Michigan Central Railway Tunnel
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Michigan Central Railway Tunnel Detroit River Tunnel
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 Detroit tunnel entrance towards Ontario 1911
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| use | Railway tunnel |
| place | Detroit (United States), Windsor (Canada) |
| length | 2557 m |
| Number of tubes | 2 |
| construction | |
| Client | Detroit River Tunnel Company |
| start of building | October 1906 |
| business | |
| release | July 26, 1910 |
| Location of the tunnel | |
 Course of the tunnel under the Detroit River
(above: Detroit, below: Windsor) |
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| Coordinates | |
| Portal Detroit | 42 ° 19 ′ 29 " N , 83 ° 4 ′ 11" W. |
| Portal Windsor | 42 ° 18 ′ 29 ″ N , 83 ° 3 ′ 0 ″ W. |
Map with all coordinates: The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel (also Detroit River Tunnel ) is a railway tunnel under the Detroit River . The two-tube tunnel is 2,557 meters long and connects the cities of Detroit , United States and Windsor in Canada . It opened on July 26, 1910.
history
North of Lake St. Clair , the Grand Trunk Railway had operated the St. Clair Tunnel since 1891 , the first permanent rail link between Michigan and Canada. The railway companies south of Lake Saint Clair, on the other hand, relied on less effective rail ferries . The connection over the Detroit River was part of the transportation route from the Midwest to the Northeast and Eastern Canada for the Michigan Central Railroad . In 1875 around 174,000 freight wagons were transported, by 1909 the number of ferries rose to 735,753 wagons. It took three to eight hours to get a freight train across the river. Ten ferries were constantly in use. In winter, the icing led to an interruption in traffic. As early as 1872, the Michigan Central and the Canadian Great Western Railway made a first attempt to build a tunnel. However, the marl clay in the river bed was an insurmountable obstacle, so that construction work had to be stopped as early as 1876. In the following years, plans to build a bridge were repeatedly drawn up, but they were always rejected.
In 1904 the Michigan Central and Grand Trunk Railway commissioned a design for a high bridge. The experiences from the electric train operation of the New York Central Railroad (parent company of Michigan Central) to the Grand Central Terminal also brought the construction of a tunnel back into focus. A feasibility study was therefore commissioned. The commission recommended the construction of a 2.5-kilometer electrified double-track tunnel.
On August 15, 1905, the subsidiary Detroit River Tunnel Company was founded, which began in October 1906 with the construction of the tunnel. The construction supervision appointed by Michigan Central included William J. Wilgus, who was responsible for the concept of the Grand Central Terminal in New York. Four concepts were compared for the construction of the underwater tunnel. In three of the variants, prefabricated tunnel tubes should be laid in a trench, which is then backfilled. The fourth proposal involved the construction of the tunnel using shield driving . However, this was not feasible due to the low cover and the expected water ingress. A higher cover would have meant a greater gradient inside the tunnel. Finally, it was decided to use a variant with prefabricated tunnel tubes.
The underwater tunnel segments are made of steel and contain two separate tubes. Most of them were 80 meters long, dragged to the right place in the river and sunk into a previously dug trench in the river bed. The sections were connected and the cavities around the pipes were filled with concrete to fix them to the river bed. The tunnel segments were then covered with gravel and rubble. This form of tunnel construction, used for the first time, was later used in other projects.
The construction of the tunnel was completed in 1909. The expansion dragged on until July 1, 1910. Because of the tunnel, the company built new marshalling yards on both sides, a new train station in Windsor and Michigan Central Station, which opened in 1913 and has since been closed . The tunnel was opened on July 26, 1910. Official freight traffic began on September 15, 1910 and passenger traffic a month later.
The tunnel received a 650 volt power rail . The electrified route between Windsor and Detroit was 7.24 kilometers. A total of around 48 kilometers of track were fitted with a conductor rail. The locomotive workshop was on the American side. A converter station was built in Detroit . The two 2000 kW motor-generator units converted the three-phase alternating current at 60 Hz and 4400 volts supplied by the Edison Company into 650 volts direct current . A battery with 2520 ampere hours was available as a reserve in the event of a supply failure. This enabled operation to be maintained for 30 minutes. In addition, five pumps and the lighting were operated electrically. In 1925 the output was increased by 2 × 2000 kW.
Six locomotives of the later R-1 series were available for operation. The mechanical part was supplied by the American Locomotive Company and the electrical part by General Electric . In 1914 four and in 1926 two more locomotives followed, which were a little heavier. In the 1950s, former New York Central class R-2 locomotives were still in service.
Trains on the Windsor-Detroit route weighed 1,800 to 1,900 tons, and in the opposite direction, due to the lower incline, 2,270 tons. The passage through the tunnel took 6 minutes. Two locomotives ran at the start of the train and another at the end of the train.
Electric train operations were discontinued in 1953. The change of traction to diesel locomotives made electrical island operation unnecessary.
As early as 1906, the Michigan Central Railroad leased the tunnel company for 999 years. Operation in the tunnel and on the adjacent lines was carried out by the Canada Southern Railway (CASO), which was also leased from Michigan Central . In 1930 Michigan Central was leased from the New York Central Railroad for 99 years. The tunnel reached the Conrail in 1976 via Penn Central . 1985 Conrail sold the tunnel and Canada Southern half to the Canadian railway companies Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway . The majority of the tunnel is now owned by Borealis Transportation Infrastructure Trust, which in 2004 bought the entire stake from Canadian National, and in 2009 the stake from Canadian Pacific up to 16.5%. Route usage rights are owned by the CN, CP, CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern .
In 1994 the tunnel was expanded a little to accommodate larger freight cars . However, its clearance profile is still too low for hi-level freight cars, such as double-decker container cars, to pass. There are therefore plans to convert the tunnel to truck traffic and to build a larger rail tunnel instead. Approximately 350,000 freight cars cross the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel every year.
literature
- William D. Middleton : When the steam railroads electrified . 2nd revised edition. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2001, ISBN 0-253-33979-0 , pp. 142-148 (American English).
- General Electric Company (Ed.): Electrification of the Detroit Tunnel Lines of the Michigan Central Railroad . Bulletin GEA-504. Schenectady, NY 1926 ( canadasouthern.com [PDF; 3.8 MB ]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ structurae.de long
- ↑ Michigan's Internet Railroad History Museum ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ^ Crandall, Charles Lee: Railroad Construction , 2009. Pages 120-123.
- ↑ railwayage.com June 17, 2010 (English)
