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Pere Marquette Railway
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Pere Marquette Railway | |
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| Reporting marks | PM |
| Locale | Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Ontario |
| Dates of operation | 1900 – 1947 |
| Successor line | Chesapeake and Ohio |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) (standard gauge) |
| Headquarters | Cleveland, Ohio |
The Pere Marquette Railway (AAR reporting marks PM) was a railroad that operated in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The railroad had trackage in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and the Canadian province of Ontario. Its primary connections included Buffalo, New York, Toledo, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois.
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It was incorporated on January 1, 1900 as the Pere Marquette Railroad Company from the merger of several Michigan railroads, the most prominent being:
- Flint and Pere Marquette Railway
- Detroit, Lansing and Northern Railroad
- Chicago and West Michigan Railroad
The company was reincorporated on March 12, 1917 as the Pere Marquette Railway.
In the 1920s the Pere Marquette came under the control of Cleveland financiers Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen who also controlled the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, Erie Railroad and Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad and planned to merge the four railroads. The ICC did not approve the merger and the Van Sweringen brothers sold their interest in the Pere Marquette to the C&O, with which it formally merged on June 6, 1947. The C&O has since become part of CSX.
In 1984, Amtrak named their passenger rail service between Grand Rapids, Michigan and Chicago the Pere Marquette.
In 2004, The Polar Express featured Pere Marquette 1225, a steam locomotive originally serving the Pere Marquette. The train seen in the movie, although not the same train in the book, was a model of the 1225 based from actual measurements and recordings of the 1225. The locomotive was scheduled to be at the premiere in Grand Rapids, Michigan, originally where the writer of the popular children's book was born, but cancelled due to interferences with the schedule of CSX.
On July 20, 1907 an excursion train of 800 passengers from Ionia to Detroit collided near Salem with a freight train, killing 31 and injuring 101. The accident apparently happened because of a hand-written schedule on unlined paper whose columns did not line up, and were misread by the freight crew. The Interstate Commerce Commission investigation also cited various safety violations including use of pine instead of oak for car walls and an omission of steel plates required for mail cars. This remains Michigan's worst rail disaster.[1][2]
The Pere Marquette also operated a number of rail car ferries on the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers and on Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. The PM's fleet of car ferries, which operated on Lake Michigan from Ludington, Michigan to Milwaukee, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin (see SS Badger), were an important transportation link avoiding the terminal and interchange delays experienced by freight traveling around the southern tip of Lake Michigan and through Chicago.
On September 10, 1910, Pere Marquette 18 was bound for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from Ludington, Michigan, with a load of 29 railroad freight cars and sixty two persons aboard. Near midnight, the vessel began to take on massive amounts of water. The captain dumped nine railroad cars into Lake Michigan, but there was no use -- the ship was going down. The Pere Marquette 17, traveling nearby, picked up the distress call and sped to assist the floundering vessel. By the time they arrived, there was no more of the ship than thirty-seven survivors floating upon the lake.[3]
- ^ Accident or hoodoo, mystery of train wreck persists. The Regents of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1995-05-05). Retrieved on 2007-12-01.
- ^ "Salem, MI Excursion Train In Head On Collision, July 1907", The Cranbury Press (reprinted by GenDisasters.com), 1907-07-26. Retrieved on 2007-12-01.
- ^ Ratigan, Bill (1977). Great Lakes Shipwrecks and Survivors. Grand Rapids: WM B. Eerdmans.
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| United States: AMTK, BNSF, CSXT, GTW, KCS, NS, SOO, UP - Canada: CN, CP, VIA - Mexico: FXE, TFM, KCSM, FSRR
See also: List of USA/Canada/Mexico Class I Railroads, List of USA/Canadian Class II Railroads, Class III railroad, Class 2 Railroads in Canada, Short-line railroad, List of United States railroads, List of Canadian railroads, List of Mexican railroads |