Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Any historical questions can be posted here. Answers would certainly help as well :)
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NS3322
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Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by NS3322 »

I just finished my Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway RailroadfanWiki page:
https://railroadfan.com/wiki/index.php/ ... ne_Railway

This is a project I have been wanting to do for quite a while, and I am glad I figured out most of the story. Let me know if I missed anything or if info needs to be edited. I think I might be missing some rolling stock, but I am not sure (not many photos of the back of the 'yard' in Walled Lake).

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by Manistique »

Great job on this Coe Rail page!

A bit of "color" for what it is worth.

Coe Rail was one of the early Staggers Act of 1982 shortlines created when the Act made it easier for railroads to sell/abandon their lines. Prior to that most of the new shortlines in Michigan resulted from Conrail being formed in 1976 and abandoning so many of its Michigan trackage. GTW had been keeping this Jackson Sub. line open because of a steel tube making plant in South Lyon that gave it enough business to justify it. When this closed they sold the middle part of the line to Coe Rail. I always wondered why they didn't sell him the east end to Pontiac for the interchange there but I guess it was too many miles of no industries.

I have photos of Coe Rail's first weekend of passenger trains with their little 20 tonner pulling a coach and caboose. I think it was a gasoline powered Whitcomb, not a diesel. Shortly afterwards they bought the PH&D then the Delay Connecting Alcos, making it an all-Alco shortline. I was glad they kept the original railroad's colors on them.

Coe was willing to run special trains. I rented a locomotive and caboose and crew one Saturday for a birthday party for my son and friends. I think it cost $300, cash. Larry rode and was very entertaining with the kids, doing magic tricks and working a yoyo. My son, who was only four at the time, remembers it clearly. We rode in the caboose.

I don't recall the Cat-powered Alco they got from GTW ever running much. I think I have one photo of it on the dinner train but it always seemed to be on the north siding in the weeds when I visited the railroad. The F-unit they painted in the Erie-Lackawanna scheme soon became the main dinner train power. I never knew why the E-L scheme.

I rode on the dinner train once. They had those Keystone cars then and we ate in one of them. They were unique. Did you know that SEMTA purchased them when they were adding a fourth commuter train but never used them? I have a photo of them when they arrived in what was Ferndale Yard (now Moterm) in the late 1970's. I think the power car for the dinner train was also a Keystone power car, wasn't it? It was never steam heated, if I recall. Larry rode on the train to as sort of a host. Sometimes he was a bit too hosty! I think they actually cooked the dinners on the train instead of having it catered and just served it.

I don't know how successful the Bed & Breakfast car was but I remember the newspapers making a big deal of it when it started. I couldn't get too excited about staying in a car parked in their rather messy freight yard/engine house there behind a Big Boy restaurant.

If I recall, The Star Clipper Dinner train advertised that it ran seven days a week. Maybe it did at one time. But I think at some point they only ran on weekends unless they got enough reservations for a train during the week. It sort of became a marketing ploy, I think, to make it seem so popular. And it was popular for so many years.

When Brown bought it I heard that he eventually made his money selling the line to the local governments for a trail. That they paid top dollar for it. Just rumor, but back then rails to trails was a very popular thing with local governments. CN did the same when the sold their Romeo Sub for $30 million dollars around the same time to all the towns it went through for a trail. I hear that only Rochester chewed them down from their asking price, which was based on local real estate values. Genius.

I cover Coe Rail in my book "Chronicles of a Detroit Railfan Vol 4, Detroit's Short Line Railroads," if you are interested. It is available on Amazon.

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

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Thank you for posting your experiences with Coe Rail, Manistique.

Like yourself I wonder why Coe Rail didn't pick up the entire line to MAL Jct. in Pontiac.

There was approximately 5 miles of ROW between the end of the line for Coe Rail (east of Haggerty Rd. out in a swamp) and end of the line for GTW (Cadillac Brick in Sylvan Lake).

Coe Rail serviced the plastics plant west of Walled Lake and the lumber yard at Haggerty Rd. while GTW serviced a beer distributor in Keego Harbor and the brick yard in Sylvan Lake.

It would be interesting to know why the line was separated.
Manistique wrote:
Sun Feb 19, 2023 8:27 am
I always wondered why they didn't sell him the east end to Pontiac for the interchange there but I guess it was too many miles of no industries.
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by NS3322 »

Yes, thank you Manistique for your input! :D

I will try to incorporate some of what you shared into the Wiki!

So were Coe's main customers just American Plastic Toys, Stock Building Supply/Haggerty Lumber, and Home Quarters?

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

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NS3322 wrote:
Mon Feb 27, 2023 7:12 pm
So were Coe's main customers just American Plastic Toys, Stock Building Supply/Haggerty Lumber, and Home Quarters?
That is it.

I recall the conductor of a dinner/murder mystery train telling shortly after Home Quarters opened (sometime in the 1990's) that COE had its best month ever handling over 30 or 31 cars (APT received 2-3/week at that time, Erb Lumber 1-3 per month and the rest were for HQ).
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

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I caught them once switching Haggerty Lumber and once the Plastic Company. One car for Haggerty, three I think for plastics. Plastic Company could use the cars as storage so would get a few at a time and then nothing for a while.

They had to do a "dutchman's drop" at the CSX interchange in Wixom to get the cars into the siding and the locomotive on the other end to do the pull. The one time I was watching them do this the train stalled on the switch as it was rolling down the interchange track. Ooops. The crew was in a panic as to what to do. One of them found a 2X4 and was able to strong arm/leverage the cars by shoving the lumber under the rear wheel to get it moving again. Phew.

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by NoviRailfan »

"When Brown bought it I heard that he eventually made his money selling the line to the local governments for a trail."

I'm pretty sure Brown purchased with the intent of selling it to become a rail/trail, not to keep it running as a railroad operation. At least that's what I recall of the discussions at the time. American Plastics was very not happy about the conversion when it was proposed. With the popularity of transloading these days, make you wonder what Coe might have been able to do with some real estate and some transloading customers.

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by ATTM4150 »

NoviRailfan wrote:
Fri Jun 09, 2023 12:52 am
"When Brown bought it I heard that he eventually made his money selling the line to the local governments for a trail."

I'm pretty sure Brown purchased with the intent of selling it to become a rail/trail, not to keep it running as a railroad operation. At least that's what I recall of the discussions at the time. American Plastics was very not happy about the conversion when it was proposed. With the popularity of transloading these days, make you wonder what Coe might have been able to do with some real estate and some transloading customers.
When did LSRC take over the Saginaw sub? 2005? (or was that just saginaw and vicinity?) If thats the case, I'm curious as to why they didn't take the line.

Does American Plastics have Transloads now from somewhere else then?

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

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LSRC began operations from Saginaw to Flint around 2005 and from Flint to Wixom around 2018. The Airline was removed around 2009.

American Plastic Toys Wixom probably transloads from somewhere else. They have a factory in Rose, MI that transloads from Standish.
ATTM4150 wrote:
Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:47 pm
When did LSRC take over the Saginaw sub? 2005? (or was that just saginaw and vicinity?) If thats the case, I'm curious as to why they didn't take the line.

Does American Plastics have Transloads now from somewhere else then?
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

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AARR wrote:
Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:51 pm
LSRC began operations from Saginaw to Flint around 2005 and from Flint to Wixom around 2018. The Airline was removed around 2009.

American Plastic Toys Wixom probably transloads from somewhere else. They have a factory in Rose, MI that transloads from Standish.
ATTM4150 wrote:
Sat Jun 10, 2023 3:47 pm
When did LSRC take over the Saginaw sub? 2005? (or was that just saginaw and vicinity?) If thats the case, I'm curious as to why they didn't take the line.

Does American Plastics have Transloads now from somewhere else then?
Does LSRC still have a transload in the Wixom yard?

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Re: Coe Rail/Michigan Air-Line Railway Wiki Page

Unread post by AARR »

I heard LSRC reopened it (CSX closed it years ago) but I haven't seen it and can't confirm if it is open or not.
NS3322 wrote:
Sun Jun 11, 2023 2:34 pm
Does LSRC still have a transload in the Wixom yard?
PatC created a monster, 'cause nobody wants to see Don Simon no more they want AARR I'm chopped liver, well if you want AARR this is what I'll give ya, bad humor mixed with irrelevant info that'll make you roll your eyes quicker than a ~Z~ banhammer...

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