Tourist Train on Michigan Southern

Also on Sunday morning of last weekend we stopped by Tecumseh, Michigan, for the Michigan Southern Railroad.  They run a scenic train with vintage heritage equipment about five miles to Clinton, Michigan.

Heading up the train is Western Maryland 75 a restored GE 44 ton engine.  Chicago, South Shore & South Bend No. 1 is a converted 65-foot mill gondola a NYC. The railroad also has a New York Central  bay window caboose and a New Haven caboose.  

The train is shown in Tecumseh.

Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon

One Day in Painesville

The wayback machine as you requested has landed us in Painesville, Ohio. It’s a little fuzzy as to whether it is late 1967 or early 1968.

Whatever the case, the era of the New York Central Railroad is in its final months so let’s enjoy an all NYC scene while we can.

There are four geeps on the property near the passenger station along with three cabooses and a handful of freight cars.

The top image is full frame while the bottom image is cropped to focus in on that line of motive power and cabooses.

Today most of these tracks are gone and you wouldn’t find CSX leaving four high-nose locomotives sitting around let along four locomotives of any kind.

Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited passes here six days a week but has never stopped to pick up passengers. The boarding platforms visible in these images are long gone.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Feeling Out of Place?

The New York Central had a line through Alliance but the big player in town was the Pennsylvania Railroad with two major routes, including one that carried the premier PRR passenger trains between Chicago and New York.

The NYC line through Alliance was just a branch line operation.

So I wonder if this former NYC caboose still in its original colors and markings felt a little out of place in this former Pennsy stronghold.

Notice it still bears the NYC slogan “road to the future.” That future turned out to be a merger with the Central’s chief rival, a marriage that turned out to be rather rocky and had little future of its own.

To be accurate, this is Penn Central caboose 21538. It was photographed on Feb. 24, 1973.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

They Still Had Truss Rods

These three New York Central cabooses were in Painesville in the late 1960s. Amazingly they still have truss rods.

Photograph by Robert Farkas