Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Ann Arbor Railroad

I know that I have posted about the Ann Arbor Railroad here before. One of its railyards is near where I work and occasionally I will see the engines parked there. Tonight was one of those nights.

This is an Electromotive GP-38 Model Engine. This represents most of the current Ann Arbor Railroad's inventory.

The Second Engine is an Electromotive GP-39-2 and was owned by Union Pacific at one point.

The current iteration of the Ann Arbor Railroad was started in 1988. It is a short-line connector railroad that connects Ann Arbor and Toledo. It mostly carries automotive related cargo but there are other cargoes that it carries. It is a direct descendent of the Michigan Interstate Railroad and not so direct descendent of the original Ann Arbor Railroad.

The original Ann Arbor Railraod was chartered in 1895 as a successor to the Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan Railway. In 1905, it was acquired by the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton which went bankrupt 3 years later. The Ann Arbor remained independent for many years afterwards. It went from Toledo to Frankfort Michigan. In 1963, it was acquired by the DT&I again which itself was owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Eventually, the Penna merged with the New York Central and was later absorbed into Conrail. The Ann Arbor itself went bankrupt in 1976 and was taken over by the State of Michigan. Eventually, it was privatized and became the current Ann Arbor (although a shell of its former glory).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think your history may be off - the DTI was never owned by the Penn that I know of. The DTI was bought by the Grand Trunk sometime in the 70's and the GT was then acquired by the CN in the 90's...

Mikoyan said...

At one point, it was owned by Henry Ford who turned around and sold it to the Penn in 1929. They owned it until they were divested to Conrail in the 1970's.

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/Stories/DT&I-TheRailroadThatWentNoPlacePart2.htm