**Turn up your speakers**
A pair of GP38-2's and a loaded 30+ car train pull Marquette Rail's Walhalla Turn east out of the yard in Ludington, Michigan to the junction at Walhalla where they will be set out. Empties will then be picked up and brought back west to the yard. Leading the train is a former UP GP38-2 with Marquette lettering that was applied during the employee-owned era of the railroad. We didn't catch them coming back west but we did catch them making the set out in the yard at the west end of the once mighty yard, which is now stub ended.
Our friendly engineer has the two EMD's working hard in notch 8 doing 25mph uphill all the way to Walhalla on jointed rail once formerly a part of the Pere Marquette's famed Ludington Subdivision. This line at one point ran from Saginaw to Ludington and was an important stretch of railroad during the car ferry era. Since the 1970's however most of the line has been in a steady decline and more then half of the railroad has been abandoned save for a few chunks operated by various short line operators. In its heyday this line was CTC equipped with signals and had many passing sidings, but later on its redundancy with the loss of carferry service doomed it as a through route.
If one is lucky enough to catch a train on this today it is quite a treat as it shows that this once mighty line is still very capable of putting on a good show if one is fortunate enough to capture it in action.
