Lake Superior
Railroad Museum

Category: "Latest News & Features"

Railroad Ghost Stories
October 28, 2025

by Theresa Beck, Education Intern   What’s your favorite ghost story? Did you perhaps grow up hearing about ghosts in graveyards, or maybe a haunted hotel? Rail workers had their […]

Online Store Now Available
July 24, 2025

Want to take a piece of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum home with you? Checkout our online store with some limited items exclusive to the railroad museum. Including our guidebook, […]

Steam Pressure Rising
May 3, 2025

Like lighting a firebox to boil some water and build pressure in the steam dome for a long trip on a locomotive… Duluth is building pressure to its summer season. […]

Holiday Schedule
November 29, 2024

The museum will be closed on New Years Eve Day, and New Years Day as well. The museum closes early on Fridays and Saturdays for the always popular performances of […]

Latest News & Features

  • May 27, 2026

    by Doug Buell As the Missabe caboose C-205 returns to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth, MN after a period of refurbishment and painting, it is a good time to review some of the history of this caboose. The C-205 was delivered in 1952 as part of an order for new, steel, wide vision (extended vision) cabooses built by International Car Company. Coincidentally, about the same time, Erie Mining Company was being designed and planned, including the 73-mile mainline railroad from Hoyt Lakes on the Minnesota Iron Range to Taconite Harbors on the shore of Lake Superior. Equipment for the mainline railroad included three steel cabooses manufactured by the same International Car Co. In this case, these cabooses would be ordered in a bay window configuration. This is perhaps because some of the railroad equipment selections were guided by Bethlehem Steel and eastern railroad experiences, where bay window cabooses were common. Hang on, we’re getting to the connection with the C-205. After operating on Erie’s mainline for a short period it was found that the bay windows on the side of the cabooses were being broken by pellets falling off of the pellet cars as the train rolled along, bouncing on the ground and back up the side, hitting the caboose window. Due to a close working relationship between Erie and the Missabe, Erie borrowed one of their newer wide vision cabooses to test. You guessed it, that turned out to be the C-205. After the use on the Erie pellet trains, all three of Erie’s bay window cabooses were returned to International Car Co. to have the bay windows removed and extended vision cupolas added. In the mid-1970s Duluth Missabe and Iron Range had half a dozen of their steel cabooses modified by removing the cupolas and adding bay windows for use on the Thunderbird Mine to Fairlane plant crude ore trains. The C-205 was one of those chosen to be modified. After it’s sale to Northshore Mining, the C-205 came to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum where it has been maintained in operating condition.

Email Signup