Article: Detroit & Mackinac Alive & Well - 1977

By Jane Briggs-Bunting - Free Press Staff Writer

Father, Son Rule the Rails

Tawas City - Nestled along the Lake Huron shoreline here is the world headquarters of the Detroit & Mackinac Railroad and one of the last of Michigan's railroad tycoons, Charles Allan Pinkerton II.

Pinkerton, 67, is the railroad's president, a job he inherited from his father and will pass on to his son, Charles Allan Pinkerton III.

Together, the father and son are preparing for what they think is the inevitable comeback of an almost extinct entity - the independent, profit-making railroad.

Founded in the early 1870s as the Detroit, Bay City & Alpena Railroad, the company went bankrupt. A group of Easterners bought the tracks in the 1890s and the D&M was born.

The railroad has yet to live up to its name - the company has never owned lines as far south as Detroit and only recently acquired the track up to the Straits of Mackinac. However, the D&M is one of the few independent and solvent lines in the state.

Pinkerton is the reason. He is a shrewd businessman who belongs in an earlier era.

His father, the first Charles Allan Pinkerton, got into Michigan railroading in 1899. A quarter of a century ago, that father-and-son team bought the D&M. Railroading has been Charles II's preoccupation since then.

The current father-and-son team is a delightful contrast of styles.

The elder Pinkerton, who is universally referred to by employees as well as high-level associates as Mr. Pinkerton or Sir, is a crusty but charming tycoon from the John D. Rockefeller period.

He punctuates conversations with, "Young lady, I don't do anything that doesn't make money," and comments about "young whippersnaps."

He wears muted, conservative business suits with a gold collar pin inserted neatly under his tie, has his white hair clipped short above the collar, and greets visitors formidably by sitting behind a massive wood desk.

He enjoys sipping wine and conducting business in his office - a private Pullman car complete with sitting room, dining room and his own white-coated porter.

Mackinaw is the Huron Indian word for turtle. And turtles used to be the line's emblem just as the sleepy kitten was the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway insignia for years.

There are turtles depicted everywhere in Pinkerton's office - on needlepoint pillows covers, on a table behind his desk parading in a line, in stacks of memorabilia, and even on his desk.

The turtle emblem still survives on a collection of turn-of-the-century Pullman cars and engines that Pinkerton nostalgically has acquired over the years.

The cars are parked in a locked roundhouse in the D&M yard, where they are painstakingly refurbished and preserved. The original walnut and mahogany paneling is carefully waxed and polished, velvet and satin wallpaper and cushions are carefully preserved.

Each car is furnished with as much original equipment as possible.

In one 70-year-old Pullman smoking car, complete with a brass spittoon, the only modern piece of equipment is a mouse trap. The mouse has successfully eluded the trap for months.

One of Pinkerton's prized possessions is a 1901 sleeping car originally built for the president of the Munising Railroad Co. 

Pinkerton concedes that his collection is not in keeping with his profit-making statements, but then everyone has a soft spot.

Besides, he hopes to open a railroad museum eventually. That venture is several years away.

At 67, Pinkerton still is in firm control of the D&M.

He knows his employees on sight, frequently chiding male employees with hair creeping to collar level with "Haven't you been paid lately?"

He knows the facts and the figures of the company as only one with daily contact can know them.

But he is gradually yielding some of the decision making to his son, his handpicked successor.

Cap, as he is known to almost everyone in the business, is a 1970s man. He wears flashy mod business suits. He is relaxed and easy-going.

His brown curly hair is clipped to the prescribed above-collar length, and his blue eyes twinkle - and sometimes roll in exasperation at this father's orders.

But he takes the orders good-naturedly. The deep affection between father and son is tangible.

Cap, 25, has been hanging around trains all his life. As a child, he had the standard toy train that many little boys had. And he had the standard problem: getting dad away from the train set so he could play himself.

But Cap also had a real railroad in the family and contentedly tagged along with his father at the D&M yards, admiring the switches and engines, learning to drive them, and gradually getting to know every D&M employee by name.

A smiling, affable young man with his father's charm, Cap is an expert on railroads, particularly the D&M. He is making thoughtful, well-researched plans for the company's future.

Though he declines to discuss the plans - after all, he also inherited his father's shrewdness - he says, "The railroad business has a lot of growth ahead of it, if the right decisions are made."

Railroads nationwide are involved in a five-year plan of state and federal subsidies to help financially troubled lines to keep running. However, within five years, the federal money dries up and the future of the rail service will reach a critical turning point.

"The Lines are going to have to be more efficient. Some towns are going to have to lose rail service," said Cap. "At the end of five years the rails will have to handle themselves at a profitable rate.

"In this period we have to rehabilitate, re-evaluate and make the rail system self-sufficient.

"The State of Michigan has done a good job compared to other states (in this area). All the railroads have to do now is look ahead and stick with a plan."

The D&M receives no subsidies other than a portion of track between Gaylord and Linwood. The track was recently acquired from a bankrupt line.

The D&M owns 402 miles of track that runs along the shore of Lake Huron from Bay City to the Straits of Mackinac and down to the center of the state (Cheboygan, Gaylord, Grayling and Roscommon) in a huge loop. D&M freight cars also can travel nationwide to deliver goods anywhere their is rail service.

"It's tough and expensive to run a railroad nowadays, mainly because of the preferential treatment through tax subsidies that are used to build and maintain highways," Cap said. Railroads traditionally maintain their track and right-of-way at their own expense.

Over 90 percent of a railroad's revenues are spent on wages, engine and car maintenance, track and right-of-way repair, and officer and administrative expenses, according to the elder Pinkerton.

"You have to maintain it, keep it serviceable and operative," said Pinkerton. After all that, there "isn't much left for R&R (rest and relaxation)."

"Money is awful hard to come by, so I hate like hell to have to go down the drain," he said.

That is the reason the D&M in 1952 terminated its passenger service, which carried families and vacationers up and down the Lake Huron shore.

According to Pinkerton, lack of customers - and, therefore, lack of profits - killed the service.

"The state highway department built roads parallel to the track. People wanted to come and go as they please and gas was cheap. People stopped taking the train," he said.

But he doesn't miss it. "Young lady, I don't miss anything that loses money," he said.

Though the decline of the passenger train may be permanent, the rail freight service will make a comeback, Pinkerton predicts.

"Trains can haul freight for one-tenth the cost of highway handling. Rail is the greatest, most economic means of moving freight and people from one point to another of any known method," he said, speaking like a true railroad tycoon.

[From the Detroit Free Press, Detroit Michigan. August 22, 1977]