The Detroit Line is a

freight railroad Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (International Union of Railways) hauled ...

line owned and operated by the

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The comp ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

s of

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

and

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

Description

The line begins south of Gibraltar Road in

Gibraltar, Michigan Gibraltar is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 4,997 at the 2020 census. Gibraltar is a southern city of Metro Detroit and is about south of the city of Detroit. The city is bordered by the Detroit Rive ...

as a continuation of the

Conrail Conrail , formally the Consolidated Rail Corporation, was the primary Class I railroad in the Northeastern United States between 1976 and 1999. The trade name Conrail is a portmanteau based on the company's legal name. It continues to do busine ...

Detroit Line, and runs southwest to

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in Lucas County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is located at the western end of Lake Erie along the Maumee River. Toledo is the List of cities in Ohio, fourth-most populous city in Ohio and List of United Sta ...

, consisting of two separate and parallel tracks. Track #1 is the southbound track originally owned by the

Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway The Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, established in 1833, and sometimes referred to as the Lake Shore, was a major part of the New York Central Railroad's Water Level Route from Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, New York, to Chicago, Illinoi ...

. Track #2 parallels Track #1 to the east running from adjacent to apart, and is the northbound track originally owned by

Michigan Central Railroad The Michigan Central Railroad (reporting mark MC) was originally chartered in 1832 to establish rail service between Detroit, Michigan, and St. Joseph, Michigan. The railroad later operated in the states of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois in th ...

. Track #2 is paralleled directly to its east by the CN/GTW Shore Line Subdivision from the start of the line at Gibraltar Road to Vienna Junction just north of the Michigan–Ohio state line. The Detroit Line's southern end is at the Chicago Line at Air Line Junction in western Toledo.Trackside Guide No. 3 - Detroit, ''

Trains A train (from Old French , from Latin">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles th ...

'', June 2003

History

The Detroit, Monroe and Toledo Railroad opened a line from Detroit to Toledo in 1856. The Toledo, Canada Southern and Detroit Railway opened a parallel line, just to the east, in 1873. With the 1930 lease of the

by the

New York Central Railroad The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The railroad primarily connected New York metropolitan area, gr ...

, both lines were placed under NYC operation.History of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company
The lines passed to

, and were assigned to Norfolk Southern in Conrail's 1999 breakup; they are now used through a

directional running A double-track railway usually involves running one track in each direction, compared to a single-track railway where trains in both directions share the same track. Overview In the earliest days of railways in the United Kingdom, most lin ...

setup, in which southbound trains use the old DM&T and northbound trains use the old TCS&D.

References

{{reflist Norfolk Southern Railway lines Michigan Central Railroad lines Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway lines Rail infrastructure in Michigan Rail infrastructure in Ohio