Repairs on Engine 46

Historic 1946 GE Engine to Receive Major Upgrade

The Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad (LS&M RR) has temporarily suspended operations for 3 years due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and an additional shut-down for an environmental clean-up along the St Louis River Train excursion route.  However, the all-volunteer railroad remains active through this hiatus.   During the downtime of these 3 years, the volunteers have been working at restoration of operating equipment as well as performing maintenance on the tracks and right-of-way.    Monday, May 16, 2022, the wheels and running gear (trucks) of the GE 44 Ton Engine #46 were “lifted” by crane onto a flat-bed semi-truck for shipping to Pennsylvania to be refurbished. The locomotive restorative work is essential to our excursions to return to full operations in 2023.  Once all the pieces come back together, we will have a set of virtually new trucks to carry the 46 for many years.  At this time the work is expected to take 8 months.

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The Engine was built in 1946 and spent it’s beginning decades as the primary switching locomotive for the Flambeau Paper Plant in Park Falls, Wisconsin. LS&M RR acquired the engine in 1985 and has spent more than 40 years operating Minnesota’s first tourist railroad, beginning along the right-of-way of the original Lake Superior & Mississippi Railroad that worked it’s way into Duluth in August of 1870. 

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After nearly 70 years of service, this venerable locomotive is in need of care to insure it’s operability for the LS&M RR.