Of five surviving Duluth & Northeastern Railroad locomotives, Consolidation type (2-8-0) #16 is closest to home ground in Cloquet, MN. It is on display in Fauley Park with D&NE Caboose #7, bought in 1967 as DM&IR #169 and retired in 1974.
Fauley Park is dedicated to the station master who held trains in Cloquet on the night of the massive 10th October 1918 fire that completely destroyed Cloquet and many other towns in northern Minnesota. The trains evacuated the residents of Cloquet to safety in Duluth.
#16 was one of two Consolidations built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, PA, to the same
specification and delivered to the D&NE in 1913. The other was #14. The locomotives had Stephenson valve gear and 20” x 24” cylinders. Weighing 144,000 lbs, 128,000 lbs on their 51”
drivers, they were typical of the relatively light weight Consolidations built for logging railroads at this time. With a 33.2 sq ft grate, 164 sq ft firebox and total heating surface of 1,972 sq ft, they operated at a boiler pressure of 200 psi delivering 32,000 lbs tractive effort.
The D&NE was incorporated in 1898 when Henry C. Hornby of the Cloquet Lumber Company laid track from the Duluth & Iron Range line at a spot now called Hornby twenty-seven miles southwest to Island Lake from where logs could be floated down river into Cloquet.
In 1902, extremely low water levels in the St. Louis and Cloquet rivers stranded 150 million board feet of timber. As a result, the timber mills shut down early in Cloquet that season and, the following year, the D&NE straightened its line and ran track from Rush Lake in the north into Cloquet. By 1905, logs could be delivered to Cloquet all year round on the railroad.
During the 1930s, the lumber market contracted and so did the D&NE’s operations. In 1941, the line from Hornby to Saginaw was dismantled.
#16 saw regular service on the remaining twelve mile section of track between Cloquet, Saginaw and Duluth, and was still operating in 1963. It was
one of the five remaining steam locomotives on the D&NE in 1964 when dieselisation finally eliminated steam motive power on the road.
In recent years, the railroad ran only a few miles in the Cloquet area and the remaining four miles of the line were taken over by the Cloquet Terminal Railroad on 13th May 2002.
