Maybe they could have left the spur in a little longer to see if business developed
From what I've heard, the new owner of the former Fletcher Paper Plant building didn't like having train tracks right in front of the building. He had some grand scheme of turning the old plant into condos or a hotel or something like that. Anyways, word of mouth is that he called the FRA, who I guess shut down the line, but not before the Lake State retaliated and parked a bunch of cars for storage right by the building. That certainly caused some tempers to flare. There was an article about that in the Alpena News that I wish I could find.
As far as the actual removal of the line, the City of Alpena completely redid Fletcher Street a few years back and tore out all of the "street running" tracks in the process. Even though most of the rails for the branch are still in place, the Alpena Power company has slowly started to take over the ROW with power lines. Slightly off topic, the rumor I've heard is that when the construction crews started tearing up Fletcher Street and digging deeper, they found some old narrow gauge rail and I think parts of a rail car.
Anyways, so when the line got ripped out there was talk of the LSRC building a new spur into DPI that loosely followed the old BCG&A line, coming off of the north side of the yard and servicing the north side of the plant rather than the south. That never materialized
From what I'm told from D&M/LSRC retirees, the reason that the Lake State stopped servicing DPI (or whatever it used to be called) is because the LSRC and DPI couldn't agree to a set switching schedule. DPI wanted to be switched at a certain time, and the LSRC had a "we'll switch you when we switch you" philosophy.
It's sad, really. I have fond memories of Alcos running through the streets here in town.
left the main just south of M-32 and Campbell St that went to another LaFarge open-pit mine was also pulled up a few decades ago. ROW also fell into the trail network.
