2-footer in the U.P.

By Aaron Isaacs

Name a 5.5-mile, 2-foot gauge tourist railroad that has been in business since 1927, before which it was a standard gauge lumber hauler. It feeds passengers to a 42-mile riverboat cruise. Also, it has been owned and operated by the same family for four generations.

Give up? Does the Tahquamenon Boat Service ring a bell? If not, its railroad is better known as the Toonerville Trolley. Wait. Wasn’t that a long gone comic strip? It’s not really a trolley, but the name lives on in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula at Soo Junction, 47 miles west of Sault Ste. Marie. This is where the Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic’s lines to the Soo and St. Ignace split.

It’s also where a lumber railroad diverged starting in 1910. The DSS&A built it for lumberman Robert Hunter who owned a sawmill 5 miles to the north on the Tahquamenon River surrounded by 15,000 acres of monumental old growth white pines. The railroad hauled out the finished products.

By 1925 the pines were logged out and the mill closed. The railroad went idle, but wasn’t removed.

Meanwhile, a local state conservation officer named Joe Beach was making daily boat patrols up the Tahquamenon from Newberry, Michigan to the 50-foot high, 200-foot wide Upper Tahquamenon Falls. East of the Mississippi, only Niagara has a heavier flow. The falls were inaccessible by road, so people who wanted to see them began asking to ride along with Beach.

Seeing an opportunity to make some money, Beach quit the conservation service and started a boat line between Newberry and the falls. However, the 14 hour length of the round trip discouraged business. Looking for a way to shorten it, Beach leased the dormant railroad in 1927. He equipped a Model T Ford with flanged wheels and pushed a single trailer.

Soo Junction is 12 miles east of Newberry on the DSS&A. Using the railroad for the first leg of the trip to the Hunter’s Mill landing shortened the boat ride and reduced the round trip travel time from 14 hours to about 9.

Soo Junction had the added advantage of being a much better location than Newberry for making train connections. Twice each day trains from Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinaw City and Duluth converged from three directions to swap cars and passengers. While all the switching was underway, passengers had plenty of opportunity to notice the little train to the falls and the timing made scheduled connections work, since there is no town at Soo Junction.

Despite its remote location, it was surprisingly accessible from every large city within 500 miles. The train from Mackinaw City crossed the straits of Mackinac on a car ferry and included a through sleeper from Detroit. A further connection was available from the Soo Line, which crossed the DSS&A at Trout Lake, 15 miles to the south. Soo trains 7 and 8 carried sleepers from Minneapolis and Chicago, and made convenient connections at Trout Lake with the DSS&A for the short hop to Soo Junction.

For a few years in the late 1920s, Hunter’s little makeshift train handed off passengers to Beach’s 30-passenger riverboat. Ridership climbed and more capacity was needed. They lashed a barge to the boat, increasing capacity to 100.

Making the train bigger was achieved ironically by making it smaller. Between 1930 and 1933, they laid 2-foot gauge rails from former mine and lumber railroads between the standard gauge rails, which were then removed. A Plymouth friction drive locomotive was purchased to haul four World War I surplus military flat cars equipped with benches. Looking back, it’s unclear if narrow gauging was done because the rail and rolling stock was cheap to acquire, or because Hunter saw a chance to create a novelty ride, or both.

Despite the Great Depression, ridership grew. In 1938 a larger 75-foot boat that could hold 400 people, the Tahquamenon, was assembled at the Hunter’s Mill landing from parts brought in on the train. A 65-footer, the Paul Bunyan, was added in 1940. On busy summer days two trains were run, with daily ridership as high as 700 and passengers riding on the car roofs. By then, most passengers arrived by automobile.

The Tahquamenon was replaced in 1964 by the 72-foot, all-steel Hiawatha, which still runs today. It was built in four sections, which were trucked to the river north of Newberry in the middle of winter. The sections were assembled on the ice and the spring melt placed the boat in the water. Much faster than the old boats, the Hiawatha shortened the round trip to 6.5 hours. The Paul Bunyan was retired. The Tahquamenon was shortened, re-engined and renamed the Paul Bunyan II. Seating 300 passengers, it now made the trip in about the same amount of time as the Hiawatha. Both boats served until the Paul Bunyan II was retired in 2001 and scrapped a couple of years later.

Like the boats, the train equipment has been replaced over the years. The two Plymouth friction drives lasted until 1956. A Buda engine was added in 1957 and is still on the roster. The passenger power now is a trio of Plymouth 5-ton locomotives bought used in 1964.

In addition to the passenger cars, there are several ballast cars and a homemade mower that trims the grass short for several feet on both sides of the track.

The Toonerville Trolley

Although it in no way resembles the Toonerville Trolley of comic strip fame, the narrow gauge’s early passengers gave it that nickname and it stuck. This has been a mixed blessing. The nickname makes it sound like a quick amusement park ride, which it certainly isn’t. Passengers spend a total of 1.5 hours on the train. On the positive side, when you Google Toonerville Trolley up pops their website, with Tahquamenon Falls Wilderness Excursion prominently displayed, lest anyone misunderstand.

A family affair

In the early 1980’s the Beach family sold its interest in the business to Robert Hunter’s grandson, Hugh Stewart. The Stewart family has owned and operated the tour ever since. Hugh passed away in 2012 and today Hugh’s son Kris Stewart is captain of the Hiawatha.

He oversees all the maintenance of the boat and the railroad. His wife Dixie, a petite dynamo, runs the depot and the business side of the operation.

There are two full time and five part time employees. All trackwork is done manually, six weeks of it before the start of each season. This year he and his employees drove 2000 spikes by hand. There are 10,000 ties in all and Kris estimates that he has changed out half of them over the years. He formerly used cedar ties, but the price went up. So he switched to untreated tamarack, which resists rot and lasts about 20 years, even in the two miles that cross a bog.

They try to do the trackwork either early or late in the year, because the mosquitoes and deer flies are ferocious during the summer. “You know you’re a Yooper (Upper Peninsula resident) when you can drink water through a bug net,” says Kris. Bugs aren’t the only problem. In the winter the bog freezes and track heaves have to be repaired each spring. Then there are beaver dams that flood the track in the summer. This year was particularly bad, and Kris had to remove twelve dams. Preparations for the season start in April, and the first day of service isn’t until mid-June.

There are challenges to running old narrow gauge equipment. Kris says it’s difficult getting replacement wheels, so he keeps reprofiling the old ones.

The trip

There’s nothing at Soo Junction except the narrow gauge’s depot/gift shop.

Already the mosquitos were thick and the staff urged everyone to use plenty of bug spray, which they sell. As we discovered at the falls, they weren’t exaggerating.

The narrow gauge boarding area is across the still active DSS&A, now Canadian National. The grade crossing sign says 2 tracks, but now there is only one. The only other sign that this was once a busier place is a pair of collapsing speeder sheds.

I rode the first day of the 2015 season. There were five passenger cars with link and pin couplers, outward facing bench seats and 75 passengers. I sat next to a couple who were celebrating their 60th anniversary and had ridden the Toonerville almost every year since taking it for their honeymoon in 1955.

The railroad is mostly flat and straight after it curves away from Soo Junction. The rail is light, dating from 1916 to as late as 1929. Except where they have recently been replaced, the ties are buried in turf so all you see are two rails. Some of the original standard gauge ties are still in evidence, along with a number of mining track steel ties that function as gauge rods.

The train averages a steady 8 mph. The ride is rather rough and lurching and the little 4-wheel Plymouth hunts and bucks its way down the track. The one-way trip to the boat landing takes 45 minutes. The first two miles traverse a peat bog and it’s the toughest part of the line to maintain. The flangeways were full of water and every few hundred feet the entire track was flooded, the rails disappearing under a couple of inches of water. The little locomotive plowed through the puddles undeterred and the train left a wake.

At about the halfway point the track passes a tall steel photo stand erected by a local photographer to capture wildlife.

The railroad helps out by regularly feeding the local black bears. Riding the steps of the lead coach as we passed the designated feeding spot, Dixie emptied a trash bag full of day-old donuts from the Newberry bakery.

She also gets leftovers and out of date food from the local deli, grocery store and a couple of restaurants. As a result, she says they see bears on about half the trips.

Once past the bog, it’s second growth forest for the rest of the trip. Although it can’t be reached by automobile, the boat landing is the operating base for the railroad.

There is a shop and a storage building. Both ends of the line have wyes to turn the engine. Because he maintains everything, Kris spends the operating season in a house at the boat landing, while Dixie lives in Newberry. She opens the depot each day, sells the tickets, then rides the train and the boat round trip.

On the boat

The transfer from train to boat was accomplished quickly and the Hiawatha immediately headed downriver. The river averages 10 feet deep and about 100 yards wide and the boat makes about 10 mph. A few houses and a hunt club line the shore, but most of the distance is forested and rural. It takes about 2 hours to cover the 21 miles to the falls, and as we progressed the river became ever more winding and scenic. Because the trip takes place over the lunch hour, the boat has a galley, serving up freshly grilled hamburgers.

The boat ties up at its own dock half a mile above the falls. Passengers then walk a 3000-foot path to reach the overlook. Kris’ family owned this land until a state park was created. The land transfer agreement permitted the boat company free access for 50 years, although it must maintain the path and overlook at the falls. That agreement has expired, so now they pay rent to the state for the access. Just a week before I arrived, erosion collapsed half of the overlook and Kris was preparing to make repairs.

As soon as we left the boat and the river breeze and took to the path, the mosquitoes descended in clouds. The staff was prepared, donning beekeeper hoods. The schedule called for 75 minutes at the falls, but after a brief viewing we retreated to the boat, which left 20 minutes early.

Despite the bugs, it’s an interesting, relaxing trip. Kris and Dixie say the market has changed over the years. What used to be a woodsy getaway for vacationing auto workers and their families now attracts eco tourists. On the train, Dixie identifies the different tree species. On the boat, Kris points out birds, turtles and deer and describes how the forest has evolved over the last century. The boat stirs up fish. The kingfishers have figured this out and one followed us for a couple of miles.

Back at the landing the train had been turned and was waiting for us. We climbed the short grade away from the river, passed again through the woods and bog and detrained at Soo Junction at 5 PM.

Looking forward

A road finally reached the falls in the 1960s, and it sees 500,000 visitors a year now. Even so, from 1979 to 1988 ridership averaged about 14,000 per year. Trains ran seven days a week. Since then the business has declined to about per year. In 2001 the Stewarts bought out a competing boat company just to consolidate the market. The schedule was cut back to six days a week. Now trains run three days a week, but Dixie says the ridership has stabilized. It’s an all-day time commitment and three days is still sufficiently frequent for most people’s schedules. It also allows the Stewarts and their employees time between runs to do repairs and even have a day off.

The company is still profitable. Fifty passengers per trip is the breakeven point. On the July 4^th and Labor Day weekends, they have to run two trains a day to handle the 200 or so passengers. For those who only want to ride the train, it makes a second train-only round trip while the boat is headed to and from the falls.

Kris turned 60 this year. Dixie is 57. You have to wonder how long they can keep it up. Kris likens the whole operation to farming and Dixie says they’ll keep at it as long as they can. The company is a throwback to a different era when people made all-day recreational trips in big groups. It’s like something out of Victorian America and yet it survives today when anyone in an automobile can drive to the falls, see it and spend only an hour doing so.