Yesterday’s NewsWire item reports on the proposed pellet plant in northern Indiana, but does not say how the iron ore concentrate will get there from Minnesota. Magnetation’s website shows pictures of the MN rail load-out:
They already ship unit trains to Mexico, so an all rail route to IN is possible. They could also use the Great Lakes from Duluth to the Chicago area, although the concentrate might require different handling than the normal pellets. It would also require rail legs at both ends of the boat trip. Has anyone heard if they decided on an option yet?
Trains will be All-Rail. The current loadout is on BNSF, and BNSF’s Ore Dock at Allouez (Superior, WI) can not handle Concentrate, only pellets. They would have to get CN involved and that isn’t going to happen.
On the Indiana Railroads Bull Session, a poster attended an informational meeting and asked some questions. What he found out was that CSXT would be delivering a daily train of hermatite ore concentrate from BNSF at Chicago to Reynolds. They’d also handle a daily train of ore pellets from Reynolds to AK Steel in Middletown, Ohio or Ashland, Kentucky. Apparently, TP&W seemed disinterested, even though they could also serve the plant.
csx already has a train k 185 that goes from toledo to middletown.An all rail rote could have it turning right at Deshler rather than coming straight across the diamond.
The train will have Magnetite Concentrate, though the difference is not significant to anyone but an Iron Ore or Steel Company. The high temperature of the Pellet firing, converts the Magnetite to Hematite. So the output of the pellet plant will be Hematite, but not the input.
I was confused by that myself. IIRC the magnetic process is used to separate out magnetite, and the ore in the website picture looks black like magnetite, however, also on their website they call the concentrates hematite and one of the analyses shows Fe2O3: