My operation is Conrail over the Muskegon Secondary in 1978 (I started out on 7/1/78 back in June 08, at the one year anniversary I'm at 10/5/78). Of course Conrail never operated the Muskegon Secondary, it was sold to Grand Trunk in 1976 when Conrail didn't include the branch in their system.
Penn Central attempted to abandon a great deal of Michigan branches back in 1973. This was for the most part denied by the ICC, but in my world, they were successful. My 1978 map of Conrail's Michigan Division is based on Conrail having included all the post 1973 PC track. Conrail was still started on 4/1/76, but included a number of branches that didn't make it into the system in real life. Among these branches is the Muskegon Secondary.
Customers on my layout are all based on actual Muskegon customers, most of which probably stopped shipping by rail in the 70s and 80s. Seeing that none of them produced a great deal of carloads, I added a bit of traffic to make the operation more believable. The largest customer is Georgia Pacific. Wood pulp from Europe is transloaded from ship to boxcars at the 11th St. Dock on Muskegon Lake, and sent down to the Georgia Pacific paper mill in Kalamazoo. There is also the TV Ramp, which handles only a half dozen or a dozen trailers a week. Most of this is bound for east coast destinations, and this traffic connects to TV16 at Kalamazoo.
My Conrail operations in Muskegon include two crews, the morning yard job, on duty M-Sat at 0700, and the afternoon road freight, on duty at 1800 M-Sat. The road freight, MUKM, runs to Mosel Yard in Kalamazoo, via Grand Rapids. The same crew returns north as KMMU, running through Grand Rapids and switching customers at Ravenna and Conklin on the Muskegon Secondary as needed.
Here are a series of photos from the afternoon/evening of 10/4/78. The lighting in the basement isn't too great, so I went with the flash on the camera. It has the added bonus of hiding any crap in the background!
1. A C&O yard job has just delivered two empty Hooker tank cars to Conrail to be sent south, and is idling at the 11th St Dock office to deliver paperwork. The morning Conrail yard job, YMMU01, is done for the day, with the 9073 tied up at the office with its waycar. In the background, at upper left are the diesel "house" tracks and the 11th St Dock, at upper right is the 9th St Dock and the relatively new TV Ramp. The C&O yard job is sitting on the C&O's South Horn industrial track. The Secondary curves off to the lower right in the photo. The track layout is all based on Sanborn maps from the 20s, with a few dock tracks at 11th St removed for spacial reasons, and the TV Ramp track added in.
2. A close up view of 11th St. going track by track left to right, a water tank car and sand car, power for MUKM, GP38 7690 was used as yard power while the 9073 was away for its 90 day inspection and has been sitting on the engine tracks for a few days now, two tracks of empty wood pulp boxcars, empty dock warehouse track (almost always has cars spotted on it), a pair of ballast hoppers with a camp car behind them, and finally a bad order NYC boxcar with an old PRR NC-5 caboose parked behind it.
3. Its just past 1800, and the crew of MUKM is bringing the power past the dock office. The outbound train is typically assembled by the morning job at Muskegon Yard, a little two track affair about a mile south of here. Power is F7 1718 and F7B 3874. The rust free red Pinto helps date the photo!
4. The power for MUKM has just crossed over from the running track to the main track at Clay St and continues down toward the yard. (The UP trailer at right just about qualifies as an antique, its one of a few random holdovers from when my brother Ed and I had a trainset in our family's basement in the mid 80s.)
5. The power has tied onto the outbound train left sitting on the running track, and MUKM is ready to head south. The train consist includes a load from the TV Ramp of Shaw-Walker office furniture, the two empty tanks from the C&O, two empty BN lumber boxcars from Brunswick, and three CR boxcars of wood pulp bound for Georgia Pacific. Hope you enjoyed stepping into my 1978 Muskegon!
