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When CSX and Norfolk Southern carved up Conrail, the two giant railroads needed to preserve competition in certain regions where Conrail's physical plant could not be easily divided. These regions were Northern New Jersey (and New York City), Southern New Jersey (and Philadelphia), and Detroit. Their solution to this problem was the creation of three "Shared Asset Areas" (SAA), where Conrail still exists but in the form of a terminal railroad which is owned by both CSX and NS.
The Conrail Detroit SAA, unlike the other two Conrail SAAs on the east coast, is primarily former New York Central System territory (the obvious exception to this is the Lincoln Secondary, which was the Pennsylvania Railroad's entry to the Detroit market).
Map courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency
The state of Michigan is a peninsula. Therefore, Detroit is a stub end terminal for most domestic traffic arriving there, much of which is automotive industry related. Detroit is also an international gateway for transcontinental traffic from the western US and Canada to Toronto, Montreal, and the Maritimes. Note that Detroit, MI and Toledo, OH are very close together.
Some traffic enters Michigan by way of the Indiana communities of Elkhart and Fort Wayne for NS, Porter for CSX, and especially South Bend for GTW.
But Toledo still acts as a funnel for a lot of CSX and NS traffic bound for Southeast Michigan in general, and the Conrail Detroit SAA in particular.
All, or at least most, roads lead to Detroit. Here we see Southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio. The lines radiating away from the Detroit area are NS's ex-Wabash Detroit District, NS's ex-Conrail Detroit and Michigan lines, the Conrail Detroit SAA Lincoln Secondary and Sterling Secondary, the CSX Toledo Terminal, Saginaw, and Plymouth Subdivisions, GTW's Mt Clemens, Holly, Flat Rock, Shore Line, and River Subdivisions, plus CN and CP's CASO Subdivision east through the Detroit River Tunnel to Windsor.
If you take away all the branch lines, spurs, and connections with other railroads, The
Conrail Detroit SAA looks like a backward letter "K".
Map not to scale.
When we add the branch lines, it kinda' looks like a dancer...
"...and if you hold it this way it looks kinda' like Elvis".
When we add existing CSX and NS properties, and combine that with NS Lines acquired from Conrail, then it looks like we have some railroading happening.
We add to this picture Grand Trunk Western...all of a sudden there seems
to be
a lot of railroading happening.
Conrail is dispatched by three different dispatchers of three railroads: Conrail, NS and CSX. In addition, certain towers control certain interlockings or stretches of track, and quite naturally they are on different frequencies than the DS channels.
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