Time Line - 1951

Last Year | Next Year

• March 31: Last passenger train operated on the Detroit & Mackinac Railway. [MDOT/HI][DFP-1951-0402]

• April 21: Department of Street Railway operators in Detroit strike, halt public transportation for 59 days. Strike ends June 19. DSR's longest strike. [DWS]

• April 30: GTW abandons service on the D&H branch (Detroit & Huron RR) between Cass City and Bad Axe. On that date, Walter Miller, the station agent at Cass City, handed Conductor George Morgan the final running order: "Engine 5038 run extra Cass City to Bad Axe and return to Cass City". [MRC-3/87 and 8/1988]

• May. The old fashioned whistle may replace the new fangled horn on Michigan railroads. A Bay County circuit judge ruled that use of an air horn by locomotives is illegal. He cited a state law specifying steam whistles. The case stems from a railroad crossing accident on the Detroit & Mackinac near Bay City in 1948.

• December 14: A DSS&A freight rolls backwards down L'Anse hill in Baraga County, causing a major wreck which derails one locomotive and 22 cars at the Falls River bridge. Two employees were killed. [RO]

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• Nahma & Northern abandons line north of Nahma. [MRRC]

• SNAPSHOT: The Mackinac Transportation company handles 34,786 cars across the Straits of Mackinac, the largest number carried by the car ferry during any one year from 1940 until August, 1984 when service ceased. [MDOT]

• The Copper Range Railroad purchases a 1,200 h.p. diesel locomotive, their fourth.  Two remaining steam locomotives are retired the next year (1952). [CRH]

Time line Key:

• Railroad event in Michigan
• Event relating to mining
• Event related to car ferries
• Event outside of Michigan
• Improvement in Technology
• Railroad built or extended
• Railroad abandoned and/or removed
• Economic panic or depression