Welcome to a high-security military base where “train club” guys named Don, Dick, Greg, Dieter, Tim and Kenny have keys to the front gate.
Well, they have keys to the railroad gate entering the Selfridge Air Base, just off Interstate Highway 94, between Detroit and Port Huron on Lake St. Clair, a large connector lake in the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence Seaway system.
The Michigan Transit Museum runs a tourist train onto the base on a nine-mile round-trip.
Every weekend from May to September, the museum’s engine and two-car train is crammed with visitors from throughout the Midwest for a 45-minute tour aboard retired Chicago rapid transit cars.
“We had been operating on the weekends, and they (the air base) were operating during the week, so when they ceased operations, we took over operations to the base rail system,” said the museum’s Vern Gomez, a Chicago native who worked on the Illinois Central Gulf electric commuter line as a trainman in the 1970s. “We can continue to take people out to the base to the Selfridge Air Museum and keep our equipment there as well.”
Ever since the base opened in 1917, it operated two coal-powered heating plants fed by a small network of military trains and track. But the Clean Air Act of 1992 forced the military out of the railroad business.
When Selfridge found that these older coal plants couldn’t meet Clean Air Act emissions standards, it switched to natural gas and the coal-rail system became obsolete. Enter the Michigan Transit Museum, a local nonprofit train club based at the Edison Train Station in nearby Mt. Clemens.
“We have a lease with the Department of Defense tostore and operate equipment there, and we maintain the track structure as well,” said Tim Backhurst, museum club president.
So when the museum tourist train arrives at the Selfridge base railroad gate, the train stops, a conductor hops out, unlocks and opens the gate, allowing the train to scoot inside. The conductor then locks the gate as per the museum’s security agreement with Selfridge, and the train follows the base’s Perimeter Road to the Selfridge Air Museum, adjacent to the base’s active runways.
Museum train riders can stay on the train and enjoy the rail-tour for $5.50/adult ticket, or pay an extra $2.50 to tour the Selfridge Air Museum, which includes 23 retired aircraft and an indoor display.
The trolley-train departs from Joy Park in Harrison Township, two miles east of the base. It passes through a railroad trestle under I-94 shortly before entering the lakefront base.
According to the transit museum, the train runs every hour, on the hour, from noon to 4 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays. The final run of the day leaves Joy Park at 4 p.m. and returns at 5 p.m. Generally, it’s a one-hour round trip.
Joy Park was named for Henry B. Joy, a founder of the Packard Motor Car Co. and a Detroit-area land baron. When the Army first leased land from Henry Joy in 1917, it was called Joy Field before the Army renamed it for military aviator Thomas Selfridge in 1922.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to amuse Midwest train buffs, the two principal rail cars used on the base tour are retired 75-year-old Chicago rapid transit cars Nos. 4442 and 4450. These railcars were built in 1924 by the Cincinnati Car Co. for the Chicago Transit Authority and were in service until the 1970s, when the CTA retired them and the Michigan Transit Museum acquired them.
“These are the Chicago `L’ 4000-series cars that were in service in Chicago and were a mainstay on the elevated railway,” said Ken Schram, transit museum historian and otherwise an analyst for the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive and Armaments Command research base near Detroit.
“When they were retired in the 1970s, several museums around the country bid on them and we got two of them, probably for not much more than a couple hundred or maybe a couple thousand dollars each.”
According to Bill Henning, vice president of research and development for the Michigan Transit Museum and a professor at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., it paid the CTA $1,000 each for six retired cars in 1974. Because the museum didn’t have enough money for renovations, three of the cars were resold to a rail museum in Indiana and one to Toledo. The Michigan museum has owned the other two cars from that auction since.
The transit museum tourist train travels 15 to 20 miles per hour on the base, passing through the museum’s base rail collection.
Visitors will see a Detroit streetcar that Mexico City first acquired from the Motor City when Detroit abandoned trolleys in the 1950s. It traveled a couple million miles in Mexico’s capital until a few years ago and has been acquired by the Michigan Transit Museum.
Then there’s the train’s 99-ton locomotive, which was built in 1941 by the American Locomotive Co. and first worked as an ALCO yard switcher before being sold to the military for use at Ft. Bragg, N.C. It was declared Army surplus and obtained by the musuem.
This 660-horsepower engine produces 600 volts DC. Eastbound, toward the Selfridge base, the diesel locomotive functions as a 600-volt generator. Traction motors on the locomotive are shut down and electrical power is transmitted to the cars by cable, giving the car motorman control of the entire train.
Westbound, leaving the air base, the diesel locomotive pulls the train. It also provides electrical power for lighting and air compression for the brakes. And the locomotive engineer has control of the train at this point.
Transit museum volunteers serve as trainmen, conductors and engineers.
The tracks run under the approach for a Selfridge runway. When the air force was using slow-flying refuleing aircraft that usually required a longer/lower approach, it would put the planes close to the tall rail cars.
“Our procedure for crossing the runway-landing pattern involved contacting the Selfridge Control Tower,” Henning said. “The train engineer would make radio contact with the tower, `Selfridge tower, this is trolley-train requesting permission to cross the runway landing pattern.’ “
“The tower came back with `runway’s clear, permission granted,’ ” said John Siemieniak, working as a conductor.
“Sure enough, just as we’re crossing the flight line, it felt like a tornado overhead as a B-52 came in for a landing just above our little passenger train. So, of course, I called back to the Selfridge tower and asked, `if the runway is clear, how come I’ve got B-52 tire tracks on the top of my caboose?’ “
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For information on the Michigan Transit Museum, write P.O. Box 12, Mt. Clemens, Mich. 48046, call 810-463-1863 or visit www.alexxi.com/mtm.
