The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad is a class II railroad that operates in northwestern Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. The railroad's main route runs from the Lake Erie port of Conneaut, Ohio, to the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a distance of . The original rail ancestor of the B&LE, the Shenango and Allegheny Railroad, began operation in October 1869. Rail operations were maintained continuously by various corporate descendants on the growing system that ultimately became the BLE in 1900. In 2004 BLE came under the ownership of the Canadian National Railway (CN) as part of CN's larger purchase of holding company Great Lakes Transportation. BLE is operated by CN as their Bessemer Subdivision. As a subsidiary of CN, BLE has been largely unchanged (though repainting of BLE locomotives into CN paint with "BLE" sub-lettering began in April 2015) and still does business as BLE. BLE locomotives, especially the former Southern Pacific SD40T-3 "Tunnel Motors", have been scattered across the CN system; many are being used in the line that feeds most of BLE's traffic, the former Duluth, Missabe, and Iron Range lines in Minnesota. The iron ore that originates on these lines is transloaded to ships at Two Harbors, Minnesota, then sent by ship to Conneaut, Ohio, where it is again transloaded to BLE trains. It is then taken down to steel mills in the Pittsburgh region, mainly to the blast furnaces at US Steel's Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, Pennsylvania, part of the Mon Valley Works. History The Pittsburgh, Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad Company was founded in 1897 by Andrew Carnegie to haul iron ore and other products from the port at Conneaut, Ohio, on the Great Lakes to Carnegie Steel Company plants in Pittsburgh and the surrounding region. On the return trip, Pennsylvania coal was hauled north to Conneaut Harbor. The company was created largely out of a series of small predecessor companies including the Pittsburgh, Shenango and Lake Erie Railroad, and the Butler and Pittsburgh Railroad Company. The company was renamed the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad in 1900. Carnegie Steel had an exclusive 99-year lease to the PS&LE. This lease was acquired by US Steel when that company acquired Carnegie Steel in 1901. At the end of 1925 B&LE operated 228 miles of road on 631 miles of track; at the end of 1970 mileages were 220 and 489. In 1988 the Bessemer