Time Line - 2017

Last Year | Next Year

• Spring - Norfolk Southern begins construction on a unit coal training staging yard just east of the Village of Swanton, Ohio in Lucas County. The yard will be used for staging coal trains awaiting shipment to power plants in Michigan and Ohio. [Toledo Blade]

• April - Canadian National closes its Escanaba taconite lake vessel loading facility. This facility had been in operation for over one hundred years either as a raised ore dock for a level loading facility. The closure followed the closure of the Empire Mine in Palmer, Michigan. The remaining Tilden Mine ships via the Presque Isle dock north of Marquette.

• After ten years of decentralized dispatching from nine regional centers, CSX is returning them to a central location in Jacksonville, Florida. The remote centers were located Albany, NY, Atlanta, GA, Baltimore, MD, Chicago (Calumet), IL, Florence, KY, Indianopolis, IN (the Great Lakes Division), Jacksonville, FL, and Nashville, TN.  The move will be completed by October 15th [TR-9/17].

• Fall - Arauco, a global producer of wood products, builds a new $400 million continuous particleboard press (170 ft) plant southeast of Grayling. The plant is located on the Lake State Railway on Four Mile Road. The plant makes particleboard with sawdust and woodchips from lumber mills within 100 miles. Resins to bind the product come from the Georgia Pacific Resins plant across the street. LSRC will bring raw materials in and finished board out. [Crawford Co. Avalanche]

• 2017 is the last year that beet traffic moves from Michigan's thumb to Bay City. The function is taken over by truck haul.

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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