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Satellite)
Google Maps can't find Tesch, but Bing could. Knowing where the town is, I found the junction on Google Maps, which has labeled the trails that are on four out of the seven spokes from this junction.
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Chicago & North Western Historical Society posted
The photographer, Ed Selinsky, is looking at the "Armstrong" tower located at Tesch, Michigan in May 1971. Who would like to fill us all in on just where Tesch is and where all those tracks are going? What a posting that would have been!
Tesch is on M 69 west about 2 mi up from the us 2 &41 intersection the track to the left past the tower is the soo line going to Gladstone mi. the center is th c&nw ore drag to the docks in Escanaba Mi. the track to the right is the c&nw felch line that connected the c&nw main line in narenta and went through Schaffer ,Perronville,Foster City. I grew up in Tesch our house was about 30 feet from the ore drag and less then couple hundred yards from the tower. |
I marked the two C&NW routes in yellow and orange. The blue line is the SOO route. The red circle indicates which "quadrant" (hextant?) the tower was in. Judging from the Felch Grade Trail, C&NW abandoned the orange route to the west because it was redundant with its mainline to the west that went through Narenta. And it abandoned the short yellow route to the south because they wanted to keep the ore drags off the mainline.
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Mike Erick Son commented on the posting
Here's another shot of the same switch house. |
According to the 2005 SPV Map, there was a mine spur that left the branch east of Felch, MI. I found
the tree lines of the spur's connection. I followed the land scars of the spur to
here. I assume the "lakes" and rows were part of an iron ore mine.
I grew up in the house with the u-shaped driveway in the satellite photos when only the Soo Line rails remained. All rails are gone today. My Lionel set in my basement is Soo Line with a few other "Michigan" related rail cars. The story, as I have heard it, is the first "switchmaster" was named Tesch. He may have lived in the house I grew up in as it was built when Abraham Lincoln was President.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the house on the other side of the tracks in the 2 story brown house with the garden and garage.
DeleteThe house was brown when I lived there. Now it looks like a cream color
DeleteI've been to this area a few times and your notes are pretty much correct. Too bad the tower didn't survive. I did find the concrete footing where it stood. and down the ore drag line I also found the concrete footing for a block RR signal.
ReplyDeleteI had a dream a number of years ago... in the dream I was riding in a car with other people and thought we were driving in Omaha (where I live), but some things were not familiar, so we stopped at a convenience station where I asked the clerk where we were... they told me “Tesch”. I spelled it back to them to make sure I heard correctly. There was more to the dream that I won’t go on about, but I had a strong feeling it was a “future” dream. (When I woke up I googled Tesch, thinking maybe a person’s name, and didn’t think - until last night - about the possibility that it was a place... which brings me here now...) Can anyone give me more info please.
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