Michigan railroads: going deep

When it comes to railroads, I never met a state I didn’t like. They’re all interesting, and for you, that’s especially true of the one you call home.

Trains magazine has acknowledged as much a number of times, with special issues devoted to a handful of states that somehow seem more compelling than others. Or at least seem more compelling to the editors. I’m thinking of our first, the all-Nevada tribute so beautifully wrought in January 1978 by photographer and writer Ted Benson. Or the all-Iowa issue of April 1986 (“Ya gotta know the territory!”). Or our California blowout in June 1999. Just this past August we gave West Virginia the full-dress treatment.

I’m not lobbying for an all-Michigan issue (Editor Jim Wrinn will turn me down flat), but a recent speaking engagement led me to reflect on my own idiosyncratic home state. I say “idiosyncratic” because the confluence of geography and economics conspired to make Michigan a bit, well, “different.” With two peninsulas surrounded on three sides by water, the growth of railroads was tightly confined except for the trunk lines that snuck across the bottom of the Lower Peninsula (Michigan Central, Grand Trunk Western, Pere Marquette, and Wabash). Otherwise, for much of its history the state was known for oddballs of railroading, like logging and timber pikes, railroad carferries, big tunnel projects, and the mining roads of the U.P.

I thought a lot about this a couple of weeks ago when I attended the 12^th Michigan Railroad History Conference, a remarkably robust event held every two years in various cities around the state. The event is first-class in every way, with excellent hotel facilities, interesting speakers, trips and tours, and a program committee that works hard to make the presentations rigorous even as they’re entertaining. The group has an advisory relationship with the granddaddy of these kinds of things, the Lexington Group in Transportation History.

This year’s event held Oct. 4-6 in delightful Bay City and led by historian Mark C. Worrall, was a case in point. The lineup of presentations showed just how eclectic Michigan can be: Pere Marquette operations in the Thumb, small-scale logging and mining carferries, the relationship of foundries to railroads, the tragic derailment of a New York Central passenger train at Trenton in 1951, the Delray Connecting Railroad (a Detroit institution), interurbans of Saginaw and Bay City, and the curious world of steam dummies. 

My own program was just as Michigan-centric: a review of passenger train service between Detroit and Chicago, mostly during the 1940s and ’50s, when the Detroit Arrow, the Twilight Limited, and the Pere Marquettes held sway. I learned a lot by doing it, especially about how little PM or GTW actually cared about the Detroit-Chicago market, and how the real action centered on NYC’s battle with the Pennsylvania (via its Wabash partner). I can’t vouch for how well my presentation was received, but I enjoyed every moment I put into it.

And that’s the point of something like this, the joy of digging into your own backyard, finding something interesting, and sharing it with like-minded individuals. I have to hand it to the board of directors of the Michigan conference. Against a number of odds, I’m sure, they have managed to sustain a very enriching and entertaining series of programs every other year since the first one in 1987 at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. That’s quite a track record.

If you’d like more information on the conference, check out the group’s website. And while you’re at it, I’d love to hear about other state-centric railroad history programs. I assume Michigan isn’t the only one, although I suspect these are rare. I’d love to go to such a program about Texas, or Pennsylvania, or Colorado. I could go on and on. They’re all great! Drop me an email at kkeefe@trains.com.