40 Years after the Carferries: Abandoned Remnants of the Ann Arbor Railroad
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- Опубліковано 9 жов 2022
- In 1982, nine decades of history came to an end as the Ann Arbor Railroad's network of carferries shut down. Forty years later, and I wanted to revisit "Boat Landing" and document what remains today. The abandoned portion of the 'Annie' is now mostly the Betsie Valley Trail, and can still be enjoyed today on foot or on a bike! I also used some slides I own, showing what things looked like when trains still ran to Benzie County.
Went To Frankfort Last August in 2022! Beautiful place!
Nice combination of stills, live action and stills of the ANN ARBOR RR. THANKS!!
The state of Michigan purchased most of the Ann Arbor RR to keep it from being abandoned after its October, 1973 bankruptcy filing. The state chose to keep the Detroit Toledo & Ironton (the AA's former parent railroad) as the operator. Politics intervened and Conrail became the operator on April 1, 1976. Conrail siphoned as much traffic away from the AA as they could. The MV Viking ran on a limited schedule. Michigan Interstate Railway Company was the designated operator of the Ann Arbor RR from October, 1977 until April 26, 1982 when they halted service north of Ann Arbor. The car ferries never ran again. Michigan Interstate lived up to its promise of restoring the lost traffic but the state of Michigan did not live up to its contractual obligation to rehabilitate the track. As a result, most of the line was 10 MPH which caused costs to skyrocket until Michigan Interstate could not sustain the losses and shut down the line north of Ann Arbor on April 26, 1982.
UA-cam recommended me this video, I’m not from the US or the area, but I was absolutely captivated by this video and how professionally produced it is. Well done!
Thank you so much! This is my first attempt at an almost 'documentary' type video, I'm grateful to hear that you like it!
A wonderful video that illustrates the history of the Ann Arbor railroad in Frankfort and Elberta. So sad that the car ferries are gone now along with the trains that loaded railcars on and off them. Michigan will never be the same.😒
Thank you! The ferry slips were torn down a few years ago…it’s amazing how much of the history is gone today.
Amazing video. Thank you.
Thanks, Drayton!
Outstanding. I greatly appreciate your work.
This is a well done video. It’s sad that I wasn’t able to see the Ann Arbor at its peak. With my grandma telling me stories of TF1 and FT2 passing through the small city of Mesick. I hope one of these days the line would return. But that’s a breath away now. All we can do is remember all the remains of the line. From bridges to the GP35 still hauling till this day.
Very impressive video work.
Thank you, I really appreciate it!
Outstanding content. Glad to see they didn’t completely do away with the turntable. Thanks for sharing 👍
I rode the Arthur Atkinson over to Kewanuee, Wisconsin in the early 80s. Loved watching them load and unload all of those rail cars.
Very nice, but I think you could have put in some older pictures of the car ferries, and maybe even some recent pictures of the City of Milwaukee now in Manistee. The photography was awesome. Loved the drone footage.
Wonderful video! From the line in Howell and the old hardware, depot and AnnPere interchange points and it's old locomtoves it is easy to forget the Ann Arbor Line was truly a Car Ferry service as much as a railroad. The sad part is the true lack of relics. We have stuff at the depot museum, and of course GLC and the SRI as well as watco have their fair cut of stock and locos but not as many solid/metal/hardware AA relics are on the market as one would like. Managed myself a uniform button though from like the steam era. Another thing that no longer exists of that railroad.
Very Nice Video! 👍👍👍 That train at the Beginning was Flying!
Thanks! They certainly were…my photo from there didn’t turn out, as my shutter speed was counting on a slower train! I only waded halfway into the river…
Thanks so much for posting this! I have not been back to Elberta since 1974, when I was 11 years old and those GP35's were 10. The ferry that was docked there that day was the Viking. So bizarre to see the turn table, is now in the middle of a play ground! I have some photos from that day that my brother took on my slide show video. I stated in that video it was 1975, my error, it was 1974.
I’m glad the turntable was just filled in and added to the park, instead of being paved over or something like that!
@@peterandben I agree 100%
Awesome Job on this video!!!
Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Excellent and informative video!
Much appreciated!
Great video. Very well done!
Thank you!
fyi: The carferries were in ELBERTA, not Frankfort! I know, my dad worked on them and I grew up two blocks from the boat docks.
As noted in the video.
✌🚂🚞🚞🚞👍
so are those geep 35s former AA?
Yes. 385-391-393 currently active, and 390-392-394 out of service currently. But 6/10 surviving is not a bad ratio!
do they come here in plymouth michigan also canton?
No, the AA (some now GLC) runs further west through Ann Arbor and on south to Toledo.
Thanks for posting, people need to remember their history and what used to be and why something exists today, I'm from Stratford Ontario and as much as we're proud of our theater and our Park system which is absolutely great and I won't take anything from it, it makes me very angry and people say oh it's a theater That Built This City, got to tell you it was the railroad and the Canadian national and before that grand trunk shops, but wasn't for the railroad Stratford Ontario would not exist, other than being some little Backwater town, during the Depression the city did not suffer too much because of the railroad and during World War II it even got a bigger boost, a sad day when they close the shops, butt hurt politicians and poor management caused the demise of Canadian National Railway in Stratford, there's a damn good book published called Railway Stratford, if you can get a hold of this that will give you the big picture, I did enjoy your video about the Ann Arbor Railroad, I love the history, as a Railroader sorry I went off in a bit of a rant LOL, I do love the railroad as a CN employee
And as someone who lives along the AA line who had visited Stratford, I can say that despite the trip being about the theater and it being entirely out of the way, one could still see the Stratford shops (what was left of them from the road) and i left also one CNR lamp heavier than I crossed the border with. That was a fun time. The lamp is the only one I have running on true lamp oil and it works just as good as it would have in the 1930s. Wondering if it was one of a pair of signaling lamps in a steam loco. Stratford is at heart, a town built on the Railroad no matter how much it has changed since then.