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An Ely high school graduate was able to get an ore car donated to the Pioneer Mine historic site in Ely.
Renee (Skube) Beaumier is the health, safety, and environment manager for North Shore Track Services. She’s a 1990 graduate of Ely Memorial High School.
She also has a personal connection to the Pioneer Mine, which closed in 1967.
“My grandfather Fred Skube was a Slovenian immigrant and worked at the Pioneer mine for 40 years,” said Beaumier.
When she heard of Canadian National upgrading ore cars they use to haul taconite, Beaumier thought of her hometown.
“I’ve been seeing some rumbling of CN upgrading their ore car fleet and I follow the local railroad Facebook pages showing they are scrapping their old fleet,” said Beaumier. “I was concerned the history would be lost and wanted to preserve a piece of history in Ely, that’s my hometown. It made sense to ask if they have an ore car available and would they consider donating it to Ely,” She spoke with Jeff Heller at North Shore Track who contacted the powers that be at Canadian National.
Heller said he spoke with Dave Anderson, the account manager for CN for the Iron Range along with Nick Stavig to make it happen.
“I talked to Nick first and Renee had mentioned Ely was looking for a car. He said I’ve got one that could’ve ran there when the Oliver mine was running. Nick is responsible for getting all the old or cars and getting them set up for scrapping” Stavig went to his boss, Helen Quirke, a VP at CN in Montreal.
“She said she’d like to so something on the Iron Range and she would like to do something to help the local historical people. Helen immediately okayed the use of a car,” said Heller.
“We wouldn’t have got this done if not for Nick and Dave talking to Helen and her signing off that day. She was very pro local mine and rail outreach.”
From there it was putting a plan together to make it happen and for the 1948 ore car to be in place for the July 1 Mining Heritage Day which was a month away.
Beaumier and Heller came to Ely and met with Ely city clerk Harold Langowski along with Seraphine Rolando and Nick Wognum of the Ely Arts and Heritage Center, the non-profit that manages the mine site.
“I couldn’t believe it when they came up here and said they had an ore car for us,” said Rolando. “We’ve been trying to get one for 10 years.”
The city of Ely did the initial site prep work so when the first crew arrived on Saturday, June 15 they had a level site to build a set of tracks.
“The city prepping the site for us to put the rail in, it never works that good,” said Heller.
“It helps to have a civil engineer as a city clerk,” said Beaumier.
“Putting down the rail and arranging the transport went well,” said Heller. “It was a fun operation we had a good time doing it and we had Renee being from Ely and passionate about the community.”
Heller said he estimated the cost of the project to be around $28,000, all donated. The companies were CN Railway, North Shore Track Services, Radotich, Inc. and Louis Leustek and Sons/Forest Concrete Products.
“Dave Anderson said all you need is a boat now because CN owns the Great Lakes fleet,” said Beaumier.
CN bought the DMIR railroad around 20 years ago.
“When everything was done it looked to me like that car had been there 20 years already,” said Heller.
For the Pioneer Mine, the ore car is a great addition.
“We want to thank Renee and North Shore Track Services and CN for making this happen,” said EAHC president Nick Wognum. “Plus the city of Ely and my classmate, Aaran Leustek who really helped out as well. To have this done in time for the All Class Reunion and to have Ely alumni involved was just a great thing for our town.”
