Sue and I visited the Lake Superior Railroad Museum last year in Duluth, Minnesota. Getting there involved a nice ride along the shores of Lake Superior. Duluth is a city perched on its western banks. Duluth looked to me like a nice place to live. Once in Duluth, we had some difficulty finding the Museum, but we finally spotted a locomotive and some rail lines, and we made our way to it.
Here are some of the photos we grabbed that fine day. These are all iPhone photos. Sometimes I can get some great photos with my phone. It’s not a Nikon DSLR, but it does a good enough job.
A magnificent steam locomotive. We’ll get to the cab a few photos down. It’s impressive.Minnesota sees some serous snow. This is a serious railroad snow plow.Construction materials were different back in the day. In the railroad world, this might be called a Woody. Surf’s up.If my memory is correct, this is a mail car.The operating room of a steam locomotive. We’ve seen these before. I imagine learning how to operate a steam locomotive takes a while. As a mechanical engineer, I love stuff like this.Valves, levers, gauges, and more. I’m guessing these fellows carried spare parts.Heavy duty brake pressure gages. Note the legends on the gage faces.I’m not sure what this gage shows. It’s a serious bit of gagery, though.A water level gage. Note the different points for water level based on locomotive angle. Cool stuff. No software. Everything is logical and intuitive. I like it.Valves and gages galore. The guys who operated these things were called engineers. You’d almost have to have an engineering degree to do so.
The Lake Superior Railroad Museum is in the former Duluth Union Depot, and the collection was impressive. We enjoyed our visit and the ride to and from Duluth. As you know from perusing the ExNotes blog, we never miss an opportunity visit a rail museum.
