Location: Saginaw, MI - PM and C&O Dispatcher

The Pere Marquette and later C&O dispatchers were located at Saginaw for most of the former Flint & Pere Marquette railroad lines in Michigan. There were two dispatchers covering the lines in the 1970's. The south dispatcher (pictured at left) was located with the chief dispatcher in the freight house east of Washington Avenue in Saginaw. The Ludington subdivision dispatcher (who also dispatched the Elmdale, Bay City, Bad Axe and Port Huron subdivisions was located on the 3rd floor of Washington Street tower. The CTC machine for the Ludington Sub was moved to the freight house in 1979. [DH]

Image info: Left, three views of the "south end" dispatcher's CTC console at Saginaw in 1984. Doug is the dispatcher and the photo was taken by his father. [Doug Hefty collection].

Notes

The south end console dispatcher's console above Doug's head handled the C&O line from Hoyt (in Saginaw) south to about Kearsley (in Flint), and then from Atwood to Grand Blanc (which is out of view), and Holly to Wayne. Romulus was added later. The track from Romulus to Erie was double-track automatic block signals. Dispatchers could not "see" trains in this territory and train orders were required to run against the current of traffic, if necessary. Both Romulus and Carleton had interlocking towers. Erie to Alexis is out of sight to the right. This console was in service until October 28, 1988.

Dispatchers had train sheets to keep track of all trains for a 24-hour period. Doug mentions: "On second trick, we would block out the train sheet for the next day and slide it under "today's" sheet. Then as we started getting on-duties after midnight we'd enter then on the new sheet. On third trick and half of first trick, we would wrestle the two sheets back and forth until the last train crew on the "old" sheet tied up for the day.

When we "blocked out": the new train sheet we did it in groupings. Starting from the center and working out it was the Holly local, then the Wayne road switchers, Lincoln road switchers, Grand Blanc road switchers, Toledo→Grand Rapids trains, Toledo→Detroit trains, Detroit→Saginaw trains, Toledo→Flint trains, Toledo→Saginaw trains and Grand Rapids→Flint trains. If there happened to be any Conrail trains between Alexis and Carleton, they were put on the far left or right. Even if the road switchers didn't leave their yards, we had to record engine numbers and crew, on and off duty.

We received "official" times from tower operators at Washington Avenue (Saginaw), Plymouth, Rougemere, Wayne, Romulus, Carleton, Alexis and Walbridge which were added to the sheet. We also kept track of delays, set outs, pick ups, etc. [From retired C&O dispatcher Doug Hefty].

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