Railroad: Mackinac Transportation Company

Built → Mackinac Transportation Company → Abandoned

Created: 1881 - Not a railroad. Operated railroad car ferries in the Strait of Mackinaw.

Operated for 103 years.

Operations Ended: 1984.

Reference: [MRRC]

Notes

This was the long standing railroad car ferry operation between Mackinaw City in the lower peninsula and St. Ignace in the upper peninsula. The operation was switched by the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic railway on the north, and the New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads on the south.

Time Line

1883. February. It has been practically demonstrated, says the Marquette Mining Journal, that the crossing of the Straits of Mackinac by boat in the winter season is attended by so much detention from the ice as to label the enterprise a failure. The Algomah, the ferry plying between the two shores, has been ice bound for the past three weeks, all attempts at blasting a passage for her through the ice having thus far proved fruitless.

Residents of that region say that this is but an average winter in that place, and the ice is not more than half the thickness it is in severe winters, of frequent occurrence in this latitude. With such a state of affairs, the residents near the Straits, and those interested in its welfare are contemplating referring the matter to Congress with a petition asking that some steps be taken to surmount the difficulty and establish an unbroken route. The idea is advanced that by cribbing from St. Ignace to Graham's Shoals a much swifter current than the present one, and one which would carry the floating ice from, where it now lodges, could be formed. [DFP-1883-0206]

1913. After being stalled in the ice for four days, the Wa-Wa-Tam reached St. Ignace after a course for the vessel had been blasted out with dynamite. Passengers, freight and mail were held up for days. Nearly 500 cars of freight were tied up upon the north side of the straits, while 250 of these cars were spotted in the St. Ignace yards and the balances filled the switches, sidetracks and spurs as far north as Trout Lake.

Some passengers disembarked and walked ashore, either to St. Ignace (four miles away) or back to Mackinaw City. The ferry was well provisioned for food. It is claimed by some that passengers were at the mercy of grasping employees of the boat, who, it is charged, extracted tips where ever they dared. The company would not allow passengers to pay for their meals. The beds of the crew were rented by the men to the highest bidder. There were 104 passengers on the boat. [EDP-1913-0211]

1963. The Mackinac Transportation company has asked the ICC for permission to abandon its railroad car ferry service at the Straits because it cannot afford to repair its ferry. John Benson, of the Soo Line railroad which owns the company, said that the Coast Guard has condemned the boiler of the Chief and that repairs would cost more than a half million dollars. "It would take us a long time to recover that much money on our present revenues," said Benson. The Chief is an icebreaker and has maintained daily service across the Straits, serving the Soo Line terminal at St. Ignace and the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroad terminals at Mackinaw City. Benson added that the loss was inevitable with the building of the Mackinaw Bridge. "We have ben hurt real bad by bridge trucking", said Benson. [EDP-1963-1126]

1963. December. Three railroads operating the ferry Chief Wawatam have asked for Coast Guard approval to continue operations into 1964. The Coast Guard had given the railroads until Dec. 31 to get the car ferry into what it called seaworthy condition. [EDP-1963-1010]

1963. December. Attorney General Frank Kelly vowed a legal battle against four rail carriers who, he said, want to "discontinue service in a substantial part of northern Michigan. "Information has been received that with the request to abandon the Mackinaw City to St. Ignace car ferry, the Pennsylvania, New York Central and Soo Line railroads will ask the ICC to reduce substantially their services in this state," Kelly said. He also said the Detroit & Mackinac railroad is seeking to halt its service to Cheboygan. Only the NYC confirmed Kelley's statement that it plans to end service north of Gaylord to Mackinaw City.

The PRR and Soo Line denied the accusations, except to say they want to discontinue the rail car ferry across the Straits. George Wyatt, general attorney for the NYC in Detroit, said: "In event the Mackinac Company abandons service, there will be insufficient traffic north of Gaylord to support a railroad, and abandonment of that trackage is almost a foredrawn conclusion." Wyatt said the NYC runs one train north and one south each day above Gaylord, servicing Wolverine, Vanderbilt, Indian River and Mackinaw City, whose combined population is about 4,000.

The NYC, PRR and Soo Line contend that the ferry over the straits can no longer be operated profitably. Each railroad has one man on the company's board of directors. The ferry, Chief Wawatam, has been condemned by the Coast Guard, and has been licensed to operate only until May 24, 1964. The railroads argue that the $1.2 million it would cost to repair the Chief would not be worthwhile in the face of declining freight traffic lost to the Mackinac Bridge. [EDP-1963-1227]

1964. The company reports a decline in carload shipments on the Chief from 19,191 in 1959 (52 cars per day) to 8,751 in 1963 (24 per day). The estimated cost to meet U.S. Coast Guard boiler standards and improve dock facilities is $1.34 million. [EDP-1964-0108]

1964. May. A U.S. District Court judge in Grand Rapids issued an injunction which temporarily halts a threatened loss of railroad freight car ferry service at the Straits of Mackinac. Judge Noel P. Fox ordered the car ferry Chief Wawatam kept in operation until the ICC rules on a petition to abandon service. An ICC hearing is scheduled for July 8. The Mackinac Transportation Company (MTC) claims that repairs would be too costly and no suitable substitute vessel is available. The judge told defendants the problem of how to continue the car ferry service was up to them. He disputed their claims that the repair order was an unexpected "emergency or catastrophe". The assistant attorney general contended that the MTC in 1961 disposed of a standby vessel although aware for many years that the 53-year-old Wawatam faced replacement.

The judge noted that the MTC had operated at a deficit for 35 years. "Prudence would have dictated a petition for abandonment long before this time", he concluded, "unless there were benefits to the three owner companies." [LSJ-1964-0515]

1964. May. Attorney General Frank Kelly and U.S. Senator Philip Hart announced the Coast Guard has given the owners of the ferry another year to make the vessel safe - instead of forcing the operation to halt May 24 because of boiler troubles. [PNR-1964-0521]

1964. July. The D&M withdraws its ICC petition to abandon their main line from Posen to Cheboygan. [HDN-1964-0702]

1964. July. A tugboat, the John Purves of Sturgeon Bay, WI served as the power to keep the ferry Wawatam going for the past five weeks while repairs were made on its boilers. [SJHP-1964-0702]

1964. July. The Pennsylvania railroad says they can't conceive of the PRR withdrawing its abandonment petition north of Cadillac, even if the Mackinaw rail ferry is forced to continue. The petition on the Sand Lake to Mackinaw City branch "stands on its own two feet".

1964. Repairs to bring the Wawatam up to Coast Guard required safety standards were less expensive than earlier estimates. The ship's boilers could be restored for as little as $270,000 to $470,000 under one plan the line is considering. The more expensive refurbishment would permit the company to cut crew costs by about $36,000 a year, but the less expensive repairs would not result in any such savings. [PNR-1964-0710]

1964. During a MPSC hearing about the abandonment of the Chief Wawatam, a MPSC consultant noted that the Manistique-Frankfort rail ferry operated by the Ann Arbor railroad across Lake Michigan has an excess capacity of about 1,500 cars per year. With about 6,000 cars leaving the U.P. through the straits yearly, the Manistique-Frankfort run could be doubled from 3 to 6 days a week and still take care of only half of the Mackinac traffic. Though a second ferry from Frankfort to Menominee exists, it would cost shippers about three times as much to ship via the Ann Arbor ferry as the Mackinac ferry because of the increased distance. Records indicate that a trip across the straits costs $25.82 per car, as opposed to $86.71 across Lake Michigan. The per-car cost on the Mackinac run could be reduced to $9.28 if the ferry owners increased the traffic to three trips daily and ran the ferry at capacity. [SEN-1964-1111]

1965. April. The Mackinac Transportation Co. is removing the train ferry from service next week to begin a $600,000 boiler repair project. The Chief Wawatam is being sent to Manitowoc, WI for repairs and will be replaced for most of the season by a car ferry from the Ann Arbor railroad. Temporary repairs were made on the Chief's boilers last summer when it remained in service and moved from dock to dock by a tug. [IDG-1965-0424] The Chief's replacement will be the former Ann Arbor No. 5, which now has no propulsion and is operated with a tug by the Bultema Dock Dredge Co., of Manistee. Bultema will charter the tug and barge to Mackinac Transportation. The 318-foot No. 5 is slightly smaller than the Chief Wawatam. [EDP-1965-0510]

1965. October 1. ICC hearing Examiner Hyman J. Blond ruled that the lines could not abandon the service. The railroads vowed to appeal the ruling to the ICC's finance division. [TCRE-1965-1201]

1969. William B. Salter, vice president and general manager of the Northern Region of the Penn Central has been elected president of the Mackinac Transportation Co. Salter succeeds Howard Kohout, former GM of the NYC Western Region at Chicago. The Mackinac Transportation Co. is two-thirds owned by Penn Central with the remaining portion held by the Soo Line railroad. Satler had been employed by the former NYC since 1925 and worked his way up through the ranks. He was named GM of the Northern Region in 1968. He had been GM of the region for the NYC since 1964. Before that, he served in various supervisory capacities with the NYC in Chicago, Canada, Syracuse and Indianapolis. [SEN-1969-0716]

1970. September. The Mackinac Transportation Company, now jointly owned by the Penn Central and Soo Line railroads has "quietly" filed an abandonment application with the ICC. Frank Kelley, the state attorney general, opposes the action. [HES-1970-0903] At the time of the new petition, the operation runs at a $600,000 deficit and makes only three round trips a week. The ferry handled just 4,118 freight cars in 1969. [DFP-1971-0131]

1976. The State Highway Commission has signed a contract to continue railroad car ferry service across the Straits of Mackinac. The Straits Car Ferry Service Corp. will operate the one-boat ferry service for the next eight months with $430,000 from the state's General Transportation Fund. The ferry had been scheduled for abandonment April 1 by the U.S. Railway Association. Since then, the state has paid out $200,000 in general transportation funds to keep the ferry operating. The new contract is effective through March 31, 1977. Lumber and wood products are the major commodity carried across the straits by the ferry. It is switched at St. Ignace by the Soo Line and in Mackinaw City by the D&M. [PNR-1976-0804]

1978. Railroad freight shipments through the upper peninsula have come to a virtual standstill because funds to operate the Straits of Mackinac car ferry are running low. About 400 boxcars routed south via the Straits Car Ferry Service Corporation ship that can carry 16 cars at a time may be stuck for a number of weeks unless they are redirected over alternate land routes. As a result, the ICC slapped an embargo against routing additional freight cars across the Straits at the request of the Straits Car Ferry company.

There are more cars up there than the ship can handle," said Richard Anderson, rail subsidy manager for the state highway and transportation department. "About all of it is southbound business". Because of the shortage of operational funds, he said the ferry is down to once-a-week operation. Last November, the railroad car ferry had been placed on more frequent round trips, occasionally twice-a-day.

DSHT is paying Straits Car Ferry an $881,845 subsidy to cover operational costs for the year ending March 31. If the traffic was about equal in both directions, Anderson said there wouldn't be much of a problem. However nearly all shipments are southbound and most are destinated for eastern states. The Soo Line could opt to reroute and backlog through Chicago adding hundreds of miles to the trip. The length of the ICC embargo is unknown. [PHTH-1978-0110]

Articles

Article: Embattled Straits' ferry is reprieved - 1980