SRI Fall Color Tour - Petoskey to Fife Lake

[SW]

Yesterday rode the train from Petoskey to Fife Lake and return. Colors were not yet at peak in most places, although there was one stretch, maybe half a mile long, south of Elmira, where they were brilliant. Left Petoskey at 4 minutes past 10 am, with GLC 396 pulling on the south end of the train, and GLC 395 on the north end. Arrived in Fife Lake at about 12:50 PM. I did not take the side trip, which I am told went south about a mile past the high bridge across the Manistee River. Return left right on time at 4 pm, arriving back in Petoskey at 6:45 pm. Here's what I saw at the various sidings and spurs along the way:

-16 covered hoppers at Petoskey Plastics south of town
-a rusty siding (appeared to be maintained) at Amerigas in Petoskey (do they ever get shipments?)
-Holcim's old loadout at Elmira looked deserted. Any new news about future plans?
-nothing at Mancelona
-4 tankers on the north side of Kalkaska, nothing "downtown".
-at least one tanker at a spur at some natural gas installation about 2 miles south of Kalkaska. I never saw this going southbound, and barely caught it going northbound. Nor do I recall ever reading any info on it. It does appear on the birds eye view of Bing Maps; looks like there are a couple of spurs there.
-nothing at South Boardman

With the trip being about 63 miles each way, and 2:45 travel time, average speed was just under 25 mph.

[AARR]

Petoskey Plastics team track received 120 cars in 2014

Amerigas, formerly Petrolane and originally Petoskey Gas, moved from downtown Petoskey after the line to Charlevoix was abandoned (1984-86ish) do to the washout. Amerigas bought Petrolane in the early 1990's and rail service stopped shortly after and has never resumed as far as I know.

The cement terminal in Elmira has not received anything since around 2009. There is speculation that due to a merger between Holcim and Lafarge(?) service may resume in 2016. We'll see... Personally I think this seems like a good location for a frac sand transload but it seems the frac sand from WI is shipped by rail or truck to a port in WI, shipped across Lake MI, then trucked from there to the mines in northern MI.

Mancelona is a transload for East Jordan Plastics and had received around 15ish cars YTD as of June.

There are several tank car transloads on GLC. I'm guessing the four you saw in Kalkaska are for methanol which is shipped in for well drilling.

The gas plant south of Kalkaska has a pair of 5 spot loading tracks. After many years of no service Merritt Energy resumed service in 2014 and is shipping 10-15 cars a week of butylone(?). This plant has had multiple owners/operators since it opened in the late 1970's.

The team track with concrete dock in South Boardman was built to receive box cars of bagged drilling sand. It may have received a few car loads but most of the sand was unloaded at a similar team track with dock in Kalkaska. This was steady although low number business for many years but came to an end around 2010.

-16 covered hoppers at Petoskey Plastics south of town
-a rusty siding (appeared to be maintained) at Amerigas in Petoskey (do they ever get shipments?)
-Holcim's old loadout at Elmira looked deserted. Any new news about future plans?
-nothing at Mancelona
-4 tankers on the north side of Kalkaska, nothing "downtown".
-at least one tanker at a spur at some natural gas installation about 2 miles south of Kalkaska. I never saw this going southbound, and barely caught it going northbound. Nor do I recall ever reading any info on it. It does appear on the birds eye view of Bing Maps; looks like there are a couple of spurs there.
-nothing at South Boardman

[Raildudes dad]

I may have been the conductor the last time the Amerigas siding was used. Last trip of the day, we were running around our passenger train going very slow due to the tight curves. There was an unusual noise so the engineer immediately stopped. I climbed down, looked at the lead axle, looked up the engineer leaning our his window and said, we are on the ground. We had spread the rails approaching the south switch:(

[EWRice]

I may have been the conductor the last time the Amerigas siding was used. Last trip of the day, we were running around our passenger train going very slow due to the tight curves. There was an unusual noise so the engineer immediately stopped. I climbed down, looked at the lead axle, looked up the engineer leaning our his window and said, we are on the ground. We had spread the rails approaching the south switch:(

I think it must just be you.