Im glad to have clicked on this, you could say it was a *SPUR* of the moment

I worked at Fluid Connections at the Leonard st crossing in 91-93 and i remember only two trains going by during day shift hours.

I'm so glad the track by my neighborhood still has trains on it. Speaking of which I hear 1 right now. Grand Elk railroad. Saw a grand rapids eastern locomotive headed back to Ann st. with a loaded train.,

The last rail access into the north side of downtown - which would now terminate at a UofM owned property. It is hard to believe the destruction of this right-of-way will not be regretted someday.

I always wanted to walk that myself. Thank you and the comments for the history.

I went to a flee market in a warehouse the other day and when ever i walked out the Building it actually had Boxcar loading docks and there was small remanates of a spur that used to be there.

Nice find. Enjoyed the trip. Thank you for sharing.

Great job,, really great job. My dad did 31 years at the Grand Rapids Press... he would have enjoyed seeing that.

I was born in Grand Rapids. Love these videos

Watched a vid of this line when it was active.

With the way you are running i thought you were running from the ghost train

Theres another abandoned railroad near Broadmoor Avenue and 52nd street and also 44th street, apparently the railroad went into the factories there at some point. Maybe you could make a video on those railroads there

Good thing you documented this, as it has changed a lot in the few years since, with remnants now impossible to discern. It looks like UofM has put a lot of money into the area. And Google has updated its street views so that you can no longer see the crossbucks at Leonard or the bridge (east leg of wye) at Monroe that you mention.

I enjoyed this video

i hope they leave alone rail bank future access

For those of you who are unfamiliar with anything relevant to Grand Rapids Michigan, this video represents a typical evolutionary event happening all over this country. Just a few years ago, newspapers were the most important sources of information available. Now, all newspapers as well as the Grand Rapids Press are relegated to nothing more than a whimpering anachronism. The buildings, the railroad tracks, and all the facilities alluded to in this video have all been demolished without a trace. No one living, (including those few followers of this segment) will ever remember what happened here for the last 75 years. And soon, all of what is left of us will be travelling around in automated vehicles: and we'll be swallowing everything that we're told about history, by whoever is telling it. So, buckle p guys!.... and get ready to in line up with whomever is in vogue!!!! You'll really like it .....trust me you really will!!!!

we used to have a railroad line that once ran from a chemical company to a paper mill and a paint company but now it,s a bike patch and supermarket parking lot witch sucks and it is here in canada

Great video! I enjoyed very much! I subbed up I look forward to more

Looks like all gone now..according to Google Earth...all of the area has been redeveloped.

Good job jrs689, we all should appreciate your interesting tract of the few of us who actually care about local history , I would venture to add some vignettes very few will ever recall: At 6:00 during the year of 1976 the lower windows accommodated a "rough mill" of Colonial Manufacturing from which dried dimensional lumber was "slid" through the basement windowsMoving onto 9:00, I remember the evidence of the faint but visible "trail" leading to the left (South) as indeed the original (backup) route from the wye near at Monroe and Sweet street to engage passengers at the DGH&M station on the North side of Michigan street.And so jrs689....., very few of your viewers will ever know, or care, of these minutiae so nobly minutiae enhanced by you.....or in my case embellished by me. Thank you for showing this in 2012, because now it is 2015 and it is a complete anachronism

You could probabley ride a bike trail across America that was one time a roadbed for trains.

There is a video on KZfaq from 1992 switching out on this actual line. Look for it

Out of Elkhart we have a line that went to Grand rapids.i think they just go to Kalamazoo.

Thank you for these views, just a pity you are moving so much your camera, sometimes it is very difficult to see what you are showing.

why rip it up ,future access

how long was the tunnel far back in and i loved this video.

do you have videos or pictures of the rout from back when it was active I would like to recreate it in Train Simulator 2017

jrs689, While I really appreciate your enthusiasm for Grand Rapids Railroad history, it might do you well to spend some time verifying some historical facts. In as much as the main line rail you followed from the original Detroit Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway (DGH&M) completed in 1858 and which Great Western had owned since 1877, and only later in 1928 did it become the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, the Grand Rapids Press building on Fulton and Sheldon had not yet existed until 1966. And that building was never a railroad station. The sole purpose for the spur you followed was to reduce previous passenger horse drawn carriage travel time from the original 1858 GGH&M station on the south side of Ann Street at Indian Mill Creek to downtown Grand Rapids. A “new” brick passenger station built in 1906 at Michigan Street and demolished in 1959 to make way for the present U.S. Post Office was built for that purpose. Because of the terrain near the river, each passenger train had to be backed into the station and would be switched onto the wye in order to head either East or West bound. Only after several years later did a freight spur split to the east at Coldbrook Street and down along Bond Avenue, serving the former Berkey & Gay factory. The southernmost trestle that formed part of the wye at Monroe and Sweet was removed in 2009. Additional freight spurs ran north and south on both sides of Taylor Avenue just north of Leonard. Also, please note the extra width of both the existing North street overpass bridge and the Grand River bridge were originally planned to accommodate double tracks. While most of your 195 viewers probably will never know (or care), I just thought you might want to avoid rewriting history in light of your commendable enthusiasm for railroad's past.

Don't know if you knew it or not but there's a video of this line back when it was still in operation. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fqt2qq5mzba3iGQ.html

you need a mountain bike