Today's DM&M

The current-day - well, 2000's anyway - Saginaw Division comprises of DM&M trackage around the Tri-Cities area of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. This includes Meredith Street (MX) in Saginaw, Carrollton and Zilwaukee, Bay City - including Wenona yard - and the branch to Midland, Mich. with Dow Chemical's large facility on the SE side of town. In reality this is the mid-Michigan former Penn Central trackage that continues to thrive today, with a diverse amount of traffic bolstered by large blocks of traffic for Dow. So too in my proto-freelanced world these lines provide the railroad with many revenue carloads to fill out the otherwise bridge-route nature of this secondary trunk on the CP Rail System.

The layout plan - courtesy of Bob Sprague -  fills a good portion of my (roughly) 13 foot by 27 foot basement train room. This dedicated space will someday in the future host monthly operating sessions, but in the interim I have many months - if not, years - of construction ahead of me. No matter, just as the original DM&M's surveying and construction crews battled the forests, wetlands, and weather (not to mention swarms of ravenous mosquitos and black flies) while they graded and placed track across the U.P. will I too make sure and steady progress in 1:87th scale. With the benchwork all up and Homasote subroadbed all down I've got a good head start, at least on the grading part.

The design is a twice-around, round-the-room schematic using the surround-staging concept as promoted by the LDSIG folks over the years. Having lots of hidden trackage can be problematic but access shouldn't be too much of an issue with a low foreground backdrop merely high-enough to block view of the trains parked behind. The four-track staging represents both Detroit to the south and Mackinaw City (and points west) to the north. There is also a provision to add a wye leading to additional staging track under the basement stairwell at a later point. The Midland Branch consists of two, six-foot by 24" sections making up a center peninsula - both double as FREEMO modules so part of the layout can "go on the road" to events.

The track plan was carefully developed using original 1971 Penn Central Detroit Division engineering department station maps and drawings for the area, as well as aerial and satellite photos of the current physical plant. Field trips to the area were also conducted to ensure accuracy, with some modeler's license applied to fit the various LDE's into the space as shown. Bob had to flip the industrial trackage to Gavilon Grain (former Peavey elevator) and the Lafarge cement terminal in Zilwaukee, as well as swap sides of Wenona yard's engine terminal but otherwise the plan is an accurate reflection of the prototype.

Operations will be largely based out of Wenona yard on Bay City's far north side, with locals to Midland and Saginaw operating daily from this mid-sized terminal. Road freights will swap blocks here, and a daily Detroit-Bay City manifest will round out the traffic into this facility. Interchange with foreign roads such as the Huron and Eastern, Lake State Railway and Canadian National will provide additional traffic, as well as seasonal unit grain moves and all-rail ore trains heading south. The Amtrak trains I noted in an earlier post will likewise require track time as they traverse the mainline.

Contemporary CP diesel power will be featured with GE ES44AC, EMD and GMD SD40-2, and GP38-2 locomotives, Union Pacific engines in pooled service, Amtrak GE P42 Genesis units on the varnish, and the occasional HESR and CN motors on transfer runs. On rare occasion, the famous Milwaukee Road #261 has been known to dust the right-of-way with her cinders pulling excursions to and from the scenic vacation areas in the northern areas of the Great Lakes. Quite a bit of variety to keep guests and operators entertained that is for certain.

My next installment will get into more details about the railroad, and hopefully show some in-progress photos as I go along with construction. In the meantime keep 'em upright and on the rails!

A great east-west route through Michigan

Years ago, a newspaper, the Lansing Republican, dated February 5, 1884, reprinted a story from the Grand Traverse Herald pointing out that the experiment to provide all-year service across the Straits by boat had failed, and that if a great east-west route were ever to be established through Michigan a bridge or tunnel would be required. The editor considered both as practicable; the only question in his mind was that of cost. Earlier, the dedication of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 gave Mackinac Bridge backers encouragement. A St. Ignace store owner in 1884 reprinted an artist’s conception of the famous New York structure in his advertising and captioned it “Proposed bridge across the Straits of Mackinac.”

Not lacking in enthusiasm what the early bridge proponents needed was capital - money is what make the world go round, or builds the world's infrastructure so we can traverse it. Good thing in 1:87 scale the amount of investment necessary to do so is factors below actual full-scale civil engineering, albeit with a smaller source of revenue to support it. As I noted in the previous installment the prototype crossing of the Straits of Mackinac suffered a number of false starts and setbacks over the decades prior to the bridge's construction in 1954 and opening to traffic in November of 1957. Had it not been for the interruption of World War II and the Korean conflict the crossing may have been completed years earlier.

In my miniature, 1:87-scale world (now under construction) the Roosevelt administration's W.P.A. had approved the state's request to construct a dual rail-highway crossing of the Straits, and the earlier, alternate Mackinac Bridge had been completed and opened for service just in time to support the surge of wartime rail traffic that followed Pearl Harbor. From the late 1930's into the postwar period both freight and passenger traffic surged as the Mackinac gateway route allowed trains to avoid the tangle of routes and delays inherent in traversing the Chicago terminal. Both the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads handed off many thousands of interchange trains to the surging DSS&A and Soo Line routes and gateways to the west.

Following the Penn Central merger of the two eastern behemoths in 1968 the challenges of maintaining an overbuilt eastern railroad network started to impact the line across the Straits. Deferred maintenance on the Penn Central as the carrier's finances continued to deteriorate lengthened running times, and derailments became increasingly common. The Soo Line Railroad - as well as its corporate parent, Canadian Pacific Railway - grew increasingly alarmed at the condition of its bankrupt southern and eastern connection, and with the USRA's blessing purchased the former Michigan Central route south to Detroit in 1974 from the Penn Central trustee.

The new line was reestablished as the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad Company for corporate and tax reasons. Largely a "paper railroad" under CPR ownership the DM&M began a large-scale renewal project on the former Michigan Central route, replacing miles of rail, thousands of crossties and trainloads of new ballast while also upgrading a majority of the route's signaling to speed both freight and passenger traffic along the line. Since 1971 Amtrak had assumed the nation's passenger trains from the private freight railroads and the Mackinac gateway was no exception. Trains 9-10 are presently Superliner-equipped running long-distance from Toledo, Ohio's Central Union Terminal through Detroit, Marquette, the Twin Ports of Duluth-Superior and onward to the Pacific Northwest. Local trains 394-395 ply much of the same route daily from Toledo and Detroit to the tri-cities of Saginaw-Bay City and Midland.

With the Soo Line's acquisition of the post-embargo Milwaukee Road in 1985 and later - with Canadian Pacific's absorption of its U.S. operations - the Detroit to Twin Ports route of the DM&M continues to serve the two peninsulas of the Great Lakes State. Now under the CPR banner, and with diverse products and unit-train commodities continuing to flow east and west and speedily so - avoiding the knot of terminal trackage within the Chicago region - the future of the rebuilt former Michigan Central and DSS&A lines have never looked brighter in this alternate reality world located in my basement. In my next installment we'll discuss more details about the railroad, and the Saginaw Division in particular. Until then, highball!