The Detroit Line is the heart of Norfolk Southern's acquisition of Conrail property in Southeast Michigan. Most NS traffic to Detroit off of the regions that it inherited from Conrail arrives on the Detroit Line
Although the train symbols have changed from the Conrail era, many of the profiles have not changed and traffic volume had returned to May 1999 levels until the recent economic slowdown combined with Chrysler Uber Allis caused a downturn in rail business. However, the state of Michigan still retains 1/3 of the total domestic automotive production in the United States, and the Detroit Line serves as a significant conduit for this traffic.
NS has built a switch at the east end of Oakwood Yard that allows trains to move off of the ex-Wabash Detroit District and onto the ex-NYC Junction Yard Secondary for forwarding to the ex-NYC Detroit Line at CP-YD. As of February 2002 we have noticed a net increase in train volume, due mostly to this new connection: 4 Wabash manifests and Coke Trains 858/859 were pulled off of the Ann Arbor RR route to Toledo while rack train 41M was pulled from the NS Michigan Line.
The Detroit Line is controlled by the Conrail Detroit Line Dispatcher from CP-West Detroit to the Conrail Rouge Bridge at MP 6.1, by the NS Michigan Line Dispatcher from Rouge Bridge to CP-Alexis at MP 51.4, and by the Toledo Yard Dispatcher from CP-Alexis to MP 57.7.
We often chuckle that GTW throws more trains at us when we are railfanning the Conrail Detroit Line than Conrail does. Ha ha. We'll be at Shawn's house doing the midnight barbeque thang', and all we get is Grand Trunk night trains and pork chops. That in mind, we are going to yammer on at you some more, this time about GTW south of Milwaukee Jct. and Delray.
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This website and all contents herein Copyright 2002 by Jeff Knorek except where noted.