The Manistee and North-Eastern Railroad Railway Equipment and Publication Company
The Official Railway Equipment Register
June 1917, p. 579 was a short, standard-gauge line in the U.S. state of

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. Organized in 1887, it served several counties in the northwestern quarter of Michigan's

Lower Peninsula The Lower Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Lower Michigan – is the larger, southern and less elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; the other being the Upper Peninsula, which is separated by the S ...

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The railroad's main line stretched from Manistee to

Traverse City Traverse City ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Grand Traverse County, although a small portion extends into Leelanau County. It is the largest city in the 21-county Northern Michigan region. The population was ...

, with a spur line to Northport leased from the

Leelanau Transit Company The Leelanau Transit Company was a short line standard gauge railroad incorporated in 1919 as the successor to the Traverse City, Leelanau, and Manistique Railroad, which was incorporated in 1901 to build a line from Traverse City, Michigan to Nort ...

."Description of the Manistee & North Eastern Railroad", MichiganRailroads.com, accessed November 20, 200

/ref> The M & NE was originally built to help exploit the old-growth

timber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...

resources of its service area. Logs were carried to mills in Manistee. The railroad also attempted to develop a sideline as a hauler of

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...

es, orchard fruit, and grain. Leelanau Transit Company Suttons Bay Depot 2011

Today

The Manistee and North-Eastern was consolidated into the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1955. A section of the short railroad's right-of-way is now in use as the

Leelanau Trail The Leelanau Trail is part of U.S. Bicycle Route 35, but also an all paved non-motorized recreational rail trail of in length that extends from the west side of Traverse City, Michigan to Suttons Bay, Michigan. This trail passes through the east ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manistee Northeastern Railroad Defunct Michigan railroads Northern Michigan Predecessors of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway