These types of improvements are vital for passenger and freight operations, improving safety, increasing reliability, and allowing for increased passenger train speeds.
Work on the crossing began at 7:45 p.m. Aug. 14 after a Norfolk Southern freight train passed through. The project entailed removing the old diamond crossing and carefully installing a new prefabricated unit. Complicating this project was a diamond comprised of four crossings, making it both a heavy lift and requiring precision alignment to reconnect to existing rail lines, as well as disrupting busy passenger and freight rail services. Amtrak Wolverine trains were terminated at Ann Arbor, Mich., with bus service bridging the gap to Dearborn, Detroit, Royal Oak, Troy, and Pontiac, while CSX and NS freight trains were either rerouted or halted.
With the project completed at 4 p.m. Aug. 15, a freight train carefully traveled through the new diamond, testing the construction work. Revenue Amtrak service resumed through Wayne the morning of Aug. 16.
— A Michigan Department of Transportation news release. Aug. 23, 2018.
Good job not answering any questions, Charles Landey. Too bad you don’t know exactly where this is located. It’s in “Wayne, Michigan”, not Westland. The Ford facilities to the west are in Wayne. The downtown area just to the northeast of the diamonds is Wayne. The working class area is in the City of Wayne. Just tossing a wild guess out there, but it may be where the name “Wayne Junction” came from? As for whether the area is in a glide path for Metro airport, one could probably look “up” and determine that!
But…good job getting the “Wasteland” crack in!
Csx to Flint McGrew yard – on a very good day maybe 3 trains each way, more commonly 1 round trip. Lake States takes over at the yard for everything north.
Job well done.
This sounds like a good place to watch trains. Is this in a relatively safe neighborhood? Is there a place to park close by?
How about CSX get to the diamond in Deshler, OH next? It’s been a topic of conversation on Virtual Railfan’s Deshler cam on YouTube.
The state paid (25%) because they own one of the lines thru the diamond. The other line C&O paid 75%. NS probably pays some thru their trackage rights. So the state got the private railroads to pay over 3/4ths of the cost and they still got their Wolverine Corridor line maintained. Does not sound like corporate welfare.
Thought more effort would have been expended on strengthening the sub-grade under the diamonds. The crossing is only as strong as the sub-grade has been built to withstand the continual hammering that happens at railroad crossings at grade.
Laughing my butt off….why are the taxpayers paying for any of this? This is corporate welfare and the reason why Fortune 500 execs are all socialists now
@GEORGE BENSON I use to do some watching at this diamond years ago. The only busy movements through the plant are mostly switching moves. NS has 3-4 trains, CSX roughly the same per day. The CSX Saginaw Sub is a shell of it’s former self. You could see 12-18 CSX freights at one time back in the early 2000’s. Not anymore with the decline in automotive traffic. You’d be better off going to Romulus about a 10 minute drive south of Wayne. There the NS ex-Wabash main crosses. CP has rights from Detroit to Butler, IN 6-10 trains a day on that line
Nicely done presentation. We all see road work by driving through construction areas. This type of work often goes under the public’s radar.
PAUL – Yes you’re right. The Chessie line includes everything into Lansing to the NW and Detroit/ Dearborn to the east (FoMoCo Rouge River) as well as Flint, Bay City, Midland and Saginaw to the north..
The NS traffic there I believe is only local service or interchange with the road that now has freight rights on the former MC from Kalamazoo eastward to AA or Ypsilanti or somewhere like that.
The CSX line gets some big freights to the Plymouth area where the line splits for Grand Rapids, Detroit proper, and whoever operates the CSX trackage to Flint and further north.
Otherwise it’s just Amtrak and that’s seldom a railfan interest for me, but YMMV.
GEORGE. Can’t answer any of your questions (access, safety, parking). It’s south of Michigan Avenue (Michigan Trunk Line Highway US-12) in the City of Westland, Wayne County, a/k/a “Wasteland”. Next to Ford Motor Company’s Michigan Truck plant. Working class area. North-south is the former Chesapeake and Ohio, the railroad named after my two now-deceased cats, the line from Toledo to Flint. East-west is the former Michigan Central or New York Central main line which carries Norfolk Southern freights and three Amtrak train pairs on the Chicago – Detroit – Pontiac run. Nearby is the combined Greenfield Village/ Henry Ford Museum, both of them must-see for railfans. The nearest passenger stops are Ann Arbor and Dearborn. This is also near Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW) but I don’t believe underneath any of the glide paths. To answer your question about train watching, I’d try the Battle Creek Amtrak Station. Some time around 1980, whatever was run through Battle Creek on the Michigan Central was diverted onto the Grand Trunk Western, which now of course goes by the name of its parent Canadian National. So you get CN and NS freights (more so the former, less so the latter), plus Amtrak trains to Detroit – Pontiac, plus I believe Amtrak still runs to Port Huron on CN though no longer to Toronto.