Mike H wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 3:39 pm
C&O Dispatcher wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 8:19 pm
You mention Bay City and Battle Creek --- right up through Penn Central days that junction to the Midland Branch was called BC & BC Jct. I used to dispatch the Saginaw-Ludington line that ran through Midland. During my time, we usually ran 6 trains a day through Midland, 2 Ludington trains (LU75, TL74), 2 Grand Rapids trains via Baldwin (MP17, ML18), and the Mt. Pleasant/Clare Turn local west and back east into Saginaw.
I sure wish I had been around to see this, I can only imagine how neat it would be to see all of this traffic! I have a couple questions that I've been meaning to ask while enjoying many of your posts.
1. Did you dispatch all the way to Ludington or was there two dispatchers covering the line?
2. I assume 1 crew would do the run from Saginaw to Grand Rapids, what was the track speed?
3. I assume there was a local that covered Clare west, where did that job originate & what portion of the line did it cover?
4. Did the Saginaw-Grand Rapids trains continue to run right up until the line was abandoned or did they stop much earlier?
Thanks,
Mike H
1. We dispatched all the way to Ludington, 137 miles. It was CTC all the way.
2. Yes, one crew ran the whole distance (183 miles) Saginaw to GR. There were two assigned crews on those runs. One was a GR crew and the other a Saginaw crew, but they each ran the whole route, stayed overnight at away-from-home terminal and returned home with the next day's train.
The max track speed on both the Ludington and Baldwin Subs was 40 MPH.
3. The Ludington-Evart (turn) local covered the west end. There was no local between Clare and Evart, but also no customers in that
section.
4. The Sag-GR trains did cut off sometime before abandonment, but I don't recall what date. I'll guess sometime in 1987.
There was one more train on the line. A unit train "Chemical Special" out of Freeport, TX was handed over to us off MP (UP) at Chicago. It left GR on Sunday evenings and ran to Saginaw, usually setting off the entire train at Midland (Dean Yard) and power lite to Sag. On Thursdays, it ran reverse route with an empty train.
We also handled the GR-Manistee trains (145/146) between Baldwin and Walhalla. There was quite a bit of block swapping at those two locations among the other trains. Most of that action was on the night shift.
Thanks for your questions!