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| Peter Dudley shared his photo An original monochromatic Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) photograph shows the Detroit portal of Michigan Central Railroad’s Detroit River Tunnel, c. May 1910. The project was rapidly nearing completion – the official completion date was July 1. |
An original monochromatic Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) photograph shows the Detroit portal of Michigan Central Railroad’s Detroit River Tunnel, c. May 1910. The project was rapidly nearing completion – the official completion date was July 1.This route also used to serve the Michigan Central Station.
The Detroit portal was in the shadow of the Vermont Street truss bridge, which was built years earlier. The tunnel approach, M.C.R.R.’s lengthy Third Street Yard (right), and the double-track branch line to the riverfront (left), were carefully inserted under the bridge, without disturbing it.
The branch line provided access to M.C.R.R.’s red-brick 1884 depot on Third Street, as well as three railroad car ferry slips, which were abandoned and filled-in, after the tunnel opened. After the new (now century-old) Michigan Central Station (MCS) opened on 15th Street on December 26,1913, the burned-out, blackened remains of M.C.R.R.'s previous depot on Third Street were transformed into New York Central Railroad’s Third Street Freight Terminal. The soon-to-be-renamed Detroit People Mover / Joe Louis Arena station currently occupies the site where the old depot's clock tower once stood.
The diagonal route to the riverfront was actually laid through the streambed of May’s Creek c. 1847, when recently-privatized M.C.R.R. moved its terminus to the riverfront from Campus Martius. The former creek bed became a naturally-occurring, depressed railroad right-of-way.
All of the relatively-surface-level trackage southeast of the tunnel portal has been abandoned, but the route still has some potential – as part of a rapid transit line, connecting downtown Detroit with Metro Airport, and / or another pedestrian / cyclist limited-access rail-trail, like The Dequindre Cut Greenway on Detroit's east side. Canadian Pacific Railway freight trains still make their way across the river, far below.
The bottom edge of the photograph shows the top of a reinforced-concrete signal bridge, built over the double-track tunnel approach. Four bolts embedded in the concrete (left) awaited the installation of a semaphore signal over the north / upstream / westbound track. Later, single-lens searchlight signals replaced the semaphores – later still, the sagging signal bridge was removed.
An out-of-focus part of the truss bridge carrying Porter Street over the tracks (lower-left corner) is also visible.
DPC shopped and hand-tinted this photograph – it became the basis for several photo-postcards. A version of this image is the centerpiece of a “Souvenir of Detroit” plate, currently on display in the window of the A.C. Dietsch Souvenir Shop, located in Detroit Historical Museum’s Streets of Old Detroit exhibit (photo retrieved from www.Shorpy.com, also available as DPC Collection photo det 4a23701, accessible from www.LOC.gov).
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| HS House Camping posted Detroit circa 1910. "Approach to the Michigan Central Railroad tunnel." Another view of the electrified tracks going under the Detroit River. 8x10 inch glass negative. Richard Fiedler shared |
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| Detroit Historical Society posted On July 1, 1910, the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel was completed under the Detroit River. The Windsor approach is pictured on this 1920s-era postcard from our collection. Noted on the reverse, the tunnel was constructed in sections, "all work being done from the surface of the water without the use of compressed air. The length from portal to portal is 1 3/8 miles, and from summit of grade 2 ½ miles. It was built by the Detroit River Tunnel Company for the M. C. R. R. at a cost of $8,500,000." |
Barry Sell posted two photos with the comment: "Detroit circa 1910. "Michigan Central Railroad tunnel."
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| Jeff Wilson shared his post Admin  +1 I ran trains thru this tunnel for 8 years. 1.8 % grade on one side, 2% on the other. 8100 foot tunnel. 5200 ft 5,000 tons was a stall train for one AC or GEVO 5200 ft 10,000 tons was a stall train for 4 SDs or 2 ACs or 2 GEVOs The biggest issue was rear end clearing 15 or 20 mph CR Shared Assets and trying to get it up to tunnel MAS of 40 mph. Once I had 2 ACs and stalled, an SD40-2 came out of Windsor and coupled up and train still wouldn't budge and actually sucked us back into the tunnel when i released the brakes. I can faintly see the third rail that was used in the tunnels at the time. |
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| Jeff commented on his post, cropped [This is on the backside of the postcard.] |
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| Benjamin Gravel shared Detroit Historical Society's post On July 1, 1910, the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel was completed under the Detroit River. This postcard notes that it was constructed at a cost of $8,500,000 and is 1 3/8 miles in length. Peter Dudley added eight photos as comments Stephen Phillips the tunnel was powered by electric locomotives from its being built ...... Diesel electrics replaced them when steam was retired ... |
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| Jeff Arthur Knorek posted The caption reads: "1910. Electric engine, Detroit River Tunnel". This is likely an 8x10 silver gelatin contact print from a glass plate silver gelatin negative. The Detroit River Tunnel Company was controlled by New York Central. Image from ShorpyDOTcom. Here is some more info on the Detroit River Tunnel Company: http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/photos/us/DRT.htm |
(new window) I recommend you skip to about 2:50. You can see the notches they put in the left tunnel to clear autoracks. I wonder if it can also handle double-stacks.
Another video of a train coming out of the tunnel. (source)
Detroit Daley has an article on the tunnel. The link for this article was shared by Peter Dudley.
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| Ross Gray commented on Peter's share Tunnel section being floated down the St. Clair River |
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| Winninoah Poohi posted Supervisors watch as the last tubular section of the Michigan Central Railroad tunnel is sunk into the Detroit River, connecting Detroit and Windsor. The railroad tunnel opened on July 26, 1910 and is still in use today. Library Of Congress |
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| safe_image for Shorpy The Detroit River circa 1910. "Michigan Central R.R. tunnel -- sinking the last tubular section. W.S. Kinnear, Chief Engineer, Butler Bros. Construction Co., contractors." 6½ x 8½ inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company. Ted Gregory: Ran hundreds of trains thru that leaky tunnel |
Michigan in Pictures posted six photos with the comment:
MEET THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL RAILWAY TUNNEL!One of the fun things about Michigan in Pictures is the way that the photos I share raise questions that I am then obliged to find the answers to! That is the case today after someone asked “Where does the Holiday Train cross over from Canada?” The answer is the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel which The Henry Ford explains was the answer to a wintertime challenge:Ferrying railroad cars across the Detroit River was time-consuming and expensive — and sometimes impossible through winter ice. The Michigan Central Railroad opened a tunnel between Detroit and Windsor in 1910. The tunnel’s sections were built on land and then towed and sunk into position. This innovative construction technique saved the railroad some $2 million versus more conventional methods.The Diesel Shop shared the photo above [below] and continues the explanation:The tunnel was constructed utilizing the immersed tube method in which tunnel sections are prefabricated and then sunk to the bottom of the river. Immersed tube construction is generally faster and cheaper than the alternative of boring a tunnel into the earth. The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel was the first immersed tube tunnel to carry traffic. The tunnel, built at a cost of $8,500,000, is 1 3/8 miles in length from portal to portal.Holiday Train post: https://www.facebook.com/michpics/posts/pfbid0FX2NwEdupQE9gXKtP37k8eQBozUtCNBdZCsZWujLhCTNYF6XQmix1pvfnTxBYzTClHead over to Michigan in Pictures for all the links & a cool video tour of the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel: https://michpics.wordpress.com/.../michigan-central.../Support Michigan in Pictures with Patreon:
Danny Eaton: Ferrying cars was expensive. But we did it up until 1996. Right out of the train yard beneath the Ambassador bridge. Loaded and unloaded barges from 1969 thru 1999. First the Norfolk and Western R.R. the The Norfolk Southern R.R.
Darryl Dixon: When I worked on the C&O RR, I would catch the CP Puller a couple of times. It was pretty amazing going through the tunnel. We would have to highball it to make it up the grade on the Canadian side when we had a lengthy train. I had low seniority so I had to ride the Caboose, which would rock sideways because we were going pretty fast. And dusty. Once, we caught a red light on the Canadian side, so we had to stop. We only had a few cars, so the grade wouldn't be a problem. I got off the caboose and walked on the catwalk. There was a bronze plaque in the wall with a vertical line going through it. On one side of the line it said Canada, the other side said United States. Pretty cool! I took my knife and scratched my initials in it. That was around 1972.
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| Peter Dudley posted A "Pesha" photograph (no. 783) shows the Detroit portal and descending approach to the Michigan Central Railroad Detroit River Tunnel as it neared completion, c. 1910. The Detroit tunnel entrance was inserted directly under the long-gone Vermont Street Overpass, without disturbing the truss span. Mr. Pesha's numbered images provide an excellent chronology of tunnel construction, from c. 1906 through July 1, 1910 (when the tunnel was completed). |
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| safe_image for CP Rail purchases full control of Detroit River Rail Tunnel Dan Gurley shared Ted Gregory: The issue with this tunnel is CP cannot run double stacked 9'6" containers. They tried it once and it didn't work out very well. There have been plans in the works for decades to build a new rail tunnel under the Detroit River with the necessary clearance, similar to what CN constructed between Port Huron and Sarnia. |
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| Viral Media posted Michigan Central Tunnel The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel runs under the Detroit River connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. The railway tunnel opened for service in 1910. In 1968, the tunnel passed from the New York Central Railroad to Penn Central, and in 1976 to Conrail. In 1985, Conrail sold the tunnel to the Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, with each getting a half share. The north tube underwent a $27 million enlargement in 1993 to allow passage taller rail cars. Canadian Pacific took full ownership of the tunnel in 2020. In the foreground is the historic Michigan Central intercity passenger rail station in Detroit, Michigan built in 1914. The Beaux-Arts style architecture was designed by the Warren & Wetmore and Reed and Stem firms who also designed New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The station was active until the cessation of Amtrak service on January 6, 1988. By 1988, Michigan Central had already become run-down. Detroit was declining in the 1980s, and after the station closed, it became prone to vandalism. The grandiose building that was a symbol of pride became the symbol of Detroit’s decay. In 2018 Ford Motor Company purchased the building for redevelopment. Michigan Central Station will be part of Ford's Corktown Campus. The former train depot be home to the automaker's electric vehicle team. The campus will include a 30-acre walkable community surrounding the train station. Between 2018 and 2021, the building's exterior was repaired and the electrical and mechanical systems were replaced; in August 2021, the renovation entered the third and final phase, focusing on the interior |
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