nailhed: Search results for Grand Trunk Railroad

November, 2009.

One day Crawly and I decided to take a road-trip up into Michigan's "Thumb" area, since I had never really explored it too well. There was a large industrial complex in Port Huron that looked like it might be abandoned, so obviously I had to go mess with it. I soon found out that it was the Grand Trunk Railroad's Port Huron Car Shops; in other words, where they sent their locomotives and rolling stock for repairs.

Port Huron is Michigan's easternmost city, and it sits at the mouth of the St. Clair River, at the southern end of Lake Huron. Port Huron's origins stretch back to the year 1686 when the French built Fort St. Joseph here. The fort burned, and the garrison decided to relocate to the Straits of Mackinac in 1688.

This area began to see permanent settlement again in 1790, and in 1814 Fort Gratiot was constructed where Fort St. Joseph had been. The town around it was renamed Port Huron in 1837. One webpage calls it "A Port City Built by the Railroad" because after the era of fortification was over, the town continued to thrive as an important crossing on an international trade route.

As I briefly explained in an earlier post, the Grand Trunk Railroad was completed between Detroit and Port Huron by 1859. Via a car ferry across the St. Clair River to Sarnia, it also stretched 800 miles east to Portland, Maine. As MichiganRailroads.com explains, the Grand Trunk then began branching out across southeastern Michigan:

In 1869 the Grand Trunk built west from downtown Port Huron towards Flint. Other roads to reach town were the Port Huron and Northwestern from Bad Axe in 1879, the Pere Marquette's Almont branch in 1882, and the Port Huron and Northwestern from Saginaw via Marlette in 1889. Later in 1916, the Detroit, Bay City & Western reached the city from Bay City in 1916 and its related road, the Port Huron & Detroit went south from town in 1918.

It was also in 1859 that a young Thomas Edison got his first job working as a newspaper boy on the Detroit to Port Huron line, where he was exposed to the use of the telegraph. Edison grew fascinated by the technology and decided to become an inventor himself. By 1879, the Grand Trunk had reached Chicago, and the era of American steam railroading was in full swing.

This particular room looked like maybe a stripping or painting area:

Luckily there is no shortage of people interested in the obscure ins and outs of railroading, so there are plenty of websites chronicling the histories of each railroad, and the Grand Trunk itself even has a few dedicated to it. One such website says the Grand Trunk (GTRR) was among the last railroads in North America to run steam locomotives. Unfortunately, most railfan pages are dedicated to the roads, the locomotives, and the depots--not so much the mundane buildings like these.

Suzette Bromley wrote that the GTRR built their first car shops in 1882, actually on the site of the former Fort Gratiot, but that large impressive complex was nearly demolished by the Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913. What remained standing of the ten-acre complex was subsequently annihilated in a devastating fire two weeks later.

According to the HAER's Lower Peninsula of Michigan Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, the replacement car shops you see here were built on new land donated by local citizens in 1915-1916, when a public appeal raised $110,000 for the GTRR to rebuild after the disaster. I find it incredible that citizens would be throwing money at a railroad company, but okay.

The GTRR decided to rebuild the facilities at this location, which was adjacent to the railyard that served the St. Clair River Tunnel. The address of the offices was 2801 Minnie Street.

The wooden construction of these older buildings on site had me thinking they could date as far back as the 1860s, but apparently I was way off:

Google Books turned up a mention of this facility in the January 12, 1918 Railway Review, at which time construction of the new car shops was almost complete. The article said that this new home was much bigger than the old works that was destroyed by fire.

It had a powerplant, two passenger car shops, a shop for steel freight cars and one for wooden freight cars, a cabinet shop, a blacksmith & machine shop, woodmill, dry lumber stores, general stores, dry kiln, paint store, battery charging house, repair track yard with 200 car capacity, and of course the offices. Construction of the project was overseen by the GTRR's Chief Engineer, Mr. H.R. Safford.

MichiganRailroads.com says that this complex closed in 2001.

Before the St. Clair River Tunnel between Port Huron and Sarnia was built, the Grand Trunk's link to Canada was hampered by having to unload cargo from the train cars and put it aboard a ship to the other side of the river. In order to streamline this logistics hurdle, Bromley said that the GTRR came up with something called the "Swing Ferry," which could take the railcars themselves aboard, eliminating the need to unloading and reloading at the shore.

Furthermore it operated uniquely by employing the river's strong current; the ferry was attached to a cable that was anchored near Fort Gratiot, and when released from mooring, would drift downstream to a dock on the opposite bank. It was the first ferry of its kind, and stayed in use until 1867.

This large shop with its immense traveling crane was where the major repairs and rebuilds were carried out.

This chamber was almost undoubtedly a sandblasting booth:

The screw conveyors visible in the floor I presume were for collecting waste sands and residues, and moving them to disposal bins:

We found most of the buildings to be wide open, so going in and out of them was pretty easy. I was still wary however of the fact that we were essentially in or adjacent to what could be an active railyard, so we exercised a full measure of discretion. My ass didn't feel like getting peppered with rock salt today.

This facility has been demolished since my visit. Here is an aerial view showing what the site used to look like:

Image from Google Earth

CLICK for part two

References:
Lower Peninsula of Michigan Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, HAER (1976)
Railway Review, Volume 62 (January 12, 1918), p. 71
Port Huron, Michigan: "A Port City Built by the Railroad," by Suzette Bromley
http://detroit1701.org/Fort%20St.%20Joseph,%20Port%20Huron.html
http://gtw.railfan.net

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/Stations/CountyStations/St.ClairStations/PortHuronArea/PortHuronMI.htm
http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/Stations/CountyStations/St.ClairStations/PortHuronArea/FortGratiotCarShopsMI.htm

Photos date from 2005-2007.

Back when I passed through Lansing more often, the attractive Grand Trunk Railroad Lansing Depot was one of the things on my radar. It took a couple of tries, but I eventually got in.

According to michiganrailroads.com, there was no railroad access at all to the city of Lansing when it was declared the new state capitol in 1847; statesmen (and postal deliveries) had to get here via stagecoach or by private carriage, which goes to show how inconsequential this town was at first. Naturally new lines were planned, but Lansing did not get rail service until the early 1860s. After that however, "they came all at once, from seven directions, over a period of 16 years."

This particular depot however did not come about until 1902, and even then it was only precipitated as a result of the announcement by Ransom E. Olds that he would be constructing his large Diamond REO Motor Works here, on the other side of the tracks.

I have read elsewhere however that it was built to replace an existing depot that was smaller, and more utilitarian. At any rate, this depot opened on January 20, 1903--making it 111 years old this year. According to the book R.E. Olds and Industrial Lansing by Michael Rodriguez, it was the second brick passenger depot to open in Lansing. The Diamond REO factory was demolished long ago, but in its heyday it set this neighborhood's tone as a unique, bustling sector of the capitol city.

Though this station was decommissioned on December 30, 1971, it was converted to a restaurant and President Gerald R. Ford (the only Michigander to ever occupy the Oval Office) dined here during a "whistle-stop" campaign tour, on May 15, 1976. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

A post on Detroitfunk.com quotes a now-dead link that says this station was significant for its association with "the golden era of the Grand Trunk railroad system in Michigan and Lansing and its expression of a major work by Spier and Rohns," the Detroit architectural firm that designed many of Michigan's historic railroad stations from 1886 to 1910 (as well as several churches and other buildings). This depot's style is most often described as Jacobethan Revival.

An article on lansingonlinenews.com tells of the "most disastrous wreck in Lansing's history." On October 7, 1941 it says, the depot was nearly annihilated when a boxcar from a passing train derailed as a result of a fractured wheel, and careened into the side of the depot as the other 32 cars jammed up behind it.

The train was reportedly moving in excess of 60mph at the time of the derailment, and one of the boxcars was launched across Cedar Street. Author Michael H. Hodges adds that the next train coming down the same track--a passenger train--was only eight minutes away, and that GTRR officials had it stopped just in time.

Apparently the damage to the depot was so severe that it took down a wall and partially collapsed the roof. Dozens of people were seriously injured, and a 13-year-old newsboy who was selling papers on the platform was killed by flying wreckage.

On the lansingonlinenews page, a description of the station's original physical appearance says that:

The white sandstone and pressed brick were set off with green trim. A 'commodious waiting room' was ringed in white tile wainscoting which met white, blue and gold fresco. The rounded ceiling and all woodwork were oak, as was the furniture. There was a 'magnificent' fireplace framed by floor to ceiling marble columns, a men's smoking room and a ladies waiting room 'richly furnished' complete with 'comfortable' rocking chairs.

The cost of construction was pegged at approximately $40,000. Sadly, most of the glitz and glamor of that original decor seems to have gone bye-bye in favor of 1970s puke.

The Lansing City Pulse seems to have taken a page from the Detroit MetroTimes' old "Abandoned Structure Squad" (A.S.S.) bit, and featured the Grand Trunk Lansing Depot in their "Eyesore of the Week" column for January 20, 2010 (which if you were paying attention was the 107th anniversary of its opening).

Anyway, the article called attention to the depot's condition and clamored that "It is high time that Lansing had a train station that was easily accessible from the city center. The Lansing Depot is the ideal choice for the reestablishment of passenger service to downtown Lansing."

The last restaurant sign over the door advertised “Blues, Booze and Barbecues,” for the Capitol Hill Station Restaurant and Blues Club, which the book Michigan's Historic Railroad Stations by Michael H. Hodges noted was listed in city directories as late as 2000.

The latest word was that the former depot was planned to be renovated by the Lansing Board of Water and Light, but I have not heard anything further on the project.

If I recall correctly the large parking lot immediately adjacent to this depot served for a long time (and may still serve?) as a practice range for motorcycle safety classes. I just remember one of my first attempts at getting into this place being thwarted be a large gang of motorcycles riving around in a circle like a pack of wolves.

Here, in a gothic-vaulted loft space above the former restaurant area, I found a squatter's nest--decked out with a full mattress, pillow, and a re-appropriated warning sign (with a few addenda):

I've seen some pretty crazy squat palaces in my exploring days, but this was one of the finest.

...I have to admit I caught myself feeling even a little jealous of this crash pad.

In the bathroom, some fancy old carved wooden brackets remained from earlier days:

Not too far away, an old coaling tower for the Grand Trunk Railroad stood over the tracks where it used to service locomotives:

In the "olden days" (up until the 1950s), when locomotives were still powered by steam instead of diesel, they required large amounts of coal and water to be loaded before setting off on a run.

This was accomplished by dispensing it from large elevator towers such as this one, also known as a "coal tipple," which would drop it through chutes into the waiting locomotive tender below.

When the coal-fired steam locomotive went extinct, thousands of these coal tipples remained standing all over the country, mainly I assume because it wasn't worth the railroad's time or money to bother tearing down.

They are sturdy enough to keep standing for quite a while longer without maintenance, but I would guess that someday they will inevitably disappear.

I was bummed to find that the ladders giving access to the upper parts of this tower had been chopped off, meaning that since I had neglected to bring my Spiderman costume today we were going to be relegated to admiring it from below.

I think though that if I were a local kid, I would find some way to rig something together so as to be able to go up there and drink beers on summer nights while enjoying the view. As you can see there are plenty of them already here painting.