Chicago & North Western Iron Ore C628s

Published: November 3, 2026

For a little more than a decade the heaviest Alco road switchers in the Midwest had one job that suited them. Thirty Century 628s, all of them ex-Norfolk & Western and the only high-short-hood C628s Alco ever built, hauled iron ore between the Empire Mine and the dock at Escanaba. Three units, 8,250 horsepower, a string of about 110 cars, and a grade that asked for both pulling and holding. They were still at it in the mid-1980s, when a big Alco in everyday heavy service was already a rare sight. The last one ran on December 21, 1986.

Chicago and North Western C628s 6706 6721 6702 with loaded ore jennies near Goose Lake MI on September 12, 1986

Chicago & North Western's C628s #6706, #6721, and #6702 move ore through the North Country as the trio is seen here ahead of loaded jennies within Michigan's U.P. near Goose Lake on September 12, 1986. Charlie Hill photo.

The model, the other buyers, and the three C628s that still exist are on the C628 page. This page is the North Western’s thirty, #6701–6730. A May 20, 1979, photograph of #6709 and #6729 at Escanaba is on that model page.

On this page: From the Norfolk & Western · The ore job · On the road and in the shop · The last winter · What became of the thirty

From the Norfolk & Western

Alco built them as Norfolk & Western #1100–1129. The first ten, order 3429, were finished in October and November 1965. The other twenty, order 3455, were finished in April and May 1966. High short hoods, dynamic brakes, a 16-251C rated at 2,750 horsepower, 74:18 gearing, and an operating weight of 408,000 pounds. That is 204 tons. They were coal-road locomotives on a railroad that was already filling out the rest of the fleet with EMD and General Electric power. Alco left the domestic market in 1969. By the early 1970s the thirty were an orphan class.

The Chicago & North Western leased the whole group on February 1, 1973, and bought it on June 29, 1973. The new numbers followed the old ones in order: #6701 was #1100, and #6730 was #1129. A 1986 film about the fleet, Centuries of the North Woods, sets that purchase against a shortage of road power. They were not sent straight to the ore docks. They went into the general pool, including the Twin Cities Division. The ore assignment came when the Fairbanks-Morse H-16-66s that had been doing the job were retired. By the mid-1970s the high-hoods were the power out of Escanaba, and the 1979 photographs show them settled into it.

The ore job

Escanaba was the center of it. The city keeps Eastern time. The railroad’s day, like the rest of the North Western, ran on Central. A three-unit set came off the servicing track, coupled to about 110 empty ore cars, and the crew made an air test. The empty train was about 2,400 tons. The 61 miles from the ore dock to the Empire Mine are mostly upgrade, a moderate pull for 8,250 horsepower, and the empties were held to 40 miles an hour.

From Partridge the trains were on Lake Superior & Ishpeming trackage rights, under the operator at Eagle Mills, through Empire Junction and into the mine. Little Lake was the usual meet. The northbound empties, timetable west, took the siding. The southbound loads, timetable east, held the main. At the mine the crew set out the empties and picked up about 110 loads, on the order of 9,900 tons. Most of the trip home was in dynamic brake, holding the train to the 30 mile an hour limit for loaded ore cars.

Three was the set. The film’s account of the job is that this was work the C628 had the tools for: lugging ability, a strong dynamic brake, and a machine that would stand an Upper Peninsula winter. Early in the 1980s Escanaba dispatched five or six turns a day to the mine. By 1986 that was down to two or three. Five of the thirty were already off the roster by the summer of 1986, and the twenty-five that remained could not all stay hot on that thinner schedule. A locomotive left sitting too long went downhill in a hurry. The railroad put the 6700s into rotating storage, so the line of stored units was always changing and the ones that had sat went back to work.

They were serviced for years at the Escanaba roundhouse. That house closed in 1984. Two years later the tracks around it were gone, and the film shows the replacement as a servicing spot inside a crane factory on the west side of town. Heavy repairs were another matter. Those were done at Green Bay. The C628s were not confined to the ore turns. They also covered the manifest between Escanaba and Green Bay, the train the railroad called ESGBA. The job that connected with those trains at Powers usually rated two of the North Western’s four C425s. After the C425s were retired in 1986, the film’s usual power there was a GP7 and a C628. In November and December 1985 the big Alcos also got loose on the main line and ran between Green Bay and Proviso, the railroad’s Chicago yard.

On the road and in the shop

The men who ran them and the men who maintained them were not describing the same machine, which is how a lot of good Alcos were remembered.

On the road, the 1986 film presents a locomotive that had found its job. The narration’s point is that the North Western considered the C628s well suited to the ore trains, well enough that they lasted longer than most people looking at an Alco in 1973 would have bet, and that in the middle of the 1980s they were still out every day. The loaded trip home was a dynamic-brake trip. That brake, more than the horsepower number, is what made three units the right size for 9,900 tons on a 30 mile an hour railroad.

At Green Bay the same film follows a lube-oil and filter change on #6725, with roundhouse foreman Al Kawalek and shop superintendent Ron Nickel. The shop view is the practical one. A 251 was more work to keep than a contemporary EMD, and the electrical side, the transition gear and the dynamic-brake contactors, was a standing maintenance item. Weight and length had already kept the model off a lot of railroads. On this one piece of railroad, the ore line, those same traits were the reason the North Western had bought them. Nickel, in the film, already had the next power in view: the SD50s were on the property, and the SD60s were close behind.

The railroad also bought parts to keep the electrical gear alive. In 1982 it picked up five former Conrail U30Cs, #6840–6844, because that model used similar GE equipment. None of the five was numbered or painted Chicago & North Western. All five went back to General Electric as trade-in material in June 1989, after the C628s were done.

Chicago and North Western C628s 6728 and 6725 at the ore dumper in Escanaba, April 1985

C628s 6728 and 6725 at the ore dumper yard in Escanaba, Michigan, in April 1985. The C628s were secondhand from the Norfolk & Western and spent their North Western years in Upper Peninsula ore service. Rob Kitchen photo.

The last winter

Thirty-five SD50s, #7000–7034, had been on the property since November and December 1985. They were 3,500-horsepower units. In September 1986 the first of fifty-five SD60s arrived, #8001–8055, with the 16-710 engine at 3,800 horsepower. The SD60s freed SD50s for the ore job, and the change was sudden.

The first SD50s entered ore service on November 18, 1986. The last C628 ore train ran two days later. Two SD50s replaced three C628s on each ore train, 7,000 horsepower in place of 8,250, and SD40-2s took the Green Bay manifests. By November 29 only #6703 and #6709 were still working, on the dumper at Escanaba. The film dates the closing of the Green Bay backshop to that same November, and notes that the Ishpeming office had closed, with the layover job beginning to tie up at Eagle Mills.

#6703 was the last Alco running on the North Western. On December 21, 1986, she went past the stored sisters, with one more trip on ESGBA still ahead of her. Five days later she was in the deadline with them. The day after Christmas the railroad was an EMD-only road for the first time. #6715 was the exception in the storage line. She had been partly cannibalized at Green Bay. The others sat in the yard at Escanaba. The film’s reading of that deadline is that their future rode with the ore operation: if a buyer took the lines north of Green Bay and took the 6700s with them, the Alcos might run again, and if not, they would not.

Nobody bought the ore lines that way. The units stayed stored. The roster dates below are the mechanical department’s retirements, which run from 1980 to 1990. The last day any of them worked is the December day in 1986.

What became of the thirty

One unit was already gone before the ore job ended. #6705 was retired on December 8, 1980, used for parts, and sold to a Wisconsin scrap dealer. #6713 and #6722 were retired on May 3, 1984, and were still on the property for the 1990 scrap sale. #6714 and #6719 were retired on July 15, 1986, traded to Electro-Motive that August, and scrapped by St. Louis Auto Shredding at Madison, Illinois. #6715, #6716, and #6724 were retired on April 12, 1990, and sold that month to National Railway Equipment at Dixmoor, Illinois. The other twenty-two were retired on October 2, 1990. Those twenty-two, together with #6713 and #6722, were sold for scrap to Pielet Brothers at McCook, Illinois, in September 1990.

That is all thirty. None was preserved.

C&NW	N&W	Order	Built	Retired	Disposition
6701	1100	3429-01	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6702	1101	3429-02	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6703	1102	3429-03	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990. Last to run, December 21, 1986.
6704	1103	3429-04	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6705	1104	3429-05	October 1965	December 8, 1980	Used for parts. Sold to a Wisconsin scrap dealer.
6706	1105	3429-06	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6707	1106	3429-07	October 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6708	1107	3429-08	November 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6709	1108	3429-09	November 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990. Still on the Escanaba dumper with #6703 on November 29, 1986.
6710	1109	3429-10	November 1965	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6711	1110	3455-01	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6712	1111	3455-02	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6713	1112	3455-03	April 1966	May 3, 1984	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6714	1113	3455-04	April 1966	July 15, 1986	Traded to EMD, August 1986. Scrapped at Madison, Illinois.
6715	1114	3455-05	April 1966	April 12, 1990	National Railway Equipment, Dixmoor, April 1990. Partly stripped at Green Bay.
6716	1115	3455-06	April 1966	April 12, 1990	National Railway Equipment, Dixmoor, April 1990
6717	1116	3455-07	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6718	1117	3455-08	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6719	1118	3455-09	April 1966	July 15, 1986	Traded to EMD, August 1986. Scrapped at Madison, Illinois.
6720	1119	3455-10	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6721	1120	3455-11	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6722	1121	3455-12	April 1966	May 3, 1984	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6723	1122	3455-13	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6724	1123	3455-14	April 1966	April 12, 1990	National Railway Equipment, Dixmoor, April 1990
6725	1124	3455-15	April 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6726	1125	3455-16	May 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6727	1126	3455-17	May 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6728	1127	3455-18	May 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6729	1128	3455-19	May 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990
6730	1129	3455-20	May 1966	October 2, 1990	Pielet Brothers, McCook, September 1990

Sources

Strack, Don. Chicago & North Western diesel roster, part 10, Utah Rails, roster of #6701–6730: builder dates, order numbers, retirement dates, and the four disposition notes. The underlying roster is the one prepared for Paul K. Withers, Diesels of the Chicago & North Western.
Strack, Don. Chicago & North Western roster notes, Utah Rails. Five ex-Conrail U30Cs, #6840–6844, bought in 1982 as electrical parts and traded to GE in June 1989.
Christopher, Bill. Centuries of the North Woods. East End Productions, filmed in 1986 and released on the East End Productions Archive channel in 2023. Ore-job figures, the Escanaba and Green Bay account, the November 18 and December 21, 1986, dates, and the shop names.
Sarberenyi, Robert. Alco C628 Original Owners. Confirms the thirty as the only high-short-hood C628s, and the number match to Norfolk & Western #1100–1129.

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