Railroads at Tustin

Glen and I have put our heads together, and here are our conclusions- he knew most of this already.

This is the station sign for Tustin station on the Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad. This north-south line was the first through the area, reaching Tustin about 1872. At it's height, it extended from Indianapolis to Mackinaw City and was the longest north-south rail line in the country.

In 1889, a group of Ludington and Manistee businessmen, in the lumber and salt industries, set out to create an east-west line from Manistee to Grand Rapids, and that is what the railroad was named (later becoming the Michigan East & West). In 1893 the track ended at Tustin, meeting the GR&I. Here's where it gets interesting.

I found this map which shows a wye at Tustin, which makes some sense because where a railroad stops, it has to have a way to turn the train around. However, neither Glen nor I can find any other record of this wye. Anyway, the M&GR is the gray dotted line, with the WYE (which may not have existed, I suppose). The strong blue dotted line is the GR&I which is now the multi-use White Pine Trail.

See the purple dotted line that I added? Glen is pretty sure that is the location of the spur that was added to bring cars from the main M&GR up to the station. The spur needs to be about that long, or there is too much of a grade.

Eventually, the M&GR was extended a little farther east to Marion where it connected with the Ann Arbor Railroad

Here's where it gets interesting.

In order for the train to continue east, the M&GR had to pass under the GR&I because the grades were not at the same elevation. Glen showed me where that overpass was. They had to raise the GR&I some, so there was room to do this. In this picture, we are standing on the berm of the GR&I where the White Pine Trail now passes. The edge is marked with the orange line. The higher berm was built so there was enough clearance for the overpass. And it was built beside the old berm, not on top of it.

The yellow line is the old GR&I berm which was lower. When the M&GR was extended the lower berm was cut out to allow passage.

You can also see a large stone at the left of the picture.

That is one of the stones that formed the walls of the overpass.

The passage is all filled in now, but part of the header can be seen on the west side.

But more of the massive stones are obvious on the east side.

In 1913, the Michigan and Grand Rapids Railroad was insolvent, and was sold, becoming the Michigan East & West Railway. By 1919, that track was all gone. One of the surprising things is that it was standard gauge track, which was not always the case with these old railroads. You've seen some other pictures of this grade on my blog before (link below). It was a well-built track, but it eventually could not compete with the Pere Marquette and Flint, which is now Marquette Rail that runs in back of my house.

Gosh, I love figuring this stuff out!

I worked some on almost all my projects today. Pat me on the back!

See Michigan East and West Railroad