We had a thread on this topic in 2011 centered on this railroad gage used in the “Copper Country” of Upper Michigan:
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ngdiscussion.net]
The story of how the Hecla & Torch Lake Railroad came to be constructed as 4’-1” gage is well known. At the time of building the railroad, once they had some track laid and some ore cars built, they ordered their first locomotive. Naturally, the track gage matched the ore car gage.
They specified the locomotive gage by measuring the wheel gage of their new ore cars, but something go lost in the translation, and when new locomotive arrived, it did not fit the track. The dimension was said to have been the result of an error in measuring the gage of their new ore cars.
Rather than correcting the gage of the new locomotive, they decided to change the track and rolling stock gage to match the new locomotive, which was 4’-1”.
As far as I know, that dimension was not intentional, and was not adopted by other railroads anywhere else in the world; with minor exceptions of other Michigan railroads near the H&TL RR adopting it; and one railroad in Australia, as I recall.
The most likely explanation is that H&TL sold their used rolling stock to these other railroads, and so they built to the same odd gage just to operate the used H&TL rolling stock being sold at a bargain price.
These other 4’-1” gage railroads were as follows:
Atlantic & Lake Superior RR
Globe Tramway (a processor to A&LS)
Victoria Mine RR
Belt Mine RR
However, this reasoning for the adoption of the odd gage by the other four railroads is based only on speculation factoring their close proximity to H&TL RR and the assumption that used equipment was available from H&TL. Entering into this speculation is whether H&TL would have had any used equipment to sell at the early dates of origins of the other railroads that chose the same gage. In 1907, the H&TL was converted to standard gage by the owner, Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. So, that is long after the other four 4’-1” gage railroads decided on that gage. So, overall, the entire premise of this 49-inch-gage raises questions that have yet to be answered.
Of those four, AL&S was by far the largest. So aside from the above speculation about used 4’-1” gage equipment being available, I assume A&LS chose the gage because it had been used by their predecessor, Globe Tramway.
Many of the Copper Country railroads built to serve the mines were necessitated by a requirement to haul the mined copper to the stamp mill for processing. The mine was located at the site that yielded the copper ore, and the stamp mills were located near a large supply of water for the washing process of the stamped ore.
Of those four other railroads built to 4’-1” gage, Belt Mine RR is the most obscure. Belt was the name of a mine and possibly a place name, as was Lake Mine very nearby. Both are about a mile northeast of an existing town called Mass, MI. Like many other mines in the region, Belt Mine needed a railroad to connect its mine with its stamp mill, but the distance was only about a mile.
Victoria Mine is a ghost town about 6-8 miles south-southwest of Mass, MI. Its surface plant is long gone, but some of the old houses have been saved and restored. I have very little knowledge of its railroad operation. It is currently being developed as a historical site called Old Victoria, MI. The mine was famous for the development of the Taylor Air Compressor, which was built as a geological feature that channeled water from the Ontonagon River and dropped it into a shaft to collect compressed air entrained in the falling water. It used this air to power the pneumatic drills and “air-motor” locomotives for use on its tram system.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/27/2021 07:46AM by Ron Keagle.
