Milan, MI: NS/Ann Arbor vs. NS+CP/Wabash

(Satellite)

Mark Hinsdale posted

Mark Hinsdale posted
TBT "Train Time @ Milan, Michigan..." On a mild and sunny January, 1979 afternoon, a westbound Norfolk & Western manifest train bangs across the Ann Arbor Railroad at Milan, Michigan, on its way to Fort Wayne and west. The operator at Milan Tower has no orders for the crew, and the semaphore signals set to clear inform them of that circumstance. Today, the tower is long gone, but the utilitarian station building still survives. So do both rail lines, the former Wabash the train is traversing belongs to Norfolk Southern, and the Ann Arbor is a Watco entity. Jamuary, 1979 photo by Mark Hinsdale Mark Hinsdale shared Victor Baird: The tower follows a standard Wabash brick design like those at Wolcottville, Indiana, and Jacksonville and Decamp, Illinois. Reportedly, this tower was moved from another location in Michigan. (That may be why the ground floor door is not trackside like the other towers. It would be interesting to find out if the frame was not trackside as Wabash towers were.) Chet French found a notation in Wabash records about at least equipment moved here from that other location. Off the top of my head, I can't remember where the other location was. Jim Sinclair: Victor Baird, it was moved from Britton, Michigan where the abandoned DT&I line between Dundee and Tecumseh crossed the Wabash. They tell me the tower was loaded on two flat cars; one on the westbound main, and one on the eastbound main, and then hauled the seven or eight miles east (or whatever the distance was) to Milan. I've never seen anything that proves this happened, but that's what the "old head" operators who worked in the tower told me 55+ years ago.

Rod Clark posted
Here is a photo I took May 29, 1981 at Milan Mi. Of Ann Arbor  GP-35 390,387  train ID OT-2  The engineer grabs the train orders  as  the train is about to cross over the N&W former Wabash diamond. The  train is heading south.

 

Charles Geletzke Jr.posted
Here is the N&W (Wabash)-Ann Arbor interlocking tower in Milan, Michigan on July 4, 1972. (C. H. Geletzke, Jr. photo)

Ned Calvin: Spent two years first trick at Milan tower the spot on the lower was a repair after an engine derailed into the tower

 

Express Horizons posted

Awesome #train content by: Classic Trains

lnstagram: 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐜.𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬

A classic scene that lasted into the late Eighties. The Super-Charger slams through small-town Milan, passing a tower that will soon be joining so many others that are now gone. April 24th, 1987.

Photo Credit to E. Garrett.

Tim Shanahan shared

Howie Castellucio: Milian Mi. Wabash (N&W) / Ann Arbor

Mark Hinsdale posted three photos with the comment:

"Youthful Mistakes"
Just about 42 years ago, I was quite disgusted with myself for having made three amateur mistakes photographing the very same train. For decades, the slides hid in a yellow Kodachrome box, as I did not consider them to be worthy of anyone's observation. In two of the exposures, I had waited a split second too long to push the shutter button, and in the other, I had not waited quite long enough. In those days, it was a "one shot" proposition, and if you blew it, you blew it. Such is how one learns, though, and at the ripe old age of 22, I was certainly in need of plenty of learning! But with the passage of time, the subject matter itself sometimes outweighs the imperfections of the photographer. Perhaps that might be the case with this sequence of northbound Ann Arbor Train TF-1, at Milan MI and near Pittsfield MI, in early May, 1975. Photos by Mark Hinsdale

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Unlike many towns, both of these routes still exist, but now both are owned by Norfolk Southern. Ann Arbor was the north/southish route and Wabash was the diagonal route.