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There was also a Standard Oil depot on the Frankfort side of the lake into at least the late 1950s.

There are a couple of color photos of it in Steve Hile's book on the UTLX tank car fleet.

Nearly twenty years ago, I produced and sold a small run of HO scale decals to stripe and letter Ludington & Northern SW8 #16 in its original scheme, as well as its later variants. It covered its time on the Ann Arbor Railroad, the Michigan Southern (and its brief stint in Muskegon on the Michigan S...

'been kinda quiet around here this summer, so here's a picture of the newly-released Rapido Trains USRA boxcar. http://www.fritzmilhaupt.com/bbgraphics/RapidoUSRAPMBoxcar81725-Broadside-jfm-1sm.jpg The detailing is exceptional- it even has the correct Carmer coupler lift levers. My only comment woul...

I see that they've trotted out the old "passenger service from SE Michigan" idea again.

Gee, has it been sixteen months, already?

John N. "Jack" Ozanich of Battle Creek, a retired GTW/CN engineer, passed away early in the afternoon of the 29th from lung cancer at age 76. Jack was known for his HO scale Atlantic Great Eastern model railroad and his 3-3/4" scale Sandy Ridge and Clear Lake Railroad, but mostly for being Jack. In ...

It occurs to me that the Sanford Historical Society's facility, with its rolling stock and the former Sanford depot, is/was most likely too close to the river to have escaped harm. I imagine that it would come down to a matter of elevation. Obviously, the folks in Sanford have bigger things to be co...

Talk of all of this grade crossing work SE of 28th and Division can't help but remind me of the several millions of dollars of work that went into reworking the grade crossings and traffic lights at 44th and Kalamazoo oh so many years ago. I don't recall whether they actually finished all of the wor...

Downtown Williston, North Dakota.

That there is Williston's Railroad Park, near their Amtrak depot.

Very nice! And you didn't hold off on installing a switch, either-- I've known a couple of live steamers who had no problem doing all of the fiddly work to build steam locomotives, but ran out of enthusiasm when it came time to cut in the first switch. Track work just wasn't interesting enough to th...

Thanks, guys!

Being gone by 1981 makes sense, because I started driving around 1982-83, and I was unable to find it then.

I have fuzzy memories from the late 1960s/early 1970s of my father driving me past the former Michigan Central roundhouse that used to stand facing Buchanan Street in Grand Rapids. It was north of Albany Street, but south of the Franklin Street overpass, across the street from what was then left of ...

The GTW yard arrangement between Plainfield/Leonard and Lafayette Streets can be seen on the Sanborn maps in the Library of Congress online collection, specifically at https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4114gm.g04023191201/?sp=56 This is the arrangement as of 1912, but from what I'm seeing, I don't think...

Back in college, we used to refer to anyone who loudly proclaimed an over-inflated view of their talents or accomplishments as a Zug Island Prom King (or Prom Queen). Especially in situations where the bar for competence was low.

I was surprised this year. I went in looking for exactly one thing (a Proto BL2 in Monon paint) and not really expecting to find it, but came away with a lot more. I'd figured that I'd catch up with the folks I usually talk to at the show, and that would be enough to make a good day of it. While I d...

Has anyone compiled a list of the excursions that the Bluewater Chapter NRHS ran?

I figure that I rode about a dozen, over the years, which didn't cover anywhere near the amount of rare mileage they ultimately managed to run over.

Nov. 30, 2019 - John R. Milhaupt, former Grand Rapids Herald and WOOD TV news photographer, owner of Colorama Studio and 20+ year Editor of West Michigan Railroad Historical Society Waybill , aged 90 in Grand Rapids, Mich. During his time with Robinson Studio in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he to...

Ron Sebastian, owner and proprietor of Des Plaines Hobbies (Des Plaines, Ill.) passed away suddenly Wednesday morning (Oct. 2), according to his daughter and as reported in several online modelers' discussion groups. No obituary has been posted at this writing. Ron was a former employee of All Natio...

Somewhere around here I have a scan of the photo Dad shot of the Christmas Eve fire that destroyed the YMCA at Wyoming Yard, but it is eluding me at the moment. The fire was believed to have been caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette that touched off paper in a wastebasket. The only fatality wa...

I'll miss them- they were the most reliable local-ish source I had for advance orders and special orders after Michigan Model Train Center closed.

The line between Baldwin and Kaleva, over the High Bridge, was removed starting in late 1955. All traffic north of Baldwin was then routed via Walhalla to Manistee, then back onto the original alignment from Kaleva northward to Traverse City and Petoskey. Passenger service north of Traverse City thr...