By Christopher Johnson
Fresh-cut timber, uniform and unweathered. Metal switches with a mint-condition shine. APC crew members in hi-vis yellow move quietly alongside the track near Clare’s Ann Arbor Trail crossing, driving ties not by hammer anymore but with much heavier machinery.
Two weeks ago, this same stretch of track was a literal trainwreck.
Between 8 and 9 PM on a Wednesday night, a freight train left the rails a short distance up at the nearest road crossing, toppling hopper cars and ripping the track apart. By morning, early commuters found 5th Street closed and the scene frozen in place: cars leaning at sharp angles, rails bent and scattered, broken ties crushed underneath like bone matter.
This unfolded the same morning the streets were being rinsed and cleaned for Irish Fest.
No injuries were reported. But the damage to the track told its own story.
The cars had been hauling plastic resin pellets—also called nurdles—which had spilled out at several points along the train’s length. A Northern Dry Bulk tanker arrived at daybreak to vacuum the pellets from the toppled cars before heavy crane equipment moved in to right them and clear the scene.
WATCO, which acquired Great Lakes Central Railroad last fall, investigated and found what many suspected: the old rails had given out. Deteriorating infrastructure and faulty alignment were to blame. The track simply wasn’t up to the demands being placed on it. Now it’s being replaced, and then some
Benny, one of the APC crew members, put it plainly: old, smaller rail is coming out and upgraded rail is going in. “That’s definitely an improvement.”
Excavators are now being used to lift and position the new track sections, which are then slid into alignment using a free-rig system before being secured. It is exactly the kind of infrastructure the stretch needed. Just not under these circumstances.
