A Conrail auto parts train was heading westbound at Mt. Hope Road near Grass Lake, MI when Edward Hodges captured it on 25 March 1981.
The location, milepost 64.3 (from Detroit), was the location of a dragging equipment detector.
There is a lot of railroad atmosphere here to take in—searchlight signal, wooden relay box, code lines, old-style crossing flashers. The double-track would not remain much longer, as Conrail single-tracked this line by 1988.
EMD GP-40 #3170 was built for the Penn Central in November 1968, and later rebuilt and used by the Kansas City Southern. It was still in service in 2020 as KCS #2829.
Today, more than 40 years later, the Mt. Hope Road crossing looks very different. The line is now single-track and used primarily by Amtrak’s Michigan Line services. The growth of vegetation has changed the landscape, and the atmosphere is much more sterile.
Google map view (2019)
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