The Union Railroad is a short line industrial railroad in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is presently still owned by the U.S. Steel corporation. The route runs from North Bessemer Yard where it interchanges with the Bessemer and Lake Erie (Now CN) to the Mon Valley works near the river outside Pittsburgh. It transports long trains of Iron Ore to feed the steel mills, as well as Coke trains that interchange with CSX, and occasionally coils. It also moves hot slabs from the Edgar Thompson works to the Irvin Works. The unique thing about the Union is that due to the tight turns and clearances of the industrial lines, rather than running road locomotives the railroad will just string together a large consist of MP15 switchers. They are also one of the last US railroads to continue to use caboose. It is an interesting railroad and could have potential for a lot of activities as the Union is also the switching railroad within the mills as well. It is also a fairly significant grade between North Bessemer and the Mills. I would say up until the 1990s they also used to move coal to North Bessemer to interchange with the Bessemer. North Bessemer Yard was actually behind my grandmothers house. By a strange bit of luck when I was a kid I was able to go to the railroads offices and allowed to operate their simulator that they used to train their engineers. It was a very cool experience!
