(upbeat music) - This is part of the North American Rail Power Operators Association and we are making a round trip from Marbles, Minnesota which is just south of Two Harbors, down here to Duluth and then turning around, having lunch here, and then heading back to Two Harbors this afternoon.

Most of the appeal is I'll say railroad wannabes.

It's just a hobby, just like you might be into model trains or model airplanes or anything else.

But it's a hobby that people love, they love restoring them, and they like to share the history of the railroad with people we meet along the way.

These are basically vintage railroad motor cars that were used by the maintenance away people back in the day.

Primarily, I'm going to say the 50's, 60's, 70's and early 80's.

The biggest one was in Fairmont, Minnesota Fairmont Railway Motorcars.

Yep and they basically made the vast majority of the cars and they made almost every one here.

The other brand was Woodings Motorcar out of Lancaster, Ontario.

Some of them were just made for like two people and others were made for four people.

So they had like M-9s MT19's they started out with basic belt drive cars, and then they went to a transmission type thing.

So it it evolved over time.

The top speed on these you can really get them up to 35 or 40, but generally speaking, we're running along at track speed about 20 to 25 miles an hour tops.

- The slice from WDSE WRPT.