Detroit Terminal Railroad
Oh sure, I could tell you, oh I could give you a good story about that. Well, I wish you could have….the railroads gone; it’s been gone now for quite a while, but on the west side of Detroit , the old Detroit Terminal Railroad. Conrail took that out in the early eighties, probably by nineteen eighty, oh $#!t, I think it was 1981 when Conrail came along and wiped out Davison Yard on the east side, and they wiped out most, oh, oh yeah they did! They wiped out, by 1981 and certainly by 1982 if the didn’t do it in 1981, that’s going on twenty nine, thirty years. Uh, that the Detroit Terminal on the west side… Oh I wish you could have seen that Mike, all the teardrop bell crossings, holy mackerel! And each crossing had 2 teardrop bells. Beginning up in Highland Park , on 2nd and 3rd. Now the Hamilton crossing, that had the regular WRRS bells, the regular sized WRRS bells. With the hates and the flashers, but then you go west of there, 12th street, not I remember in the late nineteen fifties, by 1957, uh a crossing like at Dexter, where it crossed the terminal, it was.. Actually it had a teardrop bell and the signal was right in the middle of the street.. On Dexter. They replaced that in 1957, they replaced that teardrop bell and crossing in the middle of the street with two new flashers, on you know, the side of the street, and they had regular WRRS Bells. Now Livernois, that had a teardrop bell, uh I think before the end of the nineteen fifties they had replaced it, but then you got down, down by Schoolcraft, oh I loved the ones at Schoolcraft there just a short block west of Ewald Circle . That’s where Schoolcraft began. It began and ended, west of there. And then uh, Davison had, the regular WRRS bells, but then you get down to Fullerton and that had two teardrop bells, Fullerton and Elmhurst , that had.. Oh and Oakman Boulevard , that had up on big cantilevers, that had a teardrop bell also. Then Grand River, it had a teardrop bell and then you get south of there: West Chicago . Two teardrop bells there. Same thing at Joy road, same thing at Tireman. And then, you got down to Lonyo and they had WRRS bells. And then the crossing at Wyoming at one time.. There’s still a track there, I don’t know if they still use it, but there is still a track there, but way back when in the nineteen forties and fifties, guess how many tracks that crossing had on Wyoming where there is only one track now and I don’t think they use it very much. Nine. Nine tracks! And that crossing had teardrop bells with gates. Then over on the east side there at uh, well not at Dequinder, Dequinder had the regular WRRS bells, uh and McNicholls, but then Jos Campau and Conant they had teardrop bells and then, oh yea, originally at Mt. Elliot and McNicholls the line would go through Davison yard, then it come down like that headed towards Forestlawn, over on the east side. Originally there were, all in the middle of the street, on Mt. Elliot and McNicholls, each with a teardrop bell, so there were four of them there! Detroit Terminal Railroad. Yep. Damnit I miss that railroad. I lived with that railroad for years, for decades. They ran some trains. It was really.. Its an..inter belt line. Sometimes, all they would use was one engine, a 1,000 horse power diesel switcher.. Ah most of them turned out to be EMDs, NW2s. I think there was, they might have had a couple of Baldwin DS4 -4-1000s. But anyway, sometimes the trains that they would pull from one side of town to the other to say, well they would get a train and take it over to Davison Yard and re classify it and then send it back out, but when they were taking a train, like in the morning around eight thirty in the morning it would come by Livernois and Dexter and Wildemere. Because I was working at that time in the summer of 1957, I was working at this Cook Paint and Varnish Company for my summer job. And the Detroit Terminal Railroad went right by it, and uh anyway, so they come with a pretty good sized train, it would be anywhere from forty or fifty to sometimes sixty to seventy cars, pulled by that one engine! And then in the evening, when it would go back from Davison Yard to come down to Dearborn , it would have a lot of times between sixty five to seventy cars. I wish the hell you could a seen all these, that.. Railroad. And all the crossings with the teardrop bells. Back then, they had there for years, in fact I think the teardrop bells over there, alot of them were there on the Detroit Terminal until they took the railroad out.
