Appearance
🎉 your ETH🥳
"The Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad is a privately held shortline railroad that operates of track in Northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Its main line runs from Rockland, Michigan, to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and it also owns various branch lines and out-of-service track. History Founding–1978 The railroad was founded as the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railway on November 17, 1898, by Isaac Stephenson, a local businessman, with of track from Wells, Michigan, northwest.. Over the next several years it built track to Channing, Michigan, where it connected with the Milwaukee Road.. In 1900, the Milwaukee Road built a dock for iron ore transport near Escanaba, Michigan, and began using the ELS to access its new facility. As part of the agreement that allowed the Milwaukee Road access to its line, the ELS was reincorporated as the Escanaba and Lake Superior Railroad on February 12, 1900; it has used this name ever since. In 1902, the ELS built of track southeast out of Wells into the center of Escanaba. In 1935, the Milwaukee Road moved its ore trains off the ELS and entered into an agreement with the Chicago & North Western Railroad (CNW) to jointly operate ore trains into Escanaba. Though the ELS petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) and later the US Supreme Court to be allowed to join the joint operations, it was blocked from doing so in 1938 by the Supreme Court. In the 1940s, two major sources of traffic were developed near Escanaba—the Harnischfeger Corporation, which built large cranes, and the Escanaba Paper Company.. In the early 1960s, the ELS was purchased by the Hanna Mining Company. In 1969, the ELS stopped serving the Escanaba Paper Company during a strike at the mill; in response, the mill's owners built a new connection to the CNW and Soo Line, and cut car movements on the ELS more than five-fold in two years, from 2,200 carloads in 1968 to 449 in 1970. The ELS continued skeleton service during the 1970s. In 1978, Hanna requested permission from the ICC to abandon the railroad. 1978–present On October 6, 1978, Hanna sold the railroad to John Larkin, a businessman from Minneapolis who had organized a passenger excursion on the railroad earlier in the decade.. He planned to return the railroad to profitability by reducing labor costs and entering the business of leasing boxcars to other railroads. Shortly thereafter, the leasing market collapsed. Additionally, with the Milwaukee Road going bankrupt in 1977, it planned to abandon its trackage in Michigan, consisting largely of a route between Ontonagon, Michigan, and Green Bay, Wisconsin.. This plan would break the ELS's connections at Channing, as well as end rail service to shippers on the line. One of these shippers, Champion Paper, which operated a mill in Ontonagon, approached the ELS with a proposal for the railroad to buy the Milwaukee Road track to Ontonagon. After opposition from the CNW, which wanted to retain iron ore transport from a mine on the route, and Hanna Mining (former owner of the ELS and owner of the mine in question, the Groveland Mine in Randville, Michigan), the ELS, backed by other on-line shippers and the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, reached an agreement with the Milwaukee Road's bankruptcy court to take control of the Ontonagon route, as well as additional trackage south. On March 10, 1980, the ELS bought the ex-Milwaukee Road between Ontonagon through Channing south to Iron Mountain, Michigan.. It also obtained a lease-to-own agreement of the tracks south from Iron Mountain to Green Bay; this section was purchased in 1982. Upon purchase, the ELS immediately began rebuilding its new trackage, which had been neglected by the Milwaukee Road in the years leading up to its bankruptcy. Major funding came from the state of Michigan, which paid $1.6 million (equivalent to $ in ) to install new ties on the track to Ontonagon. The freight yard in Channing, Michigan, which was the junction for Milwaukee Road trains bound for Ontonagon. 2015 In 1981, the ELS bought additional trackage, this time a branch line from Channing north to Republic, Michigan. In 1985, it bought a branch from Crivitz, Wisconsin, on the Green Bay line, east to Marinette, Wisconsin, and Menominee, Michigan. During 1987 and 1988, the line to Ontonagon had its lightweight rails replaced with new, heavier rails. In 1991, it bought a line from Sidnaw, Michigan, on the Ontonagon line, east to Nestoria. The following year, the line from Channing to Wells was taken out of service, with access to Escanaba retained via a new trackage rights agreement with the Wisconsin Central Railroad, under which the ELS was granted access the WC's line from Pembine, Wisconsin, to North Escanaba. In 1995, it bought a short branch line between Stiles Junction, Wisconsin, just north of Green Bay, to Oconto Falls from the CNW.. In 2005, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation provided a $2.01 million (equivalent to $ in ) grant to rebuild trackage from Crivitz north to the Michigan state line. This was the last section of mainline track that had not seen a complete rebuild since it was bought in 1980. The various branch lines are often used by the railroad to store rolling stock. After closure of the Smurfit-Stone Paper Mill in Ontonagon in 2009, the of track between Ontonagon and Rockland was abandoned in 2011, and the railroad no longer reaches Lake Superior. The remaining trackage between Rockland and Mass City is used for 3rd party long term car storage. The railroad's northernmost customer ships logs from an open air transload in the yard near the junction of East Branch Road and Depot Road in Mass City. Rolling stock When it began operations, the ELS used steam locomotives purchased second hand from other railroads in the Midwest. It bought a new Shay locomotive for logging service in 1904, followed by various locomotives from Baldwin.. Its first diesel locomotive, a Baldwin VO-1000, was purchased in 1946. The railroad continued buying new and used Baldwins for the next several decades. In 1985, the first EMD diesel, a GP-38 was purchased, followed shortly by additional GP-38s and SD9s.. In 2003, the railroad bought two SD-40-2s, and, unusually, an FP7 two years later. Sometime in 2020, the railroad bought a former BNSF Railway EMD SD-40-2 and numbered it 503. See also * References External links * Michigan railroads Railway companies established in 1900 Companies operating former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad lines Companies operating former Chicago and North Western Transportation Company lines Wisconsin railroads "
""
"Shifford is a hamlet in the civil parish of Aston, Cote, Shifford and Chimney in Oxfordshire, England. It is on the north bank of the River Thames about south of Witney. Archaeology There was a modest Iron Age and Roman-era pastoral settlement east of what is now Old Shifford Farm. It was abandoned around the end of the 1st century AD, but a new settlement was established slightly north of the old one toward the end of the 3rd century AD. The Oxford Archaeological Unit excavated the sites in 1988–89, after which it was excavated as a gravel pit parallel with Brighthampton Cut. Late Iron Age and Roman artefacts found at the site include ceramic loom weights and parts of pots and plates; Roman coins from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD, but particularly the late 3rd to late 4th centuries; copper items including brooches, a pin and a bracelet, iron items, particularly nails; lead items including weights, pot rivets and lead shot; and stone items including several quern-stones and a whetstone. Bone fragments found at the site came mostly from cattle (16.4%), sheep and goats (10.7%) and horses (10.7%). Farming at the site seems to have been mostly pastoral; there was little evidence of arable cultivation. History The settlement arose by a ford across the Thames, from which it derived its toponym ("sheep ford"). It was mentioned in a charter of 1005, when the estate was granted to Eynsham Abbey. A 17th century tradition that Alfred the Great held a council at Shifford arose from a reference to Sifford in the 12th or 13th century poem The Proverbs of Alfred, now thought not to refer to this place. In the 17th century Shifford had between 15 and 23 houses. By 1881 the population had risen to 70 but by 1951, the last year for which separate figures are available, it had fallen to 27. It is now a largely deserted village. Until the 19th century Shifford was a township in the parish of Bampton. It became a separate civil parish in 1866. In 1954 the parish was united with Aston Bampton to form the parish of Aston Bampton and Shifford, later renamed Aston, Cote, Shifford and Chimney. Chapel Base and broken shaft of a 15th-century preaching cross (right) in St Mary's churchyard Shifford was never an ecclesiastical parish but in medieval times it was a dependent chapelry of Bampton. The chapel was later described as "Georgian" and became derelict by the 19th century. In 1863 it was replaced with a Gothic Revival one designed by the architect Joseph Clarke. It is a Grade II listed building. Shifford Lock A lock on the River Thames was built in 1898 half a mile upstream from Shifford. It is accessible on foot from Chimney, but not directly from Shifford. References Late 18th or early 19th century Georgian chest tomb Sources External links Villages in Oxfordshire West Oxfordshire District Former civil parishes in Oxfordshire "