Story: The Old Road Bows Out

Final Passenger Service on a Historic Line

From the Inside Track Magazine, March-April, 1982

by Bob DeWolfe, Ann Arbor Train and Trolley Watchers

Michigan's first railroad quit the passenger business on Monday, November 19,1956, exactly 120 years and 17 days after it began.

[Left image: The last Old Road passenger train approaches Elkhart depot in 1957]

When Brakeman R. E. St. John called, "Toledo, last stop, all change," and New York Central locomotive 822 ground to a stop on Toledo's Union Central Terminal track 9 at 5:35pm — an hour and five minutes late — passenger operations on the New York Central's Old Road line were finished.

Reluctantly, almost reverently, the 95 revenue passengers and dozen deadheads filed out of the two coaches, pausing on the platform to gaze silently at the train whose run had just ended a way of life for many of them.

Conductor Edward G. Kumrow, of Toledo, whose 43 years and 6 months service with the NYC made him second on the Old Road's seniority list, was deep in thought. He was proud to bring in the Old Road's last passenger train, but sad. "No one is going to get hurt," he admitted, "but think of the inconvenience to employees living on the line and working elsewhere and persons who depended on the trains for transportation — there were more than you think. Without passenger trains a line doesn't seem alive."

Actually, the last run was a round trip from Toledo, Ohio, to Elkhart, Indiana, over the 142 scenic miles of track that meandered through 21 Southern Michigan communities and some in Ohio and Indiana. Originally scheduled for October 31 the Old Road won a reprieve when permission to discontinue the service was not forthcoming unanimously from the public service commissions of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.

First leg of the final run was westbound and left Toledo at 7:05 am — 15 minutes late due to heavy express shipments — in the murky pre-dawn chill of a November day that promised to mellow later. Pulling out on track 4, No. 807 carried two extra coaches, its regular consist of a 60-foot express car next to GP9 #5934 followed by a combination baggage-coach with an aged express reefer on the rear. It was loaded with merchandise and was to be cut off at Adrian, a normal operation five days a week.

Nine passengers were aboard out of Toledo, four revenue. Conductor 0. J. Geiser of Toledo, felt it was poetic justice of some sort that he should have had the run. With his 49½ of service he was top man in seniority on the division. Affable and willing, Conductor Geiser related many good rail yarns about the Old Road. Would he be making the round trip? No. He was sad that he could not shepherd both ends of the final run but pardonably proud to have the first leg of it. It was then that Brakeman St. John mentioned he would work both trips, pleased at the honor but admittedly sentimental that the service was ending. "Some call it progress," he grumbled.

As the train ate up the miles the day became warmer and the passenger list grew. Detroit, Toledo, Adrian and Hillsdale newspapers had reporters aboard. Photographers were in evidence at all stops and along the right of way putting the bright sun to good use. Constantly hampered by the amount of express handled at the way stations, No. 807 reached Elkhart 38 minutes late but with 44 passengers, 37 of them revenue.

Not all of the riders on the run were nostalgic neighbors of the Old Road or NYCRR employees out for the last ride. Like Mrs. Fred Corden of Elkhart, widow of a "20th Century Limited" engineer, she had been riding on passes 59 years. That morning she was returning home after visiting relatives at Pittsford, an on-line village east of Hillsdale. Or Mrs. E. C. Fisher, 80, of Adrian who was enroute to spend Thanksgiving Day with friends in the' West. She was dismayed to learn it was the last trip and she'd have to return home by bus.

[Left image: A map view of the Old Road and associated branch lines]

There was Mrs. Eva Orr, of Bristol, Indiana, who was really mad. She used 807 daily to commute to work in Elkhart. "Now I'll have to use the bus and leave earlier," she complained. James H. Baker, 78, of Adrian, an attorney there for 55 years, loved the Old Road and was bitter over loss of passenger service. He led the fight before the Michigan Public Service Commission to try and keep the trains operating. "My mother told me I was born beside the tracks in Hudson the night the "White Mail," the first fast mail train in the United States, inaugurated service over the Old Road in 1878. Perhaps that coincidence marked me as rail booster for I've always fought for railroads in general and the Old Road. in particular, this is the end and I hate it. In fact, I’ve never liked funerals. Next I suppose the Wabash will get the urge."

Mr. Baker was referring to the four daily and Sunday passenger trains that pass through Adrian on the Wabash between Detroit and St. Louis. (Wabash passenger service, then N&W, ended with the advent of Amtrak in 1971.) With Mr. Baker on the last ride was William Brady, 79, for 30 years roundhouse foreman at Adrian, who retired in 1945. At one time he said 24 steam locomotives were berthed at Adrian. Now the roundhouse was gone and a two-diesel shed had replaced it.

Returning to Toledo, No. 822 left Elkhart with 52 passengers. More newsmen and others joined those who'd come up on 807. It was the same consist and locomotive that left Toledo that morning and the crew held orders to pick up the express reefer set off at Adrian earlier.

At White Pigeon, 822 overtook the Old Road’s tri-weekly local and saw the Grand Rapids branch's local waiting for a clear main to head out for Elkhart.

Brakeman St. John flagged the Main Street crossing in Sturgis for the last regularly scheduled passenger train as 822 stopped, and he got off and preceded the train over the crossing, a practice required of all passenger trains in Sturgis by city ordinance. Apparently calloused to the loss of passenger trains -- first the Pennsylvania’s Fort Wayne-Grand Rapids service which ended several months before — Sturgis barely raised its collective and indifferent head to the Old Road’s last trains. But three 14-year old's — Arthur Laws, Bill Haack and Bob Schlage — all model railroaders, were sufficiently moved to obtain permission to cut classes and plunked a saved-up $2.56 each for a round trip to Elkhart. They'd made a similar trip to Toledo during the summer even thought it meant staying there overnight.

[Image Left: The Quincy depot in 1918. The author's father worked at this station].

Outside Bronson, 822 crunched to an emergency stop in response to Brakeman St. John's air signal. The generator belt on a coach had broken and the noise caused the stop. On discovering the trouble, a high ball got 822 underway again.

Reaching Hillsdale, formerly a transfer point for four branch lines to Lansing, Jackson, Ypsilanti and Fort Wayne and at one time served by 22 daily and Sunday passenger trains, the only ceremony to mark the last day was staged. Arranged by the American Legion, Hillsdale had its high school band at the depot, a color guard, city officials, public address system and a crowd of about 500. The local radio station was transcribing everything for a later broadcast. Mayor George Conviss, a former traveling salesman who rode countless miles over the Old Road, said "with the abandonment of passenger service by the NYC, Hillsdale will be completely without any form of public transportation as two bus lines quit nearly a year ago." He then asked Conductor Kumrow to say a few words and introduce the train crew. The band played a dirge as 822 pulled out for Toledo, taps were sounded and a firing squad sounded a final volley on the depot lawn.

Boarding the train at Hillsdale were Mr. and Mrs. William Smallbrack. They had a small farm near Pittsford and were getting Social Security allotments. They bitterly protested removal of passenger service. "Now we'll be marooned as though we lived on an island. We have not money for a car, there is no bus, and we can't walk to Hillsdale. Why can't they use one of those trolley cars (referring to Budd cars)?"

Purchaser of the last ticket sold at Hillsdale and the only one purchased the last day that wasn't used — Hillsdale to Quincy for 72 cents — was this writer, a native of Quincy who was practically raised in the depot there during the 42 years his father, Leon 0. DeWolfe, served as station agent. It was a shock to learn that only Hillsdale and Adrian still had tickets to sell. They had been removed from all other stations since July. Mary Beth Keller, 12 years of age, of Sylvania, Ohio, the first stop west of Toledo, was the last person to pay a cash fare on the Old Road when she had No. 822 flagged to a stop for a ride into Toledo and paid Conductor Kumrow 46¢.

[Image info: an early view of the Erie & Kalamazoo on their line between Toledo and Adrian, which became part of the Old Road].

Originally, the Old Road was chartered April 22, 1833, four years before Michigan was admitted to statehood and while Toledo — then named Port Lawrence -- was a part of the Michigan Territory. Known as the Erie & Kalamazoo Railroad it was the first rail route built and operated in both Michigan and Ohio, and the first west of the Allegheny Mountains. Passenger service began on the E&C November 2, 1836, when two horses hitched in tandem hauled an unheated, open platform car from Toledo to Adrian on wooden rails covered with thin iron straps. The first steam locomotive to be used west of the Allegheny began service early in 1837, on the E&K between Adrian and Toledo. It was built in Philadelphia by Baldwin, carried number 80 and the name "Adrian" and was shipped to Toledo by boat. Running time for 33 miles from station to station was an hour and 40 minutes.

The second steam locomotive to be put into service on this road was No. 90, named "Toledo" which began operating in October, 1837.

In 1838 the "Southern" route was under construction by the State of Michigan to link Monroe and New Buffalo. Two other State-financed roads were also being built at that time — the "Central" from Detroit to St. Joseph, and the "Northern" from St. Clair to Grand Haven. The "Southern" inaugurated service between Monroe and Adrian in 1840 but by 1844 when its tracks halted in a field west of Hillsdale, the State was willing to sell out to the Erie & Kalamazoo.

A New York City syndicate headed by Detroit attorney Elisha Litchfield organized the Michigan Southern Railroad and purchased both the "Southern" line and the E&K's Palmyra Tecumseh branch line in 1846. In 1849, Litchfield leased the E&K "in perpetuity," and progress resumed again after a five year lapse. By the close of 1850 the rails reached Coldwater. The following October 4 trains could run through to South Bend, and on February 22, 1852, the first railroad link between Toledo and Chicago was completed. The first train to reach Chicago from the east was a joint Michigan Southern-Northern Indiana passenger accommodation, making the run over its parents' rails, the route that eventually became the Old Road.

The competing Michigan Central had a train into Chicago from Detroit three months later on May 23, 1852, but for the last 14 miles into Chicago it ran over the tracks of the Illinois Central from Kensington to downtown Chicago, an arrangement that lasted for many decades afterwards. In 1855 the Michigan Southern and the Northern Indiana merged to form a new company named, logically, the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana. in 1869 the MS&NI was merged into the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern and under that corporate name it operated the Toledo-Chicago lines until 1914 when the LS&MS came under the control of the New York Central system.

Thus it can be truly said that the beginnings of the Old Road are part of the Genesis of railroading in America. That's why the abandonment of passenger service seemed such a catastrophe to those who had been so close to the road for so many years. The line was more than just another rail link. The Old Road was historic and venerable, the forerunner of all present rail routes between Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland and Buffalo. Once it had 24-hour stations at nearly every stop, regal dining salons at division points like Adrian and Hillsdale with 16 to 20 daily and Sunday passenger trains plus the nation's first "fast mail" trains.

The first to have steam east of Chicago and west of the Alleghenies, the Old Road was the last stronghold of steam on the NYC. Steam power lasted until 1955. The once-lengthy passenger trains with diners, chair cars, through sleepers and brass-railed open-end observation cars had dwindled through the years to a couple of head end cars and a combination. When the RPOs came off on January 1, 1956, in favor of two Highway Post Offices ("Hypos") operating over the highways to serve Old Road communities, the end seemed near. But the finish required nearly a year to come.

But it finally did on Monday, November 19, 1956, with the mournful air horns of the diesels on Nos. 807 and 822 sounding a requiem for the passing of a way of life that is gone forever.

BOB DEWOLFE is retired from the Detroit "Free Press" where he was a general news reporter for several years. Now living in the wilds of Union City, Michigan, Bob grew up in Quincy on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, where his father worked for the railroad.