by AARR » Sat Dec 05, 2009 11:51 am
During MIGN era there were quite a few small customers that dotted the line from Cadillac to Petoskey.
MIGN had only one customer in Traverse City until they took over Chessie's track. They delivered a carload of feed once a week to that customer.
During ferry service years, MIGN operated a pair of trains from Cadillac to Petoskey. While they were scheduled to depart their terminals, meet and swap crews, and return to their home terminals, it didn't always work that way. Sometimes they'd run a train in one direction, rest 8 hours, then run the train back. Or they may send another crew (the whole 130 miles) and bring the train back.
After the natural gas plant opened around 1978ish, they also operated a night turn from Cadillac to Kalkaska and back. For a while the gas was trucked to a loading platform at Walton Jct and loaded into rail cars there. Later, they built a relatively long spur to the plant where they could load as many as 10 cars at a time. This business never took off like they thought and at its peak loaded around 8-10 cars per week. Most years it loaded half that number which were shipped to the refinery in Alma.
A lot of well drilling materials were delivered to Kalakska in particular but also a few other loacations up and down the line. Inbound clay, frac sand, methanol, and pipe formed most of the traffic.
When TSBY took over in 1984 until TSBY sold to Mr. Shepherd and partners in 1992 traffic switched to truck so by early 1990's there were only a handful of customers left between Cadillac and Petoskey and another handful on the Traverse City branch.
Dundee (or Holnam) cement built a terminal in Elmira in the early 1990's which produced 1,000 cars a year for a few years but trucks grabbed some of the business reducing rail traffic to about half that by around 2000.
Integrity Iron started rail service in the early 2000's and for a few years was shipping 10-20 cars per week. But they were bought out by Rifkin (in Saginaw) and they switched to trucking to their Saginaw yard where the load into railcars there.
Anyway, there's a few tidbits that I hope helps.
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...