Iron Range Mining Charges On - Mesabi Daily News

Let’s talk about ore trains.

Aside from the rumbling haulers in the mines, ore trains are a visible sign of the industry in motion. Chunks of ore is loaded in a train car on site, shipped to a processing plant to be pelletized and shipped to port for commercial orders.

When the trains aren’t running, the industry isn’t running.

At different times in 2015, the trains out of several Iron Range mines sat idle awaiting better days.

The light at the end of the tunnel wasn’t an ore train headed to Forbes or the Port of Duluth.

Instead it was hope and uncertainty.

Earlier this month, Mesabi Daily News Photographer Mark Sauer went to United Taconite in Eveleth and Forbes to document the railroad process at the plants. It was our first access to a working UTAC facility since the plant idled last year, and reopened with a $65 million construction upgrade in August.

UTAC has become the symbol of this recent resurgence in Iron Range mining. While ArcelorMittal’s Minorca Mine and U.S. Steel’s Minntac facility have been steadier, UTAC was a key cog in the Quad Cities mining scene. Without it running, hundreds of workers weren’t working.

So there’s significance in the trains running between Eveleth and Forbes, and out to the port again.

For the first time in a year it seems like the industry is normalizing.

And that’s what we aimed to capture in this issue of MINE: That the doom and gloom of 2015 is behind us, even if steel production and exports haven’t been a juggernaut in the data.

We can feel the change from last year. We can see it in the cars parked at UTAC, the trains running again and the tone coming out of places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh and even Las Vegas.

UTAC is upgrading, Hibbing Taconite is expanding, Minntac is continuing its expansion, and the industry’s partners are preparing for a future mining for minerals that make the world turn.

They’re creating new technologies to make mining more efficient, safer and cost-friendly. Those new inventions and adaptations might not change the markets, the imports or the tariffs, but they’re a sign of things to come.

As for that light at the end of the tunnel now? It sure looks like an ore train headed to port, with a fresh batch of Mustang pellets from UTAC.