Union members at a Michigan short line railroad have ratified a new contract.
The pact with the Lake Superior & Ishpeming Railroad, was approved by members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the Teamsters union.
The union said in a statement that the new contract provides wage increases along the lines recommended by a presidential emergency board last year and also makes changes to work rules service recognition bonuses and other paid time-off provisions.
It is June 14, 1978, in Cadillac, Michigan. As I recall, the owner of the Castolite company had purchased the ex-Delaware & Hudson Sharks and had leased both 1205 and 1216 to the Michigan Northern Railroad. My good friend Charlie Wilson (John Woodworth’s cousin) and I found 1216 still wearing a D&H warbonnet paint scheme. The 1216 spent a few minutes moving cars around that morning which made our short time on the Michigan Northern even better.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
This image was made by an unidentified photographer at an unidentified location in Michigan. It shows the long defunct Michigan lumber railroad East Jordan & Southern locomotive No. 6. We do know the image was made in the 1950s or early 1960s.
The EJ&S suspended operations in 1961 and the railroad’s lines were subsequently abandoned.
No. 6, a 2-6-0 built in 1909 by Pittsburg, has survived and is owned by the City of East Jordan, where it is on static display.
Photograph Courtesy of Robert Farkas
Michigan regional railroad Lake State Railway has acquired its first wide cab locomotives.
It picked up six SD70Ms once operated by Union Pacific. UP leased the units and has returned them.
The first of the SD70Ms, No. 6431, was recently repainted by Metro East Industries in East St. Louis, Illinois.
Lake State has an all-EMD motive power fleet to cover its 375 miles of track. Most of its locomotives are 40-series four and six axle units.
The SD70Ms will be Lake State’s first units to be equipped with positive train control.
Michigan short line Adrian & Blissfield Railroad has a new locomotive livery that it has applied to an SD40-2 once owned by Southern Pacific.
The new scheme is bright red and white paint. The railroad operates on 20 miles of track in Lenawee County.
For several years its four-axle EMD motive power has worn a New York Central inspired look.
The A&B was sold last year to Transportation Holdings.
We don’t know the identity of the photographer who made this photo of East Jordan & Southern No. 6, probably in or near East Jordan, Michigan. The slide was processed in September 1960. The EJ&S still used steam until the early 1960s.
This image portrays a tourist train, but the EJ&S got its start as a lumber railroad. It transported harvested lumber to a connection with the Chicago & Western Michigan. The EJ&S also served other industries that helped to sustain it after the lumber mills shut down in the 1920s. The short line connected in Bellaire with the Pere Marquette.
The EJ&S operated between 1901 and 1962. It had regulatory approval to cease operations in 1932, but management instead decided to press ahead, hauling passengers and freight.
Every year on Independence Day the railroad offered free rides. No. 6 shown above is a 2-6-0 built in 1909 by the Pittsburgh Steam Engine Company. The EJ&S also had two other steam locomotives on its roster.
A last run was staged on Aug. 12, 1962, just ahead of the end of operations. The tracks were later pulled up. No. 6 survives today on East Jordan on static display.
Collection of Robert Farkas
Lake State Railway of Michigan has been named the 2021 regional railroad of the year by Railway Age magazine.
An Ohio short line, the Belpre Industrial Parkersburg Railroad, was awarded honorable mention in the short line of the year competition, which was won by the Memphis Line of R.J. Corman.
Lake State is a 373-mile Class II carrier serving primarily the northern half of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
It became a regional carrier in 2019 by acquiring the CSX Saginaw Subdivision between its namesake city and Plymouth.
This year Lake State is expected to handle 65,000 carloads, up from the 30,000 carloads of 2018.
It has won an American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association award for marketing initiatives in three of the past four years.
The 48-mile Class III BIPR is located in far southern Ohio and interchanges with CSX in Parkersburg, West Viginia.
It serves industries in metals, plastics and petrochemicals in the Ohio River Valley.
A relatively new operation, BIPR has upgraded 21 miles of track from excepted to Federal Railroad Administration Class 2 standards.
In its 12 months of operation the railroad has had zero reportable injuries and increased total revenue movements 84 percent compared with the three-year average of the line in previous years.
Other projects undertaken by BIPR have included converting several barge and truck movements to rail for existing customers (coal, residual fuel, asphalt); initiating new product movements for existing customers (ferroalloys, carbon, plastics); adding three new storage-in-transit customers supporting regional industry; and investing more than $2 million into equipment, rail refurbishment and upgrades, and new sidings.
Five Michigan short line railroads are on track to be sold to a new owner.
Transportation Holdings recently told the U.S. Surface Transportation Board that it will acquire the Class III railroads, which will be the first railroads that it owns.
The five short line are the Adrian & Blissfield Rail Road Co., a 20-mile line which operates a dinner train on Saturdays, as well as three subsidiaries: the 5-mile Charlotte Southern; 2.5-mile Detroit Connecting Railroad; 1.5-mile Lapeer Industrial Railroad, and 47-mile Jackson & Lansing.
Michigan short line Great Lakes Central has acquired all three SD35 locomotives that recently worked for Montana Rail Link.
The SD35s will be a new motive power type to the largely GP35 fleet that GLC operates. Most of those GP35s once ran on the Ann Arbor.
The latest addition to the GLC roster are MRL Nos. 701, 702 and 705, which are the last three SD35s the western carrier had.
The units were last reported to be in the Chicago area being interchanged from BNSF to Canadian National en route to Michigan.
GLC had indicated it plans to renumber the SD35s as 383, 384 and 380. No. 383 is expected to enter revenue service in short order but Nos. 384 and 386 need light repairs.
The three units were built in 1965 for Norfolk & Western.
Canadian National has leased a short stretch of track in Port Huron, Michigan, to the Lake State Railway.
The track in question is the HR Track which runs from Port Huron Yard to the and city’s waterfront on the Saint Clair River.
There are two active freight shippers on the spur, Domtar Paper and Dunn Paper.
A drawbridge on the line over the Black River will remain the responsibility of CN.
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