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
The Michigan Department of Transportation has awarded $3 million to improve the surfaces of 44 highway-railroad grade crossings.
The funding is coming from the Local Grade Crossing Surface program, which helps pay for small and large projects that range from minor asphalt repairs to installing new track and surface materials.
The projects provides funding for 60 percent of a project with the railroad that owns the crossing paying the remaining 40 percent.
MDOT offers lump-sum cash incentives for projects to permanently close public grade crossings and caps funding incentives for track realignment projects to eliminate grade crossings.
Michigan has about 4,800 public grade crossings.
A Michigan rail project is among 23 freight and passenger rail projects in 17 states that have received a Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity grant.
The U.S. Department of Transportation named the grant recipients this week that will share the $2.2 billion in funding being awarded in federal fiscal year 2022.
Altogether USDOT awarded grants for 166 projects, which were evaluated for how they met the objectives of safety, environmental sustainability, quality of life, economic competitiveness and opportunity, partnership and collaboration, innovation, state of good repair, and mobility and community connectivity.
The Northern Michigan Rail Planning Phase II Study and Service development plan received a $1.3 million grant.
The funding is to be used to develop a plan that considers new train services through 15 counties between southeast Michigan and northern lower Michigan.
Canadian National has announced it will spend $485 million on capital projects in eight states during 2022.
No projects are planned for Ohio or Indiana, but the Montreal-based Class 1 carrier plans to spend $55 million in Michigan.
That work includes replacement of more than 4 miles of rail; installation of approximately 50,000 new railroad ties; rebuilding 19 road crossing surfaces; and maintenance work on bridges, crossings, culverts, signal systems and other track infrastructure
In all CN plans to spend more than C$2.6 billion on its capital program systemwide.
Mike Ondecker and Bob Farkas went into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to find Lake Superior and Ishpeming No. 2500. The GE U25C was photographed in Marquette on Aug. 27, 1975.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has signed a bill that supporters say ensures continued funding of a program to maintain adequate and functional signage and warning devices at railroad-highway grade crossings.
The legislation divides the costs of grade crossing sign upkeep and maintenance between railroad and road authorities, preventing any additional costs from being passed on to motorists, state officials said in a news release.
The Michigan Department of Transportation will conduct a study to determine traffic control device maintenance costs.
The agency also will update the fees road authorities pay railroads annually for the maintenance of active warning devices at crossings.
A Michigan appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit against the Grand Trunk Western Railroad stemming from a 2012 incident in which a teenager was struck by a train.
The case was brought by Jacob Marion who was 14 at the time he was hit. A court summary of the case indicated that Marion was walking down the tracks in Wyandotte in suburban Detroit while wearing headphones and listening to music.
A trial court judge had dismissed the case in 1989, citing evidence that the train crew sought to warn Marion but he didn’t respond.
In the appeals court decision, Judge Elizabeth Gleicher wrote that “a reasonable jury could conclude that [the] defendants had Jacob in plain sight and recognized his peril for a period of time sufficient to react so as not to strike him.”
The appeals court noted that although the train crew sounded the locomotive horn it did not activate the train’s emergency braking system in time to avoid striking Marion.
It also said trial judge Annette Berry in 1989 incorrectly interpreted a nineteenth century precedent as authority for dismissing the Marion’s case. The appeals court said tort law has come a long way since that case involving a deaf person struck by a hand car was decided in 1899.
The case was remanded to a Wayne County court for further consideration.
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.
The U.S. Surface Transportation Board has put the brakes on a move by short line holding company Watco to acquire Canadian National trackage in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The board said it was responding to concerns that some shippers, shipper associations, and a Wisconsin congressman have raised about the transaction.
CN plans to sell to Watco 650 miles of light density branches that once belonged to the Wisconsin Central.
Watco had said it wanted to begin operating the lines on June 30.
Two shipper groups have objected to the sale of Midwest branch and secondary mainlines by Canadian National to short line holding company Watco.
The Wisconsin Central Group and the Lake States Shippers Association have asked the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to deem the sale of 650 miles of track in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as a “significant” transaction that would require board review.
CN and Watco contend that the sale is exempt from STB review.
The shippers said they are taking no position on the merits of the CN-Watco deal, but said conditions attached to CN’s 2001 acquisition of Wisconsin Central could be applied to Watco.
Another objection by the shippers is that CN and Watco did not consult with them during the sale negotiations.
“The proposed transaction is ‘significant’ for the broad Great Lakes Forests Region and its communities and, in the present context is significant for the nation’s general system of railroad transportation as a whole. It is not a private matter to be resolved between and among private railroads behind closed doors,” wrote John Duncan Varda, the lawyer for Wisconsin Central Group and Lake States Shippers Association, in an STB filing.
Several other parties also sent letters to the STB asking regulators to review the CN-Watco transaction.
The letters caught some railroad industry observes off guard.
“I’m surprised that this is the least bit contentious. Sales of short line properties are always negotiated in private,” William Schauer, a rail consultant and former Wisconsin Central official, told Trains magazine.
Schauer believes the transaction will be good for shippers because they will receive better service and more attention from Watco than they would get from CN.
One industry observer believes the reaction to the line sale is in part a lingering legacy of the 2001 CN acquisition of Wisconsin Central.
In particular, shippers may still have grievances about the rapid operational changes CN made after buying WC.
Analyst Anthony B. Hatch told Trains that the way the changes were made upset many shippers and led to Wisconsin becoming a hotbed of anti-railroad sentiment.
Hatch believes that having Watco own the affected rail lines will be good for shippers because short lines hustle for local business.
“You’d think this would be a very positive thing,” he said. “For those who want more service up there, having a short line work hard for two loads a week is a good thing. Watco has a good reputation with customers.”
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