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Does anyone have a timeline of when the Michigan Central Railroad's Bay City Branch was constructed? I see that it took in the Detroit and Bay City Railroad, which was apparently chartered in 1881, but I think part of this existed previous to then? I'm particularly interested in how the part of the line within Metro Detroit came together. The history of Warren seems to state that the settlements that would become the villages of Center Line and Warren (Mound Road at Chicago Road) were stagecoach stops settled around the 1830's and 1840's, and then the railroad would eventually replace those services, but I'm not sure how early that happened.

Thanks!

By looking it up found that it was 1873, and the last passenger train was 1964. Some of it is still in use, other sections have been removed. As of today, it stops at M59, but HESR AND LSRC still use parts of it.

The MCRR Indian Lake Road stone arch bridge near Lake Orion was built in 1891 but is believed to be a replacement for an earlier wooden structure.

The railroad history area of Michiganrailroads.com has a great timeline feature year-by-year that covers the construction of most lines across the state. That might have your answer!

Unfortunately, they do not.

Does anyone have any old maps, charts and/or timetables of just this railroad/branch line? Everything I've been able to find on the MSC error is usually zoomed out quite a bit so local detail gets washed out.

Forum discussion on Bay City and a link to a map...
Bay City area Rails / Operations
https://railroadfan.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=39203

Reads...
In The Pines - An Atlas Of Michigan Logging Railroads. Bay City and its railroads are covered. Check in vol 01 and vol 02, mostly.
4 parts to this book on Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/in-the-pine ... -railroads

On google books, there are interstate commerce department reports and state commerce railroad reports.

Michigan railroad history read from the state guberment site.
Michigan RR History 1825-1914
https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/-/media/P ... istory.pdf


Old Railroad Maps...
Maps of Detroit & Bay City, Michigan Central, NYC, Others... The Detroit & Bay City map is a quality map and just for that line.
https://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/maps.htm

Guberment - Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroa ... q=michigan


An image from a Michigan Central 1893 timetable and a system map from facecrack...

Thanks, the 1897 and 1876 maps from the Library of Congress are clear enough to get some detail out of. And the 1911 map from the Canada South website you linked to is the best:

https://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/ima ... 1-d&bc.pdf

As for the dates, I was able to find Michigan Railroads saying it was built between 1872 and 1873 (from Detroit to Oxford, and then from Oxford to Bay City), controlled by MCS from 1875 onward, and I guess formally purchased to MCS in 1881, which is where that date I posted came from.

Not exactly versed well enough on railroad financing and operations to know how MCS simply won control over the railroad in 1875 or why it took until 1881 to purchase it. Railroad law must have been interesting back then.