Google Maps can't find Tesch, but Bing could. Knowing where the town is, I found the junction on Google Maps, which has labeled the trails that are on four out of the seven spokes from this junction.
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| Chicago & North Western Historical Society posted The photographer, Ed Selinsky, is looking at the "Armstrong" tower located at Tesch, Michigan in May 1971. Who would like to fill us all in on just where Tesch is and where all those tracks are going? What a posting that would have been! Leland Frossard Tesch is on M 69 west about 2 mi up from the us 2 &41 intersection the track to the left past the tower is the soo line going to Gladstone mi. the center is th c&nw ore drag to the docks in Escanaba Mi. the track to the right is the c&nw felch line that connected the c&nw main line in narenta and went through Schaffer ,Perronville,Foster City. I grew up in Tesch our house was about 30 feet from the ore drag and less then couple hundred yards from the tower. Greg Bunce posted Tesch Tower in Michigan's Upper Peninsula looking east.. The track running from the lower right to the left is the Soo Line's line from Minneapolis to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The track running from the top to the bottom is the Chicago and North Western's Ore Line from Iron Mountain to Escanaba. The track across the photo is the C&NW's Felch Branch which ran from Felch to Naranta on the C&NW's main line from Green Bay to Escanaba. All of it is gone. Paul Ernest: With permission from the author, this is a recollection from Robert Grindrod: I Remember this place. The Felch branch was a complete mistake. CNWW built the branch in the 1880s because they thought there was an ore body in Felch. There wasn't.....but the branch lasted into the 1950s carrying some occasional loads of pulpwood. The CNW Ore Line ran from Antoine Yard in Iron Mountain through the woods to Escanaba. The yards that supported the old pocket type ore docks in Escanaba were built along this line, so the ore came into town this way. In practice CNW ONLY ran eastbound loaded ore trains over this route. Empties returned via a different line that ran Escanaba - Powers - Norway to Iron Mountain, so you could say the two lines were run as double track. Diesel power and a gradual reduction in ore movements eliminated the need for the second line. About two miles of new track was built in Escanaba in the early 1960s to connect the two lines there, which allowed the Ore Line to be abandoned about 1963. After that, ore moved via Powers to Escanaba from the from the Iron Mountain area. The last line was the SOO....the old main line from Minneapolis to Sault St. Marie via Ladysmith. Soo had changed from an east - west railroad to a north - south one in terms of traffic. This line remained, but with little traffic. Under Wisconsin Central in the 1990s there was a movement of gold and copper ore from a brand new open pit mine near Ladysmith to points in Canada via Sault St. Marie. This lasted about 4-5 years until all the ore had been removed. Then about 1994 iron ore started moving between mines on the DMIR north of Duluth south to Ladysmith, then east over this line, "north" to Gladstone and Sault St. Marie for Algoma Steel of Canada. The sawtooth profile of this line, light rail and the elderly DMIR ore jennies themselves made moving these trains difficult.....and resulted in an early use of distributed power to keep the trains in one piece and on the rails. To say that Tesch was remote is an understatement. I think CNW had to maintain about 10 miles of pole lines just to get electricity and telegraph to this tower. |
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| Phil Martin commented on Greg's post Original model board from Tesch. Heard rumors of it surviving in a hoarder's estate in Esky. 2 hours of digging through the house and there it was under a table. Hidden away for years. |
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| Mike Delaney commented on Greg's post |
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| Mike Delaney commented on Greg's post 1921 |
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| Satellite |
I marked the two C&NW routes in yellow and orange. The blue line is the SOO route. The red circle indicates which "quadrant" (hextant?) the tower was in. Judging from the Felch Grade Trail, C&NW abandoned the orange route to the west because it was redundant with its mainline to the west that went through Narenta. And it abandoned the short yellow route to the south because they wanted to keep the ore drags off the mainline.
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| Satellite plus Paint |
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| Posting plus Pant |
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| Mike Erick Son commented on the posting Here's another shot of the same switch house. |
According to the 2005 SPV Map, there was a mine spur that left the branch east of Felch, MI. I found the tree lines of the spur's connection. I followed the land scars of the spur to here. I assume the "lakes" and rows were part of an iron ore mine.
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| Michael R Valentine commented on Greg's post Wow what a cool place! |
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| Michael R Valentine commented on Greg's post |
I grew up in the house with the u-shaped driveway in the satellite photos when only the Soo Line rails remained. All rails are gone today. My Lionel set in my basement is Soo Line with a few other "Michigan" related rail cars. The story, as I have heard it, is the first "switchmaster" was named Tesch. He may have lived in the house I grew up in as it was built when Abraham Lincoln was President.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the house on the other side of the tracks in the 2 story brown house with the garden and garage.
DeleteThe house was brown when I lived there. Now it looks like a cream color
DeleteI've been to this area a few times and your notes are pretty much correct. Too bad the tower didn't survive. I did find the concrete footing where it stood. and down the ore drag line I also found the concrete footing for a block RR signal.
ReplyDeleteI had a dream a number of years ago... in the dream I was riding in a car with other people and thought we were driving in Omaha (where I live), but some things were not familiar, so we stopped at a convenience station where I asked the clerk where we were... they told me “Tesch”. I spelled it back to them to make sure I heard correctly. There was more to the dream that I won’t go on about, but I had a strong feeling it was a “future” dream. (When I woke up I googled Tesch, thinking maybe a person’s name, and didn’t think - until last night - about the possibility that it was a place... which brings me here now...) Can anyone give me more info please.
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