RailRoadFan.com

Being from Eastern Pennsylvania, I'm a little clueless on some of the operations in Michigan. I was just curious if any of the railroads still used boats to haul rolling stock across any of the Great Lakes. The last time I was in Toledo, OH, it looked like they may of still used the docks as a trans-loading facility, but not necessarily for putting rail cars right on to boats. Thank you in advance for any knowledge on this subject.

Ferries used to carry rolling stock died a while back (20 years??). But, they still transload from train to ship and vice versa.
The Badger, the last coal-fired ferrie in the great lakes, was a train ferry before being converted for cars. it still runs from Ludington, MI to Mackatawa, Wis. However, the climate change freaks imposed new regualtions that will likely have the Badger converted to oil.

The last car ferry operations were the Ann Arbor RR out of Frankfort? and the C&O out of Ludington. The Michigan Northern/Detroit & Mackinac also interchanged with the Soo Line via a ferry between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace across the straits. All of these were done by 1983 or so, IIRC. The cost of moving cars across the lakes and maintaining the boats and facilities were at that point greater than just routing the cars around the Lake.

I thought CN was operating one in port huron until the 1990s.

Here's a picture of the Badger I took last Saturday while in Ludington:

Oh--I forgot that CP ran ferries on the Detroit river for excess height cars before the Detroit Rail Tunnel was expanded to serve excess height boxcars, intermodal stacks, and autorack trains. that would have ended in the late 1990s

MQT3001 wrote:Oh--I forgot that CP ran ferries on the Detroit river for excess height cars before the Detroit Rail Tunnel was expanded to serve excess height boxcars, intermodal stacks, and autorack trains. that would have ended in the late 1990s

I would say around 1994, when the CP's started running double stacks through Michigan, though some trailers were still taller, as I remember seeing one that was crushed on the top of a stack.

didn't CN or CP use farries for hazardous materiales into the 2000's because they were not allowed in the tunnels under the detroit river?

Ferry between Frankfurt and WI (AA & GB&W) stopped April, 1982.

Ferry between Mackinaw City and St. Ignace (MIGN & SOO) stopped August, 1984. Although it operated very sparadically the last two years.

Ferry between Ludington and WI (Chessie & GB&W) stopped sometime during 1990.

CSX ran ferries at Pt Huron until the late 80's mid 90's along side GTW. As far as I know there were never ferries, at the Toledo docks.

Lots of great info. here. Thanks again.

Andy