The Michigan Line, sometimes known as the Chicago–Detroit Line, is a

higher-speed rail Higher-speed rail (HrSR), also known as high-performance rail, higher-performance rail, semi-high-speed rail or almost-high-speed rail, is the jargon used to describe inter-city passenger rail services that have top speeds of more than convent ...

corridor that runs between

Porter, Indiana Porter is a town in Westchester Township, Porter County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 4,858 at the 2010 census. Porter is in the Indiana Dunes ecosystem, which played a role in the creation of The Nature Conservancy, and ins ...

and Dearborn, Michigan. It carries Amtrak's ''

Blue Water Maritime geography is a collection of terms used by naval military units to loosely define three maritime regions: brown water, green water, and blue water. Definitions The elements of maritime geography are loosely defined and their meanings hav ...

'' and ''

Wolverine The wolverine (), (''Gulo gulo''; ''Gulo'' is Latin for " glutton"), also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch (from East Cree, ''kwiihkwahaacheew''), is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a muscul ...

'' services, as well as the occasional freight train operated by

Norfolk Southern The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada ...

owns the section between Porter, Indiana, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, the longest stretch of Amtrak-owned rail outside of the Northeastern U.S. The state of Michigan, through the

Michigan Department of Transportation The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is a constitutional government principal department of the US state of Michigan. The primary purpose of MDOT is to maintain the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System which includes all Interstat ...

(MDOT) owns the section between Kalamazoo and Dearborn, which it purchased from

in December 2012. Norfolk Southern retains an exclusive trackage right for freight on the line. A short stretch of track in Battle Creek, Michigan is owned by Canadian National Railway. The entire line was originally the mainline of the Michigan Central Railroad. The entire corridor (including the portion owned by MDOT) is dispatched and maintained by Amtrak, which , is working to replace worn tracks and integrate the train signaling and communication systems.

History

In 2002, the section from Porter to Kalamazoo became the first passenger rail line in the United States to have

positive train control Positive train control (PTC) is a family of automatic train protection systems deployed in the United States. Most of the United States' national rail network mileage has a form of PTC. These systems are generally designed to check that trains a ...

(PTC) technology installed, specifically

GE Transportation Systems GE Transportation is a division of Wabtec. It was known as GE Rail and owned by General Electric until sold to Wabtec on February 25, 2019. The organization manufactures equipment for the railroad, marine, mining, drilling and energy generati ...

' Incremental Train Control System (ITCS). In 2005, Amtrak received approval from the

Federal Railroad Administration The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is an agency in the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). The agency was created by the Department of Transportation Act of 1966. The purpose of the FRA is to promulgate and enforce rail saf ...

to run trains at up to . Most Amtrak trains outside of the Northeast are limited to due to federal regulations. Regular service at began from Porter to Kalamazoo on February 15, 2012. In November 2011, Michigan was awarded $150 million to upgrade its rail line to allow speeds of up to along the rest of the line from Kalamazoo to Dearborn, for a total 77% of the routes of Amtrak's Wolverine and Blue Water services between Detroit and Chicago.

Incidents

Despite the presence of the safety system on the Michigan Line, a derailment occurred just east of

Niles, Michigan Niles is a city in Berrien and Cass counties in the U.S. state of Michigan, near the Indiana border city of South Bend. In 2010, the population was 11,600 according to the 2010 census. It is the larger, by population, of the two principal cit ...

, on October 21, 2012, after a ''Wolverine'' train exited the main line and entered a freight yard due to a misaligned

switch In electrical engineering, a switch is an electrical component that can disconnect or connect the conducting path in an electrical circuit, interrupting the electric current or diverting it from one conductor to another. The most common type of ...

. The train had a green signal and was traveling at about when it hit the switch. The incident was investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board and was found to be an Amtrak contractor's fault, caused by one of its employees improperly applying jumper wires to the signal system, bypassing safeguards that had been designed to prevent such an occurrence.

References

Notes

External links

{{commons category inline Passenger rail transportation in Michigan Passenger rail transportation in Indiana Railway lines in the United States Rail infrastructure in Michigan Rail infrastructure in Indiana