page_title: Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway
section_title: Merger
hierarchical_section_title: Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway / History / Merger
caption_attribution_description: Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway 2-8-8-4 ("Yellowstone" type) articulated steam locomotive #229, as preserved at Two Harbors, Minnesota, USA.
context_page_description: The Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway, informally known as the Missabe Road, is a railroad operating in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin that hauls iron ore and later taconite to the Great Lakes ports of Duluth and Two Harbors, Minnesota. Control of the railway was acquired on May 10, 2004, by the Canadian National Railway when it purchased the assets of Great Lakes Transportation.
context_section_description: By July 1938, the two railways merged to form the DM&IR. The two operating divisions, the Missabe and the Iron Range, were based upon the predecessor roads. As the United States began to prepare for the Second World War, the iron ore tonnage moving over the Missabe Road accelerated from a little over 8 million tons in 1938, past 18 million tons in 1939, then to almost 28 million tons in 1940 and past 37 million tons in 1941.
  The first eight of DM&IR's class M 2-8-8-4 Yellowstone locomotives were delivered by Baldwin Locomotive Works in spring 1941. As well as the Yellowstones, the DM&IR had heavy 2-8-8-2 articulated's (also Class M), 2-8-2 Mikados, 2-10-2 Santa Fe's and eventually 2-10-4 Texas types from B&LE. Ore movement was nearly 45 million tons in 1942 and the War Production Board allowed the Missabe to order ten more Yellowstones, delivered in 1943. The 2-8-8-4's were slowly retired in the latter half of the '50s and the last remaining served until around 1960.
caption: One of the DM&IR's 2-8-8-4 locomotives preserved in Two Harbors, Minnesota
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