Trains in Michigan
Bruce Catton, Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood (Great Lakes Books, 1972; republished by Wayne State Univ. Press, 1987)
Although trains appear in the title, this isn’t technically a railroad book. Instead, the author tells about growing up in small towns in upper Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, the waning days of the White Pine logging industry. The Morning Train is a metaphor for leaving home as one goes out into the world. In his last chapter, "Night Train," the author talks about his father’s death as he himself waits for the last train. Even though this is not strictly a railroad book, there are several good descriptions of "jerkwater trains" that crisscrossed the region. The Pere Marquette, that "was often in receivership, and was half-affectionately referred to as the Poor Marquette," the Manistee and Northeastern, the Ann Arbor railroad and the Boyne City, Gaylord and Alpena. As the railroads were mostly built to support logging operations, they were at best temporary. One of highlights of Catton’s early years was visiting relatives in Minnesota. Taking the Ann Arbor from Beulah to Thompsonville (a short trip), we’re they have to walk over to the Pere Marquette station and wait for a night train to Chicago. Once in Chicago, they’d board one of the first class lines: the Northwestern, the Milwaukee Road or the Burlington. These trains boasted ballast roadbeds, double tracks and automatic switches. After riding on them, it was always a letdown to come back into the woods of northern Michigan.
Although Northern Michigan didn’t have the grand railways that connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, Ernest Hemingway also used the logging railroads in his writings. In his short stories on the "Big Two-Hearted River," takes a train across the Upper Peninsula to the river he plans to fish. In an unfinished novel that’s published in the Complete Short Stores of Ernest Hemingway, the author starts out on a train heading south from the north country (Hemingway’s family had a cabin on Walloon Lake).
Although trains appear in the title, this isn’t technically a railroad book. Instead, the author tells about growing up in small towns in upper Michigan in the early years of the 20th century, the waning days of the White Pine logging industry. The Morning Train is a metaphor for leaving home as one goes out into the world. In his last chapter, "Night Train," the author talks about his father’s death as he himself waits for the last train. Even though this is not strictly a railroad book, there are several good descriptions of "jerkwater trains" that crisscrossed the region. The Pere Marquette, that "was often in receivership, and was half-affectionately referred to as the Poor Marquette," the Manistee and Northeastern, the Ann Arbor railroad and the Boyne City, Gaylord and Alpena. As the railroads were mostly built to support logging operations, they were at best temporary. One of highlights of Catton’s early years was visiting relatives in Minnesota. Taking the Ann Arbor from Beulah to Thompsonville (a short trip), we’re they have to walk over to the Pere Marquette station and wait for a night train to Chicago. Once in Chicago, they’d board one of the first class lines: the Northwestern, the Milwaukee Road or the Burlington. These trains boasted ballast roadbeds, double tracks and automatic switches. After riding on them, it was always a letdown to come back into the woods of northern Michigan.
Although Northern Michigan didn’t have the grand railways that connected Chicago with the rest of the nation, Ernest Hemingway also used the logging railroads in his writings. In his short stories on the "Big Two-Hearted River," takes a train across the Upper Peninsula to the river he plans to fish. In an unfinished novel that’s published in the Complete Short Stores of Ernest Hemingway, the author starts out on a train heading south from the north country (Hemingway’s family had a cabin on Walloon Lake).
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