Stan... I am enjoying your wonderful series of images of the Ann Arbor's far "west end" and that includes your carferry shots at Kewaunee, WI as well! I'm sure you didn't know that when you shot this series of photos, the Ann Arbor had just a little more than 10 months to operate until the carferries ("Boats" as they were called by employees) and the railroad shut down on April 26, 1982. Actually, nobody knew in 1981 how much longer the railroad would survive since it was riddled with severe financial problems. Of course, when the Boats shut down, so did the railroad from just north of the city of Ann Arbor all the way to Boat Landing. Indeed, this was a very dark era in the Ann Arbor's history. The trains started running a few months later, but the Boats never did. After that, the line between Yuma and Boat Landing/Frankfort was operated on an "as needed" basis and that wasn't very often since there was little local business on the far west end of the railroad. The track that train 501 is running on in your photo actually survived until late 1994, at which time it was removed to create the Betsie Valley Trail. The final train operated into Boat Landing on July 21, 1988, when former AA GP35 393 left Cadillac to pick up a handful of freight cars and a caboose that had been left at Boat Landing many years before. Since the last previous train to run over the line was on December 13, 1985, the final train took 11 hours to make the round trip and encountered everything from small trees, questionable track conditions and signs on the right-of-way west of Yuma. The silver lining, I guess, is that the right-of-way is still being used as a hike/bike trail, but I still have fond and vivid memories of riding Ann Arbor trains over this stretch of track, the most scenic part of the Ann Arbor Railroad. Thanks for sharing these images with us and thanks, also, for the memories...
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