Grand Trunk Western Railroad

Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway

Detroit and Huron Railway

Grand Rapids Terminal Railroad

Michigan Air Line Railway

Muskegon Railway and Navigation Company

Peninsular Railway of Michigan and Indiana

Pontiac, Oxford and Northern Railroad

Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railway

Mainline

Grand Trunk Western began as a route for the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) to link its line to Chicago through lower Michigan. GTR's objective was to have a mainline from shipping ports in Portland, Maine, to rail connections in Chicago through the southern part of the Province of Canada that would serve Toronto and Montreal.

In 1859 the Grand Trunk completed its route to Sarnia, Canada West, and began a ferry service across the St. Clair River to Port Huron. GTR leased the Chicago, Detroit and Canada Grand Trunk Junction Railroad to reach Detroit and from there then ran over the Michigan Central Railroad's line from Detroit into Chicago. It was on the line from Port Huron to Detroit that a 12-year-old Thomas Edison held his first job as a newsboy and candy butcher onboard passenger trains. Grand Trunk established its own route to Chicago across Michigan when the New York Central Railroad's William Henry Vanderbilt took over control of the Michigan Central in 1878. GTR sought to put together a route by acquiring three railroads it had already been sending some of its Chicago-bound trains on since 1877. The Chicago and Lake Huron Railroad, the Chicago and Northeastern Railroad (C&NE) and the Peninsular Railway of Michigan and Indiana together formed a direct route from Port Huron through Flint and Lansing, Michigan, to Valparaiso, Indiana, where it connected into Chicago on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. However, Vanderbilt owned the Chicago and Northeastern section of the route from Flint to Lansing and charged Grand Trunk higher rates to move its freight over the line. Vanderbilt soon sold the C&NE to Grand Trunk when GTR bought the other two lines in 1879 and proposed building its own route between Flint and Lansing just north of Vanderbilt's line. Grand Trunk completed its own route into Chicago from Valparaiso in 1880 and incorporated the entire line from Port Huron to Chicago as the Chicago and Grand Trunk Railway.

More routes

Over the next two decades through either leases or purchases Grand Trunk acquired several other branch lines in Michigan. It took control of the Michigan Air Line Railway through a lease in 1881. The line connected with the Chicago, Detroit and Canada Grand Trunk Junction at Richmond and ran to Jackson, through Romeo and Pontiac, Michigan. When Grand Trunk purchased the Great Western Railway in 1882 it also acquired the Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway (DGH&M), which Great Western had owned since 1877. The DGH&M gave Grand Trunk a route from Detroit through Pontiac, Durand and Grand Rapids to Grand Haven, Michigan, where it began its Lake Michigan railcar ferry operations in 1902. The DGH&M connected with the Chicago and Grand Trunk at Durand and with the Chicago, Detroit and Canada Grand Trunk Junction in Detroit. Durand became a major junction point for Grand Trunk when it continued to increase its mileage. It acquired the 96-mile (154 km) Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railway from Ashley to Muskegon, Michigan, in 1888. GTR obtained trackage rights to reach the line at Ashley from Owosso, Michigan, with the Toledo, Ann Arbor and North Michigan Railway, the predecessor of the Ann Arbor Railroad. Grand Trunk acquired a route into Saginaw, Michigan, in 1890 with the lease of the Cincinnati, Saginaw & Mackinaw Railroad from Durand to Bay City, Michigan. The line was the last to be held as a leased property until January 1943, when it was fully merged into Grand Trunk Western.

Western Division

By 1900 Grand Trunk united the operations of the Chicago and Grand Trunk Railway and all of its lines in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana under a subsidiary company called the Grand Trunk Western Railway Company. The name derived from the fact that GTR's rail lines west of the St. Clair and Detroit rivers were referred to as its Western Division. The lines had also operated under the name Grand Trunk Railway System.

Pontiac also continued to become another important junction point when the Pontiac Oxford and Northern Railroad was acquired in 1909. It ran north from Pontiac to Caseville in Michigan's thumb region. By 1910, GTW had a network of trackage connecting all of lower Michigan's major manufacturing cities when it acquired a lease on a short branch of the Chicago, Kalamazoo and Saginaw Railroad giving it access to Kalamazoo, Michigan. A few years before, in 1902, GTW had gained access into Ohio with its shared ownership of the Detroit and Toledo Shore Line Railroad. The line was a small carrier that had a multi-track mainline bridging Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, and was purchased equally by GTW and the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad, a predecessor of the Nickel Plate Road. GTW eventually took complete control of the line when it bought Nickel Plate's half interest from its successor Norfolk and Western Railway in 1981.

Terminal railroads

Grand Trunk Western also owned or co-owned terminal switching railroad companies in some of the cities it operated in. Beginning in 1905, it co-owned equal shares of the Detroit Terminal Railroad with New York Central (NYC). By the 1970s Detroit Terminal was suffering financial losses, and GTW negotiated to sell its share to NYC's successors Penn Central and Conrail until it dropped its ownership in 1981. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, it acquired the Grand Rapids Terminal Railroad in 1906. In Bay City, Michigan, it owned the Bay City Terminal Railway and in Kalamazoo it took over the nearly 3-mile-long (4.8 km) Chicago and Kalamazoo Terminal Railroad by 1910. Prior to moving its ferry operations to Muskegon, GTW also acquired the railway belt-line Muskegon Railway and Navigation Company in 1924. The company existed as a GTW subsidiary until 1955. For its entry into Chicago GTW, along with the Erie, Wabash, Chicago and Eastern Illinois and Monon railroads, was a co-owner of the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad (C&WI), beginning in 1883. It performed passenger and express car-switching duties at Chicago's Dearborn Station. GTW was also part of a group that created and shared ownership in the Belt Railway Company of Chicago, which connects every rail line in the Chicago area.

Canadian National

By 1919, GTW's parent, Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, was suffering financial problems related to its ownership of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The Canadian government nationalized Grand Trunk and other financially troubled Canadian rail companies by 1923 and amalgamated them into a new government-owned entity, the Canadian National Railway. GTW became a subsidiary of the new entity and was reincorporated as the Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company on November 1, 1928, when nearly all of its lines were formally merged under the company.

River tunnel

GTW's predecessor Grand Trunk Railway also sought to expedite its rail service between Port Huron and Sarnia by constructing a rail tunnel under the St. Clair River. The St. Clair Tunnel, completed in 1891, approximately 6,000 feet (1,800 m) long and hand-dug, allowed Grand Trunk to discontinue its ferry service across the river. The tunnel was the last link in GTR's complete mainline from Chicago through southern Canada. In 1992, Canadian National began construction of a new, larger tunnel next to the original tunnel to accommodate double-stacked intermodal containers and tri-level auto carriers used in freight train service. The new tunnel was completed in 1994 and dedicated on May 5, 1995. GTW also gained trackage rights in 1975 to use Penn Central's Detroit River Tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. Penn Central's successor Conrail sold the tunnel to CN and Canadian Pacific Railway in 1985. Eventually, CN sold its share of the Detroit tunnel in 2000 after the new St. Clair tunnel was completed.

The railroad's first major line abandonment came in 1951 when it abandoned about half of the former Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railway line from Muskegon to Greenville, Michigan. That same year, Grand Trunk Western bought its headquarters building at 131 West Lafayette Avenue in downtown Detroit. At the end of 1970, GTW operated 2,154 miles (3,467 km) of track on 946 miles (1,522 km) of road, and that year it reported 2,732 million net revenue ton-miles of freight and 49 million passenger-miles.