Michigan Northern Railway

Michigan Northern Railway
Locale	Michigan
Dates of operation	1976–1986
Successor	Tuscola and Saginaw Bay Railway
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) (standard gauge)
Headquarters	Cadillac, Michigan

The Michigan Northern Railway (reporting mark MIGN) was a railroad operating in the northwestern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The main line stretched from a southern hub at Grand Rapids to a northern terminus at Mackinaw City. It operated from 1976 until 1986.

Description of railroad

The Michigan Northern's trackage consisted of the northern half of the main line built between 1867 and 1882 by a predecessor railroad, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad. During the 1900s, the spread of paved roads and altrernate means of transportation reduced the profitability of this line. Although the GR & I main line was consolidated into the Pennsylvania Railroad and then the Penn Central, usage continued to decline. The bankrupt Penn Central won permission from the federal government to abandon lengthy sections of trackage in northern Michigan.

An intervention by the Michigan Department of Transportation prolonged the working life of the old GR & I main line. The state acquired most of the trackage and contracted with the Michigan Northern (MN) to operate it. The MN also offered service on branch lines to Charlevoix and Traverse City during their period of service. At the railroad's northern terminus, the MN turned freight cars over to the Detroit & Mackinac Ry., which switched them onto the SS Chief Wawatam, a railroad ferry that crossed the Straits of Mackinac. This allowed the MN to offer through freight service to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A controversial rate "flag-out" starting in 1978 resulted in a rush of overhead traffic from the ferry onto the Michigan Northern. This soon went away after nationwide railroad deregulation in 1980.

Ceased operations

The severe economic recession of the early 1980s forced the state of Michigan to reduce its subsidies to northern Michigan railroads and their customers. Michigan Northern service ended in fall 1984 from Reed City to Grand Rapids (Comstock Park). A section of the former MN trackage stretching from Cadillac to Petoskey continued in service under another contractual operator, the Tuscola and Saginaw Bay Railway, (now the Great Lakes Central Railroad); while most of the MN's former trackage from Grand Rapids north to Cadillac was redeveloped as the White Pine Trail State Park. The Line from Petoskey to Charlevoix (former Chessie line operated by MN) closed due to severe erosion of the land and thus making the track unusable. MN cut back to the 33-mile stretch from Bay View to Pellston, which had not been purchased by the State of Michigan. MN set up a purchase agreement with Penn Central (which still owned the track), and established a truck-to-rail transfer facility at Pellston. Canadian steel trucked to Pellston was put on the MN there, and MN hauled it south to the Tuscola and Saginaw Bay interchange near Petoskey. This ended circa Jan. 1986. In summer 1986, MN ran some excursion trains. However, MN ran short on track payments to Penn Central, and MN's last train (cleaning out remaining equipment, although a few things were left behind in Alanson and Conway) left Pellston in April 1987. The line once again survived another 5 years (from Alanson to Petoskey) with the Little Traverse Scenic Railway, which even used a MN GP-7 Locomotive in their first year of operation.