Eastern Railroad Discussion > Trains in lower MI

Is there any good locations to see Lake States RR and any other regional and shorelines in Lower MI?

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BNSF-4567 Wrote:
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> Is there any good locations to see Lake State RR
> and any other regional and shorelines in Lower MI?
>

The most likely places to find Lake State (one state) trains originating are at Flint in the morning -- the return of the Z127 turn that comes up from Wixom around sunrise -- or at Saginaw at varying times. From what I can tell, the normal operation is a daytime turn up to Bay City and then a late-afternoon/early-evening turn to Flint, and there may also be a separate Saginaw/Flint run with traffic from Dow at Midland (or those cars could be included in the regular train).

Also, this time of year you can catch and follow from Pinconning either of two northbound trains that a yard job delivers there during the day as one but which are split apart and continue north toward Grayling and Alpena; the crews for those seem to show up in Pinconning around 1800. The train to Grayling is a turn while the Alpena train does a meet-and-swap at a siding by the Iosco County Airport near Tawas City well after dark.

Great Lakes Central is the other regional game in that part of the state, and right now it seems like their regular routine is crews reporting at Owosso (ONTN) and Cadillac (CSTN) mid-to-late morning and doing a meet-and-swap at Clare, while there's also a late-afternoon OSTN that goes south from Owosso at least as far as Howell to interchange with CSX and sometimes as far as Osmer (north side of Ann Arbor) to interchange with Watco's current version of the AA. I believe work to customers north of Cadillac (toward Traverse City or Petoskey) usually occurs with a night job now, but not always. I paid a quick visit up there last month on a Friday and the day crew at Cadillac only went as far south as McBain, where it spotted 13 loads of scrap ties in CSX MoW gons at a tie recycler and left 13 empties on the lead before heading light back to Cadillac. The tie recycler is a big account for them now and a friend who was there more recently said that day's train spent a long time working there before continuing on to Clare.

Both LSRC and GLC handle grain trains -- the Lake State from Standish and the GLC from several elevators. GLC may also deliver potash trains to the Mid-Michigan at Alma. I don't know if LSRC interchanges any unit trains with Huron & Eastern at Saginaw, but for the time being it does also deliiver coal trains to Consumers Power at Essexville. The coal trains usually have BNSF power and until recently it seemed like the grain trains always had CSX power, but the latter may have changed as LSRC beefed up its locomotive roster.

The aforementioned Ann Arbor operates its ancestral railroad between Osmer -- the location of some long interchange sidings just north of the U.S. 23/M-14 overpass on the city of Ann Arbor's north side -- and Toledo. AA handles a lot of bridge traffic between both NS and CSX at Toledo and the Great Lakes Central, although GLC also does extensive interchange with CSX at Annpere Jct. in Howell. Its road train between Toledo and Osmer is somewhat variable as to when it runs, although the most common arrangement seems to be a night job north and a day job south, with a recrew at some point along the way. Their road trains seem to run normally with two or three GP39-2 or GP40-2 locomotives that include a couple in Watco paint, a Helm leaser (HLCX4215) in IC&E colors, and a couple of former UP GP39-2s that Ann Arbor modified with its own herald pre-Watco and still operate in Armour yellow and Harbor Mist gray. The orange Ann Arbor "heritage" GP38 that AA also has rarely if ever strays from local operations in Toledo.

Thanks toledopatch.  That info is helpful to me also.  Have not been to Clare since I moved to the Elk Rapids area two summers ago but want to investigate when the summer tourist season is over.  I do know that its history during the Depression Era included oil extraction and illegal gambling/liquor sales managed mostly by gangsters from Detroit.

-John

On the West side you have Indiana Northeastern, Grand Elk, Michigan Southern, Hamilton Northwestern, West Michigan and a slew of other smaller lines in the Grand Rapids area.  

Lower Michigan meaning "like South of Lansing!"    Anybody have any idea where Richland Junction was located near Richland, MI?   The train came out of Kalamazoo and went to a town called Cooper which still exists and then there was a diamond at Richland Junction.  This part of the local railroading has been gone for so long it is hard to find any info on the trains.   And I see the Nickel Plate steamer is coming to a place called Hillsdale, MI.   The little steamer that comes out of Coldwater, MI will travel to Hillsdale but have no idea how they will get the NKP from Fort Wayne to Hillsdale!  Anybody have an idea of the route?   Thank You

Richland Junction was just east of North 28th Street off M43.  Its clearly visible on google maps.  It has not been gone THAT long,the lumber yard in Richland recieved cars into the early 1980's.  

Friedy Wrote:
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> Lower Michigan meaning "like South of Lansing!" 
>   Anybody have any idea where Richland Junction
> was located near Richland, MI?   The train came
> out of Kalamazoo and went to a town called Cooper
> which still exists and then there was a diamond at
> Richland Junction.  This part of the local
> railroading has been gone for so long it is hard
> to find any info on the trains.   And I see the
> Nickel Plate steamer is coming to a place called
> Hillsdale, MI.   The little steamer that comes
> out of Coldwater, MI will travel to Hillsdale but
> have no idea how they will get the NKP from Fort
> Wayne to Hillsdale!  Anybody have an idea of the
> route?   Thank You

It’s already there.
Fort Wayne to Montpelier on the NS-Wabash. Handed off to the Indiana Northeastern.

Posted from iPhone

Thanks for the help ,
Does Michigan Southern and Adrian & Blissfield even run?
Been looking at them on Google maps and they dont look like there used very much!

Posted from Android

BNSF-4567 Wrote:
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> Thanks for the help ,
> Does Michigan Southern and Adrian & Blissfield
> even run?
> Been looking at them on Google maps and they dont
> look like there used very much!
>

A&B has at least one crew on duty most if not all weekdays, but finding their train can be a bit of a challenge. I did catch them this spring pulling and then spotting carbon-dioxide tank cars at the IORY interchange at Riga, MI using a non-descript red switcher.