There is a steam locomotive running in Lake Linden most Saturdays this summer, and the season ends with September.
It was built in 1915 by the H. K. Porter company and bought to work, not to be looked at. Calumet and Hecla used it to move materials around its copper operation. It is now the engine of the Lake Linden and Torch Lake railroad, which runs a four-tenths-of-a-mile loop around the Houghton County Historical Society’s campus, and WLUC reported this month that it is the only steam-powered train still running in the Keweenaw Peninsula.
“You don’t see steam locomotives operating steam machinery too much these days,” Brian Keeney, the train’s engineer, told the station.
That is the part worth sitting with. The Copper Country is full of preserved industrial machinery and almost none of it moves. A few miles away, above Hancock, sits the Nordberg steam hoist at the Quincy Mine, finished just as the industry it was built for stopped needing it, and it never did the job it was made for. It is magnificent and it is still. The Porter is small, unglamorous, and under steam on a Saturday afternoon with people aboard.
Porter is the reason a mining company had an engine like this in the first place. The firm started in Pittsburgh in 1866 and spent the next eighty-odd years building light industrial locomotives for mines, mills, quarries and plantations, more than 7,800 of them out of its Lawrenceville works before it stopped making locomotives in 1950. These were never the machines anyone photographed. They were bought the way a company buys a forklift, worked until they were worn out, and scrapped. That is what makes a survivor odd: not that it was important, but that it was ordinary and somebody kept it anyway.
The society runs the steam engine on Saturdays and a gas engine midweek, weather permitting, and the steam season runs through the end of September. Rides are $6 for adults over 18, $4 for students aged 6 to 17, $3 for children aged 3 to 5, and free under 3.
Weather permitting is doing real work in that sentence. It is a coal fire, and the society is a volunteer operation that depends on donations to keep the locomotive maintained. Check the schedule with the society before driving over, particularly if the trip is a long one and particularly late in the season.
The museum complex the track loops around sits on the old Calumet and Hecla ground at Lake Linden, and it is worth the visit on its own if the engine is not running that day.
Steam locomotives that still steam are getting scarce, and most of the survivors are tourist-railroad engines restored for the purpose. This one is an industrial machine that outlived its industry and is still turning a loop on the ground where it started working.
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Sources, credits, and reporting details
Sources & accountability
How this story was reported
Editorial methodAggregation
Last verifiedAug. 27, 2026
Corrections statusNo material correction note is recorded on this article.
AI assistanceResearched and drafted with AI tools. Reviewed and approved by editor Keegan O’Brien. Tool: Claude.
Verification note: Ledger written 2026-08-27 before scheduling. The 'only steam-powered train still running in the Keweenaw Peninsula' claim is WLUC's and the copy attributes it to WLUC in the sentence rather than asserting it, following the M-185 correction. The midweek engine's day is left as 'midweek' in the copy because the society's own page says Wednesdays and a secondary summary said Tuesdays; rather than resolve a conflict in the copy the piece tells the reader to confirm with the society, which also covers the weather-permitting steam day. An earlier draft called Calumet and Hecla one of the largest copper operations in the world; that was in none of these sources and was removed. Fares come from the society's own page, not from the news report, which gave none.
Primary sources
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Houghton County Historical Society provides rides on a century-old steam engine — WLUC
Published Aug. 23, 2026. Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
Additional reporting
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Railroad — Houghton County Historical Society
Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
The society's page gives the gas engine as Wednesdays where a secondary summary gave Tuesdays. The copy says 'midweek' and directs the reader to confirm rather than printing either.
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H K Porter Company: Builder Of Small Steam Engines — American-Rails
Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
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H.K. Porter, Inc. — Wikipedia
Accessed Aug. 27, 2026.
Totals differ between sources, some giving over 8,000 locomotives. The copy uses the lower figure and says 'more than 7,800'.
Photo and media credits
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HoughtonCountyHistoricalMuseumM26.jpg (featured image) — Royalbroil, via Wikimedia Commons
Featured image record. Accessed Sep. 10, 2026. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Supports: Featured image, credited on the page as "Photo: Royalbroil (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons."
Photographed 2010-08-27. Resized for the site.
