Typical of their brethren everywhere, even a century after the fact many railroaders still called certain southern Michigan branchline segments “the Air Line.” But unlike many such monikers elsewhere for short-cuts or straight-track segments, this one had an ancestor with that actual name. The Michigan Air Line Railroad was planned to link the Canada Southern — which went from Buffalo, N.Y., across Ontario — with Chicago, using a ferry across the St. Clair River between Canada and the U.S.
In 1868, CASO and the Grand Trunk Railway, chartered in Michigan and Indiana, formed the Michigan Air Line, which opened in February 1871 from the Michigan Central hub of Niles, Mich., east to Jackson. It was leased to MC as part of a shorter Chicago-Detroit route. Also opened was a route from Romeo, Mich., east to Richmond. The Michigan Midland & Canada, chartered in 1872 to continue east from Richmond to St. Clair, Mich., on its namesake river, opened in 1873 as part of the CASO. Owing to financial problems, the Jackson-Pontiac-Romeo segment was not built.
The Romeo-Richmond segment was detached in October 1872 as the St. Clair & Chicago Air Line, but it soon went bankrupt; in November 1875 it was sold and reorganized as the Michigan Air Line Railway. This MAL made arrangements for operation by the Grand Trunk, whose Port Huron-Detroit line went through Richmond. GT leased the MAL on Jan. 1, 1881, and finished the line west to Jackson on Sept. 1, 1884, building the Pontiac-South Lyon portion on the right of way of the planned Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northeastern. Michigan Central (later New York Central) continued to operate the Jackson-Niles segment.
In the last years of steam on Grand Trunk Western, several excursions went from Detroit to Port Huron via Pontiac and Richmond, but only two are known to have gone to Jackson. In the 1950s, NYC rebuilt the Jackson-Three Rivers track as a CTC-signaled shortcut from Detroit toward the new (1958) Robert R. Young Yard at Elkhart, Ind. The Three Rivers-Niles portion of the MAL had been abandoned prior to World War II.
