Map Copyright © 2000-2001 Shawn O'Day, Jeff Knorek
Now then, a few words about Fort Street, NS Oakwood Yard, and Ecorse Junction. A Rand McNally map of Downriver Detroit will help you visualize this, and to a lesser degree, so will the SPV Great Lakes East RR map.
Before I-75 was built, Fort Street was one of the major Downriver north-south surface streets. It crosses the old Wabash main at the east throat of Oakwood Yard. Fort Street is still a busy artery just south of here through the communities of Ecorse, Lincoln Park, Wyandotte, etc. Today, however, this portion of the broad avenue has fallen on hard times and is not a place you want to visit unless you have a friend and a cell phone. To say that this is a shabby,unattractive neighborhood is almost being kind. The Huuuuge Bridge that carries I-75 over the River Rouge cuts right through the middle of all this, and can cast a shadow over the Fort St. bridge at certain times of the day and year, and will figure quite prominently in any photograph taken of Ecorse Junction from the Fort Street Bridge. The eastern throat of NS's Oakwood Yard can be clearly viewed from the north side of the Fort Street Bridge.
The Fort Street Bridge itself is about 150 yards west of Ecorse Jct., and in addition to carrying Fort Street over the NS Detroit District, it also goes over the CR Junction Yard Branch (which heads north to Scheaffer Tower and CP-Townline on the Michigan Line) and the CR Lincoln Branch (which ends at CP-Ecorse having come up from the CSX Saginaw Sub at Carleton).
Ecorse Junction gathers all of this traffic in addition to that generated by the GTW Shoreline Subdivision. The Shoreline Sub joins the NS main at Ecorse Jct. and heads east across the River Rouge, past the Foreman Wye, and then to Delray Tower and West Detroit.
Sound complicated? It is. But we are here to help relieve some of your confusion. To illustrate the complexity of this interlocking and the surrounding territory. we have assembled a collage of photos and text from some of the swarthiest characters in the Detroit railfan community.
Enjoy.
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This website and all contents herein Copyright 2001 by Jeff Knorek except where noted.