course, all of the underground workings remain like lost cities deep in the rock and earth. Some of this dates back to the 1850s.

The #29 was built as a work horse and am sure she did worked like one too. Like all locomotives, I think she was rode hard and put away wet. Her tires look pretty good and the crown brasses have what appear to be a lot of "meat", so maybe her running gear was rebuilt towards the end? I know the engine was "working" slightly on the engineers side, you could see some "movement" had been happening near the saddle/frame connection. What scared me was the corners on the inside of the firebox, very sharp corners. Would imagine she had repairs made in house and "it was good enough" in the day. Never got to ask Clint what mechanical history he had on the locomotive. He had worked for the Copper Range and also owned/ran the loco.

The local "sheeny" just down the road from the smelter complex has a museum of his own. Not sure with the high prices of scrap if he sold off his huge piles of scrap or not. But a few years ago the scrap yard was an interesting place to visit too. Not a whole lot of obvious RR or mining stuff, but some old machinery and other treasures to be gawked at. Heaven to me.

Met a few years ago, after my last trip to the UP {of MI}a guy who probably scrapped more than anybody in the area. He owned a huge scrap yard near Waupaca, Wi but had crews scrapping in the UP for 10 years, very interesting guy. He openly admits he wished he could of saved more things. He wasn't evil and donated many things to local museums and groups that he could of scrapped for the almighty dollar. Forgot how many people he kept employed up there but it was a good sized crew. He got to know many locals and had some interesting stories to tell. An awe inspiring area for sure. Thanks for starting the thread about my favorite area in this part of the country. Cheers, John.

PS about the #29 being a "nice looking" loco. When I first saw her in about 2000 I thought she was a butt ugly old wreck as far as good looks go. But she grew on me. If you find builders photos of sister CR #30 you can see why I like her. Am positive the current stubby stack is not original, the original stacks I think were taller and gave her an older more quaint look, and the CR snow plow pilot added to her "mystique". Plus I have a thing for Alco's.

David,
C&NW 175 is still up there where CR 29 was before she was moved. A lot of folks would like to see her go to a good home. She's in pretty rough shape, and getting worse all the time.
175 had some prep work done to be moved when the 29 was moved, but nothing ever came of the planned move to, as I recall, South Dakota.