Rambling Down the Track

A recent radio commercial spoke of the efficiency of rail transport in our oil-starved country. I think it was CSX that was advertising, and in it they claim that their trains can move one ton of cargo 432 miles on one gallon of diesel fuel. That is impressive, and it took me back to my observations of the abandonment of the railroad that I witnessed, specifically in my beloved northern Michigan. I always wondered why?

I've always enjoyed trains, and virtually all of the little towns I love in northern Michigan were founded along a trunk-line of some little railroad. There were no monopolies in the rail business in 19th-century Michigan. Dozens of companies owned rail throughout the north; providing transport mainly for the lumber industry. When the giant white pines were all but erased, miles and miles of track were pulled and the right-of-ways sold or abandoned. The tourist trade kept some alive, but only for awhile.

It's interesting to search out some of these lost railroad beds, and think back to life in those times. Of course, many of these locations are obvious; the ones that have been turned into bike/hike paths. (And I totally endorse that kind of "recycling"). Or a building that was unmistakably a depot in it's past, but now with only sidewalks and a street running by it. But there are many that take real detective work to find. After 100 years or longer, they may just be nothing more that a raised berm snaking through what is now a forest. Those are kind of neat to locate.

Right here within a mile of my house, the old Detroit Urban Railway used to run up from the city to the little farm towns in mid-Michigan. It had a stop in my town, and I can still go out and find the right-of-way. I've even found an old concrete bridge over a little trout stream that sits in the middle of a woods. It sure looks out of place now as you first walk up to it and wonder how and why it's there!

To get back to my main point; I can certainly understand the end of the lumber era closing most of these railroads. I don't think anyone back then could visualize a future need with the lumber virtually gone. But when I watched miles and miles of rail being pulled in the 1980's and 90's, I thought; what a short-sighted move! We had already lived through the big oil crisis of the 70's, and we could definitely see that oil prices were only going to go in one direction. Why pull all of that track? Why sell off the right-of-ways? Did anyone stop to think about how difficult and expensive it would be to try and buy it back someday? Guess not. But I bet someone is thinking about it now.

When I was a kid, I would visit with my aunt and uncle who still own a cottage on the west shore of Mullet Lake, just south of Cheboygan. On a lake, the "front yard" is the water side. The "back yard" is where the garage is, and where you park the car, etc.. Well, in this case, they also had a train track running through the back yard, which followed the entire shoreline for miles. What a scenic little railroad that was! I still remember fondly how my cousin and I would be out swimming and from a few miles away we'd hear the first whistle. Then it was a mad dash to get out of the lake and through the yard to get near the train as it ran by. Mostly we'd just pump our arms to get the engineer to blow the whistle, but if we were quick enough, we'd place a couple of pennies on the track and turn some U.S. legal tender into little copper potato chips!

That little train ran once a day in the summer. A big one was maybe twenty cars long. Sometimes only three or four though. I guess that's why it was doomed, and so in 1984 they pulled the track. Now, many semi-trucks run up and down U.S. 27 right next to where the track used to be, and now those trucks are costing a fortune to operate. And they can't even flatten a penny!