RailRoadFan.com

The article is a nice summary of the situation, but unfortunately there isn't much new in there, beyond the line "we have a verbal commitment" and the mention of drafting timetable changes. Ironically, if the state buys the line it will be a "back to the future" situation, since the state built and ...

If $2.4 million is raised, before over-extending the community's scarce resources on a "memorial park" which calls for a lot of non-memorial stuff in it, the money should be used on one or more of these issues: *Maintenance problems like the peeling window trim and broken sewer line. *Parts of the d...

$2.4 million would be better spent on continuing to restore and maintain the depot, which doesn't exactly have a secure and stable source of funding. We don't need to spend money on a "children's splash yard" when these things still need attention: *boarded-up windows in the baggage and freight area...

Fascinating! But frustrating, since if it was at normal speed or close to it (even if it has to be split into a bunch of increments for YouTube) a lot more details could be noticed. At the very beginning, I was startled to see Downtown Hudson's (and other since-destroyed stuff like the Statler and T...

Isn't the $196 million stimulus grant supposed to pay for track work? Or is it all going to be spent on signals? Speaking of that money, when are we actually going to see construction? Are bids in the process of being let?

Some interesting concepts there, vonhammer! I grew up two blocks away and can't even bring myself to drive by the site since the demolition. One correction: the former "Pere Marquette easement" that you captioned at the bottom is actually the GTW old main line right of way, which is still owned by C...

Can this thread please be renamed, so I don't keep checking it for info about the original subject?

The dome car, "Ocean View," was originally Great Northern. Then there's "Beech Grove," the Amfleet observation car, and "Pacific Cape," originally a Union Pacific 10&6 sleeper. Google for more car info.

Any hard facts about NS looking to sell it to somebody other than Amtrak, or just rumors? The grant from last fall was specifically for helping MDOT to buy the line from NS, as reported in many different news publications.

MDOT is in discussions to buy the line from NS. That stems from the $150 million federal grant from last fall, which needs state matching money to go into effect. I can't find any updates on the status of the matching dollars. Once Amtrak finally gets running times down to match or better the NYC's ...

Norm wrote, "It's difficult to make a true comparison. For example, the station in Durand has been well taken care of since it burned in the early 1900's." Except when it was abandoned from 1974 to 1979. Practically all of the 2nd floor windows were smashed, and the interior was vandalized and damag...

Looks like Congress is going to soon pass the budget bill, which cuts *all* high-speed rail money for 2011. Posted today by Trains Magazine.

http://tinyurl.com/3n4s9mp

Those records might have been stored at the MC Depot in Detroit (Northern Region headquarters). I looked at the online finding aid of the Penn Central papers at the U-M Bentley archives, but those seem to deal only with PC predecessors. I excerpted the following from Robert MacDowell's post on rec.r...

I'm surprised to hear that cars are still stored on this line, so I checked the STB site to see if HESR has consummated abandonment. It did notify the STB on July 10 last year of consummation. But in the filing, there is this sentence: "HESR has reclassified the Line as spur track." Interesting! I w...