Pere Marquette Railway

Loading salt into a Pere Marquette boxcar

The Pere Marquette Railroad was incorporated on November 1, 1899, in anticipation of a merger of three Michigan-based railroad companies[1] that had been agreed upon by all parties. It began operations on January 1, 1900, absorbing the following companies:

• Flint & Pere Marquette Railroad (F&PM)
• Detroit, Grand Rapids & Western Railroad (DGR&W)
• Chicago & West Michigan Railway (C&WM)

C&O's The Pere Marquette at Grand Central Station in Chicago on December 26, 1967

The company was reincorporated on March 12, 1917, as the Pere Marquette Railway. In the 1920s the Pere Marquette came under the control of Cleveland financiers Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen. These brothers also controlled the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate), the Erie Railroad and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, and planned to merge the four companies. However, the ICC did not approve the merger and the Van Sweringens eventually sold their interest in the Pere Marquette to the C&O in 1929. The company continued to operate separately as the Pere Marquette Railway until being fully merged into the C&O on June 6, 1947. Forty years later, the C&O was absorbed into CSX Transportation.

In 1984, Amtrak named its passenger train between Chicago and Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Pere Marquette.[2]

The train in the 2004 film The Polar Express was modeled after steam locomotive Pere Marquette 1225. The film also included audio recordings of the locomotive in operation.[3] It is the locomotive that Chris Van Allsburg said was the inspiration for the book, having seen it as a child when it was on the Michigan State University campus. The locomotive was scheduled to be at the premiere in Grand Rapids, where the writer was born, but was canceled because of interferences with the schedule of CSX. It is now housed and maintained at the Steam Railroading Institute in Owosso, Michigan.

On July 20, 1907, an excursion train carrying 800 passengers from Ionia to Detroit collided near Salem with a freight train, killing 31 and injuring 101. The accident apparently happened because of a hand-written schedule on unlined paper whose columns did not line up, and was misread by the freight crew. The Interstate Commerce Commission investigation also cited safety violations, including use of pine instead of oak for car walls and the omission of steel plates required for mail cars. This was Michigan's worst rail disaster.[4][5]

• Toledo Division – Saginaw, Michigan, to Alexis and (via trackage rights over Ann Arbor Railroad) Toledo, Ohio (In use by CSX Transportation south of Plymouth, leased to Lake State Railway north of Plymouth)
• Ludington Division – Saginaw to Ludington, Michigan (Partially now part of the Pere Marquette Rail-Trail, between Baldwin and Ludington in use with Marquette Rail, and Saginaw to Midland used by Lake State Railway Company, with the rest of the line removed in 1991; the ferry closed in 1990)
• Detroit Division – Detroit to Grand Rapids, Michigan (In use by CSX)
• Grand Rapids Division – Elmdale, Michigan, to Saginaw (Alma-Saginaw in use by Mid-Michigan Railroad)
• Chicago Division – Grand Rapids to Porter, Indiana, and (via trackage rights over various lines) Chicago (In use by CSX)
  • La Crosse Branch – New Buffalo, Michigan, to La Crosse, Indiana (Abandoned north of Wellsboro, Indiana, by C&O in 1989, most tracks removed; Wellsboro to La Crosse in use by the Chesapeake and Indiana Railroad[6])
• Petoskey Division – Grand Rapids to Bay View, Michigan, was the basis for the Pere Marquette's longest route, the Chicago and Detroit-Bay View Resort Special.[7] (In use by Marquette Rail between Grand Rapids and Manistee and by the Great Lakes Central Railroad between Grawn and Williamsburg, with the rest dismantled in 1983 after being abandoned by C&O in 1982)
• Canadian Division – Lines in Canada, including Windsor, Ontario, and Sarnia, Ontario, via Blenheim, Ontario, to St. Thomas, Ontario, and St Thomas east to Buffalo, New York, via trackage rights over the Canada Southern (Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo Railway trackage rights over CASO from Welland, Ontario, to Buffalo via Niagara Falls, Ontario).
• Saginaw Subdivisions – Saginaw to Port Huron, Michigan, via two routes and to Bay City, Michigan (Mostly abandoned between 1951 and 1988, some sections in use with the Huron and Eastern Railway)

• 
  Postcard depiction of the line's streamliners.
• 
  Postcard photo of one of the railroad's dining cars.
• 
  A Pere Marquette Flyer c. 1910.
• 
  Ad for a Pere Marquette cruise to Duluth, 1905.
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  The Pere Marquette Railway bridge in Port Huron, Michigan, as seen in 2021. It was demolished in 2023.

The Pere Marquette operated a number of rail car ferries on the Detroit and St. Clair rivers and on Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. The PM's fleet of car ferries, which operated on Lake Michigan from Ludington, Michigan, to Milwaukee, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin (see SS Badger), were an important transportation link avoiding the terminal and interchange delays around the southern tip of Lake Michigan and through Chicago. Their superintendent for over 30 years was William L. Mercereau.

Pere Marquette 18

Postcard illustration of sinking ferry 18, with ferry 17 coming to its aid.

On September 10, 1910, the SS Pere Marquette No. 18 was bound for Milwaukee from Ludington, Michigan, with a load of 29 railroad freight cars and 62 people on board. Near midnight, the vessel began to take on massive amounts of water. The captain dumped nine railroad cars into Lake Michigan in a failed attempt to prevent the ship from sinking. The SS Pere Marquette 17, traveling nearby, picked up the distress call and sped to assist the distressed vessel. Shortly after SS Pere Marquette 17 arrived, the Pere Marquette 18 sank, resulting in the loss of 29 out of 62 total people onboard.[8][9] The location of the wreck was unknown until July 23, 2020 when shipwreck hunters Ken Merryman and Jerry Eliason confirmed the location using sonar and drop cameras at a depth of approximately 500 feet (152 meters).[10]

• History of railroads in Michigan
• Pere Marquette 1225

• Pere Marquette Historical Society
• PM 1225 Steam Railroading Institute

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pere Marquette Railway.

• Pere Marquette System Map
• Remembering the Pere Marquette Railway (Kevin Keefe)