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As if built by a spider whose am-
bition knows no bounds, the web of railroad networks spiraling out of Duluth-Superior links the Port with virtually every corner of North America.

There's a limit, of course, to the reasonable competitive range of the Port's rail service, but the fact is that the Twin Ports has more railroad connections than nearly any port on the continent.

The CN (once represented here by the Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific as well as the Wisconsin Central).

The Union Pacific (which some years ago purchased and absorbed the Chicago Northwestern).

Around the clock, seven days a week, while most residents eat or sleep or work or do whatever else occupies their lives, the railroads are moving cargo in or out of the Port — generally unnoticed, silently (for the most part) and efficiently.

Although many local customers move freight in single-car or less-than-load lots, the sheer size of the Port's commerce means that on the waterfront, the highest percentage of tonnage is carried by unit trains.

Unit trains of more than 100 cars — a common sight at Twin Ports ore docks and Superior's Midwest Energy Resources Coal facility (left) — are new as of 2002 at Duluth's Cargill (not pictured) and Superior's Peavey-Connor's Point grain elevators (above).

(Railroads grant discount rates to shippers employing trains of fixed minimum numbers of cars, or units, carrying the same commodities over fixed routes.)

Of the Port's annual average of nearly 40 million metric tons, about 35 million are outbound. And of that, during the 2001 navigation season, about 80 percent arrived by unit train.

All of the Port's iron ore and coal arrives by rail, while about 70 percent of the bulk grain comes in by rail, the balance by truck.

Strings of custom-made ore cars snaking their way between the Iron Range and Duluth-Superior have been part of northeastern Minnesota's industrial landscape for more than a century.

Furthermore, for the past 2 1/2 decades, serpentine unit trains of Montana-Wyoming coal have been arriving daily at the Midwest Energy Resources Co. dock in Superior.

And now, more of these super-size trains — carrying grain instead of ore or coal — have also begun to appear on the Duluth-Superior waterfront. This latest testimonial to the notion that size makes a difference is part of a grain "shuttle" program established in the late 1990s by the BNSF.

The BNSF designed the shuttle service to accelerate the cycle (or turn-around) time of its equipment while also improving on-time performance. The program also serves the company's long-standing efforts to reduce car inventory.

To participate — and, thereby, to get rate reductions inherent in any unit train program — shippers need to commit to fixed numbers of trips over given periods of time, while both country and port elevators must be able to load or unload the 110-car shuttle trains in no more than 15 hours.

Extensive trackage is also a requirement at the origins and destinations — one train of 112-ton covered hopper cars is 6,700 feet long (about 1.3 miles) and requires an open track of about 7,300 feet.

Until this past summer, none of Duluth-Superior's grain terminals was capable of meeting the eligibility criteria. Port Authority officials had several meetings with the BNSF, both at its Fort Worth, Texas, headquarters and in Duluth, in efforts to find ways to provide shuttle service to the Twin Ports.

By August, however, Cargill, Inc., owner of a major elevator complex in Duluth, and ConAgra Foods, Inc., which owns the Peavey-Connor's Point Elevator in Superior, had made modifications to their facilities, and the first grain shuttles began to roll in.

To be sure, these weren't the first unit trains of grain to arrive here, but until now, the largest single-grain trains were made up of 65 cars. Besides the BNSF, various unit train services have also been available via the CP, the CN and the Union Pacific.

Regional grain shippers recall the early 1970s when they were stunned by a railroad offering special three-car rates. Then came five- and 10-car rates, growing to 25 and 50 and upwards as lighter hopper cars, underground conveyor systems and the economies of volume shipments revolutionized the industry.

Meanwhile, ore and coal continue to pour in aboard trains specially built to move those cargoes.

The BNSF and the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway deliver iron ore pellets to docks they own in Duluth-Superior and Two Harbors. In 2001, the BNSF, whose ore trains average about 170 cars holding 100 tons apiece, handled 479 trains carrying 7.75 million tons. The DM&IR, whose trains are 65 to 95 cars long, moved 10.5 million tons through Two Harbors and 4.6 million through Duluth. (The DM&IR doesn't keep data showing the number of separate trains.)

Low-sulfur coal shipments to MERC in 2001 arrived in 123-car trains of about 116 tons per car. Last season, MERC received 1,201 trains.

On any given day, 22 to 25 coal trains are at some point of motion between the Powder River Basin — 1,000 miles west — and the Port of Duluth-Superior.

Unlike major metropolitan ports where the generation or consumption of good provides high volumes of "captive" cargo, Duluth-Superior relies on top-quality inland transportation and fast, efficient cargo-handling facilities. Combined, they are economic imperatives for a port where nearly all of the cargo has its origins or destinations somewhere else.