A quote from Wikipedia
The Lake Superior & Ishpeming’s historic main line operates on a relatively steep grade, called “The Hill”, from Marquette to the iron mines. The steepest gradient is 1.63%. Incidentally, this grade is the ‘cliff’ from which the railroad owner’s holding company, Cliffs Natural Resources, gets its name.
Can anyone confirm this bit of ‘trivia’ about the how Cliffs got it’s name?
I have my doubts about the origin, the previous name for the Company was Cleveland-Cliffs, based coincidentally in Cleveland, OH.
I had the same thoughts as beaulieu above.
Which Wikipedia article/ entry ? Does it cite or reference anything ? Following its logic, the holding company should be called “Hill Natural Resources” instead. Besides, 1.63% isn’t even that steep of a grade. There’s nothing along that line that I would call a “cliff” - lots of hills, rocks, trees, and lakes, but the only “cliffs” are about 30 miles east of Marquette at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (?) Park.
I have a few references from up that way, but there are others here who may be more familiar and informed. My WAG at the moment is that Cliffs was the name of the founder of one of the predecessor mining companies that was merged into Cleveland-Cliffs. But we’ll see.
It is when you’re struggling to get a loaded taconite train over the road.
Because the ore jennies are so short, the result is a concentration of weight in a short distance. Thus, when running a train like that, it takes very little time for the entire train to go from struggling up the hill to rushing downhill.
With a ‘regular’ heavy train (coal, grain, lumber, etc), the cars are much longer, and because of this, the engineer has more time to readjust the train handling for the downhill part of the run. In addition, the engineer can use the length of the train to his advantage by adjusting his speed and handling such that the weight of the train hanging back on a hill can be used to help control the speed (in hogback territory a long train length is a disadvantage). With the ore train being so short, no sooner has the power crested the hill, that the engineer barely has time to switch to dynamics (or set the air) before the rest of the train is already shoving you downhill (hence the feeling of “going over a cliff”).
And if at the bottom of the hill is the loading dock and Lake Superior, I would imagine a high degree of trepidation as the train approached the top of the ‘last’ hill.
Loaded trains are going down the grade towards the docks. It’s mentioned in one of the videos I have on UP ore railroads (Upper Peninsula, not Union Pacific). Trains coming downgrade loaded with pellets come down in a haze of blue brakeshoe smoke. One tape noted that some engineers refuse to take trains down the hill, since if you don’t get the train stopped in the yard the next stop is the lake!!
BTW running ore trains can be very difficult, given the length and weight of the trains. (Remember ore cars are short partly because ore is so heavy, a 24’ loaded ore car weighs as much or more than say a 40’ hopper car of coal.) Frank King noted that the Missabe had some terrible sawtooth grades where when running a 2-8-8-2 and 220 ore cars, the engine might be going uphill while the cars about 1/3rd of the way back were going downhill, while the cars 2/3rds back were going uphill…while the caboose was going downhill. O and the train was going thru curves at the same time!! He recalled one Baldwin rep saying the Missabe had the roughest grade issues he’d ever seen.
BTW apparently the Cliffs name did come from the geographical feature. The co. was started in the area around Negaunee, MI, and no one involved in founding Iron Cliffs Mining (which eventually merged to become Cleveland-Cliffs, and now Cliffs Natural Resources) was named “Cliffs”. In fact the founder / first president was Samuel Tilden, who became Governor of New York and as Democrat candidate for the presidency in 1876 won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College due to some shenanigans regarding Florida’s vote totals (sound familiar?) [(-D]
While we’re talking about the LS&I, what is their story? I really don’t know much more about them than the fact that two LS&I Consolidations now live down in Alamosa and one of them runs over La Veta Pass and the other one will someday…
That makes a lot more sense - that it was named after the “cliffs of iron” at the mines out Negaunee way, not the supposed “cliff” on the grade up from the Marquette harbor into the hills back towards said mines.
Nobody at the Cliffs corporate HQ seem to know of the link between the railroad grade and the Cliffs name. I’m going to ‘google it’ again.
Thanks for all of the input so far.