Talk:Battle Creek Transportation Center

Picture Added
I Added a picture of the Battle Creek station. Hopefully its suitable. It's a hard station to photograph due to it's location. It's an unmarked building, it share the train station with a bus terminal as well. The busses are in the front and the trains run through the back and I wanted to at least include the tracks. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 01:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about anybody else, but I can live with it. DanTD 23:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If I get the chance I'll see what I can do about getting some pictures of the "Original" Battle Creek Station for a "History" chapter. Its by far a better looking building than this generic looking Multi-Purpose building. The Original is a few blocks from this one. (It's a restaurant now..) I'm not sure if they moved the tracks or moved the building, I just moved here so I don't know the history of the area too well. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 00:25, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Is this the Grand Trunk of Michigan-Penn Central? DanTD 01:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


 * There are 2 lines that run through Battle Creek. One is the GT the other is primarily Amtrak. Not sure who owns that line. It just sold recently. The two merge just before the station. (The one pictured) What I *think* they did was in order to minimize congestion they merged the two lines to make one set of 2 tracks running through the center of town instead of two sets of 2. Thus leaving the original Battle Creek station behind so a new one was built. Further out of town the two lines split again. This is of course a guess, I'm going to look into it. More content for the History chapter of the station I guess.. lol --Dp67 | QSO | Sandboxes 02:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, this is only... eight years(!) late, but if anyone's still watching this page, I grew up in Battle Creek (I've even taken trains from both the old MC station and the new one!), and I can give a bit of background on things. Technically, there are three train stations in Battle Creek. The "old" one that most people remember is the former Michigan Central Railroad station adjacent to Willard Library; that's the one that is now Clara's. There is also a closed Grand Trunk Western Railroad station on the east side of downtown, off Main Street. When Amtrak took over passenger services, they moved the GTW's one train per day in each direction from using the Grand Trunk to using Penn Central's ex-Michigan Central line from the point where the two crossed east of town all the way west to Porter, Indiana, partly to allow them to close the GTW stations and reduce staffing requirements.

However, in the late 1970s or early 1980s, with just about all of the industrial customers served by the now-Conrail ex-MC line through downtown having closed or shifted their service to trucks, Conrail and the city got together with GT to do something that the city had wanted to do pretty much forever, and consolidate all rail service downtown on just one joint line. (Apparently, from the 20s through the 40s, when bank robbery was commonplace, it was "common knowledge" among criminals that one should never rob a bank in downtown Battle Creek, because traffic on both the GT and the MC were heavy enough that one couldn't escape north, south, or east, and thus the police would just block off your exit to the west and you'd never get away. Traffic was no longer anywhere near that heavy, but it was still considered a nuisance to have two mainlines five blocks apart.)

After the negotiations were over, the final decision was to consolidate service on the GT line, since it was in better material condition (Penn Central's deferred maintenance due to its bankruptcy had taken its toll, and Conrail hadn't managed to make much progress in fixing it) and also had the bulk of the local industries on it. Since the Grand Trunk station had been closed for over a decade, was now being used by GTW for storage and office space, and wasn't as convenient to downtown destinations as the MC station was, the decision was made to build the new station on land that had housed a now-closed factory, with partial funding coming as part of the redevelopment of downtown that saw the demolition of lots of abandoned factories. The move of the city's bus station (both intercity and transit) came later--I want to say the mid-1990s?--and saw them moved from a location closer to City Hall and the old Grand Trunk station.

So there you have it. The Clara's building was the original Michigan Central station, included in the New York Central System, and briefly became the Penn Central station before Amtrak started up, and was on the Conrail mainline until the route consolidation saw the Conrail mainline removed. The old Grand Trunk station is still present, though I'm not sure what it's being used for now; the current station is on a siding off the old Grand Trunk (now Canadian National Railway) mainline that became the joint line through downtown Battle Creek. I know none of this is citable (I'm hardly a WP:RS), but it does give background in case anyone wants to try researching this for citations to expand the "history" section. rdfox 76 (talk) 14:29, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

In case you're interested
This [Clara's on The River] is in fact the old Battle Creek train station and the building is on the historical register. I'm going to get as much info I can on it for a historical standpoint to expand this article. And yes, I do believe they moved the tracks. I haven't seen any historical maps of the city to confirm anything so I'm going on what I'm told. So they say, they merged the Michigan Central Railroad onto the Grand Trunk Western through town and once out of town the two lines split again. That's all I know so far. Apparently the restaurant people are train buffs so hopefully they'll cooperate in this project and offer as much info as they can without expecting any advertising. We'll see. I'm no photo-expert so maybe they'll let me use some stock photos for the article. That's it so far.. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandbox | UBX's 09:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I just checked Google Maps and it confirms the lines have been merged and the old line ran right along side of where the restaurant is and they're not there now. --Dp67 | QSO | Sandbox | UBX's 09:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)


 * From what I've read on the web, the MCR & GT stations are both historic landmarks completley separate from the current Amtrak station, even if the lines are the same. DanTD 20:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

New Transportation Center
This article does not have a picture of the current Battle Creek Transportation Center. Can anybody, who has this on their watch list, help with that? Secondarywaltz (talk) 12:57, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070927044747/http://user.mc.net/~louisvw/depot/bc-amt/bc-amt.htm to http://user.mc.net/~louisvw/depot/bc-amt/bc-amt.htm

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