Along the Rail Line

A tourist operation in Charlotte, Michigan. I had an appointment at the hospital this morning, so I took a few pix of the train that lives in the middle of the campus. More information here .

Sunfield's about four miles down the way from Mulliken (Michigan, in both cases). The two towns are about the same size, and both live mostly between the tracks (CSX, these days) and highway M-43. Historically both are grain elevator towns and provided services to local farmers. The biggest physical difference between the villages is that our town spills over to the north of the railroad, while in Sunfield the rails define the town's northern boundry. As this photo shows.

As you can see, Kalamazoo's transportation center was built around the old train depot, which was originally built by the Michigan Central and long part of the New York Central system. Unfortunately, all the construction to accommodate the local and inter-city buses has largely obscured the gorgeous railroad building.

(That would be Maintenance of Way.) Stumbled on these loud fellows on the Amtrak main yesterday, round 'bout Galesburg. They were eastbound--which is to say, going from right to left. Grabbed the camera and snapped a couple shots. There was a third component to the set but circumstances kept me from photographing it. Definitely not my best photography ever, but sometimes you just go with what you find....

(That would be Maintenance of Way.) Stumbled on these loud fellows on the Amtrak main yesterday, round 'bout Galesburg. They were eastbound--which is to say, going from right to left. Grabbed the camera and snapped a couple shots. There was a third component to the set but circumstances kept me from photographing it. Definitely not my best photography ever, but sometimes you just go with what you find....

Gorgeous sunlight this morning, so I headed downtown and snapped off a bunch of photographs. The railfans call this the Pere Marquette mainline. Everyone else calls it CSX or Chessie.

Near Dimondale, Michigan. As you might guess from the auto racks parked on the tracks, this yard pretty much exclusively serves a General Motors final assembly plant. It's also within an easy walk of my former workplace.

Port Huron, Michigan. Paper mill with GT(!) locomotive on the left, a family in the middle, and the Ken Boothe Sr/Lakes Contender tug/barge on the St Clair River. Not to mention a bit of the big bridge. And Lake Huron hiding out there in the fog.

A couple Dash-8 40CWs pulling a train of mostly tank cars around the Marysville (Michigan) power plant. We'd been following it down the road when it crossed over and blocked the way. We waited, of course. 7913 & 7768 are the numbers on the locomotives. I regard myself as a recovering railfan, an affliction I consider an addiction.

We were eating breakfast at Freighters Restaurant in Port Huron when this train wandered by. Since I don't recall ever seeing a train on this line before, I hurried to the window and snapped this photo. The camera was set up for a very different photo, and that shows. Nonetheless, I really like this pic.

Downtown Mulliken on the left.

Headed for the post office to pick up the mail this afternoon and spotted this train coming across the field. So I grabbed the camera and snapped this photo.... Sounds easy, no? The description's a bit misleading, as the camera was set up to take photographs more or less in the dark--which definitely doesn't describe this photograph. I was able to recover the image, as you see, but it was pushing my processing skills. After slaving over the computer for a while I had an acceptable color image--albeit a bit washed out--because the camera and its new lens are pretty good at capturing detail. But it looks better in monochrome, so that's what you get. It blows up rather nicely, by the way .

The barely-visible building to the right is CCD Engineering, where they " design and build special machines ."

Photo taken 8/4/1990 at a Missabe Railroad Historical Society convention. Two Harbors, Minnesota.

Depends which locomotive you read.... At Sleepy Eye, Minnesota; photo taken 6/5/2007.

And my brother, Richard. Proctor's up the hill from Duluth. Photo taken 8/8/1987 during the Missabe Railroad Historical Society's annual convention. Scanned from a negative. I sometimes call myself a "recovering railfan." The reason most of my rail photographs are old is that I stopped chasing trains in the early 1990s.

An Alco RS3 at LS&I's Eagle Mills yard, in August of 1989. Photo taken during a tour with the DSS&A SIG of the Soo Line Historical and Technical Society. Scanned from a slide.

"Covered Wagons," the railfans call 'em. At Erie Mining Company, Hoyt Lakes, Minnesota. Photo taken 8/5/2006 during a Missabe Railroad Historical Society convention tour.