Keweenaw Central 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 20 (Locobase 13497)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 32, p. 324. See also Horace Jared Stevens and Walter Harvey Weed, The Copper Handbook, Volume 5 for the year 1904 (Houghton, Michigan: Horace J Stevens, 1905), p. 496. (Thanks to Matt Mihalo for his 22 April 2021 email supplying the 20's post-KC career.) Works number was 33034 in November 1908.

Copper deposits in the Lake Superior field of Keweenaw county were described by Stevens and Weed in 1905 as "...being the lowest grade of any important or producing copper district of the world." To work such ore profitably required rail facilities and that was the needed spur to build the KC. Taking over the ownership of the defunct Lac La Belle & Calumet, which had laid 8 miles of track in Keweenaw county, Keweenaw Copper planned to build a 35-mile main line between Calumet and Lac La Belle.

The authors predicted that "The Keweenaw Copper Company, through its railroad, the Keweenaw Central, should prove the most important factor in reviving the once important, but long decayed mining interests of Keweenaw county."

The KC can't be said to have been robust, particularly in its non-ore operations; it operated at a deficit in most years. The Upper Peninsula was sparsely populated and passenger trains operated at a loss and didn't run at all from November to May. In 1916, the road owned only two locomotives and 95 cars, of which only 55 were available for service. Two years later, the KC RR was liquidated, equipment sold off, and the rails on the Mandan-Lac La Belle branch were pulled up and sold.

Matt Mihalo's email reported that the 20 went on the Minnesota, Dakota & Western. "MD&W kept the road number, "Matt wrote, "and modernized the locomotive, new cab and tender added."