Taconite Harbor

By the mid-1950s, ore supplier Pickands-Mather had extensive experience with iron ore shipping. Since they were building a new facility at the top of the lakes, they applied all that experience and built the perfect ore dock. This is it. Right at the moment it's not in use, but that is apparently just a temporary situation--perfect or no, the dock's worthless without something to ship.

The trains came down from the Erie Mining Taconite plant and followed an oval trestle over the dock, rather than waiting while cars were shuffled on and off the deck. The operation was sufficiently automated that the train would never completely stop moving, and the enormous switching effort required atop a more conventional dock was no longer essential.

More recent docks have addressed the same problem with conveyors, and the Missabe Road has converted two of its conventional docks into conveyor shiploaders. BNSF's Dock Five, mentioned in my previous writeup, has always struck me as a compromise solution.