Jerry,
Thanks for the work. Great bunch of material!
The photo of a Northern Region coal empty passing through Durand MI on the Ann Arbor RR was interesting, but I was wondering if anybody knew why PC would route trains from the Bay City/Saginaw area to Toledo this way. They could have used two all-PC routes:
- Continue south on the Saginaw branch to Jackson, east on the main line to Detroit, then south to Toledo.
- From Bay City to Saginaw, east to Denmark Junction, south through Vassar and Lapeer to Detroit, then south to Toledo.
How long did this routing (over Ann Arbor) last?
By the way, the photo shows the train actually running on Grand Trunk Western's Holly Sub. The Ann Arbor line originally came up from Toledo about a mile east of the Durand diamond, paralleled GTW to about where the photographer was standing, crossed GTW roughly in line with that communications tower and again paralleled GTW all the way to Owosso (PC connection). Sometime previous to the date on the photograph, GTW bought the AA line from approximately Pitt Road (where AA came up) to Owosso and later abandoned most of it. AA trains then operated via trackage rights over GTW between the new junction at Pitt and another new junction at San (east side of Owosso). So, what we're seeing in that photo was actually PC trackage rights over Ann Arbor on top of AA trackage rights over GTW.
Bob T.