RAILFAN GUIDES of the U.S.
Todd's Railfan Guide to
DETROIT MI
the
Delray Tower Area
In General
Maps
Sights
Floobydust
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Detroit has so much cool stuff for the railfan to see. In this area alone, all within 10 minutes or so of each other, are a multitude of yards, two stations, two towers, the Ford Museum, the Ford plant, Rouge Steel... phew, I get tired just thinking about it all!
The area around Delray Tower includes CSX's Rougemere Yard, CN's Schaefer Yard, NS's Oakwood Yard, and NS's (CR) River Rouge Yard.
Delrey Tower is a fun place to go, and the tower ops are usually nice, with the exception for a woman I ran into on one occasion (to young and not enough male hormones to understand our needs). Contrast this to going to Plymouth Diamond on the other side of town - and they're both CSX!
A little further south off i75 are lots of hotels and places to eat, like Northline Rd (exit 37), Eureka Rd (Southgate / Southland Center Mall)(exit 36), West Rd (Woodhaven / Best Western, etc)(exit 32). Both Northline and Eureka are good back roads into the airport, as well as Goddard Rd.
As always, if anyone has additional info, check me out here
Maps
Maps for Delray seem to be in abundance on the internet, a few of what I have come across are shown below in addition to my own map of the area.
The above two drawings are by drawn by Dale Berry with info provided by
Nathan Neitering
1 Delray Tower
Here you can see almost anything. In two hours on Friday, 7/24/2009, my buddy and I saw a CN freight, 2 CSX freights, an NS freight, and a CSX freight headed up with two UP engines, in addition to a CSX cop for the first time in all of my visits......
Here are some shots of the tower itself, and to the right,
pix of where all of the wires come in and out of the tower, and where the
armstrong actuating rods used to come out of the building.
A US&S machine handles the interlocking.
The freights we caught: A pair of UP engines head up a CSX
freight, a CSX freight coming from Rougemere yard, a SB NS freight, a NB CN
freight, and another CSX freight out of Rougemere.
Busted for parking on the shoulder which is owned by CSX!
At least he was nice and let us off. IT PAYS TO BE NICE... HELLOOOO!
Delray Signals
1
A pair of two head GRS searchlight signals guarding the NB NS tracks going to the diamond.
2
A different little simple green/yellow LED signal for the NB CSX tracks, and the turnout is manually switched by the tower op. The picture of the green aspect just goes to show you that the reliability of LED signal elements has a long way to go to justify their extra expense, as there is one string of LED's out within the "bulb".
3
These shots are from "on the other side" of i75 (except for the far right photo), a more seedy part of town than where the tower is, if that's possible - the two on the right are looking back under the interstate towards the tower.
The cantilever bridge (two right photos) doesn't have a signal on it, probably got replaced by the searchlight signal underneath it.
4
Signals for trains in and out of Rougemere Yard.
2 CSX's Rougemere Yard
A couple of aerial shots of CSX's Rougemere Yard, and
above them, the yard office and a couple of new yard goats.
3 CN's Schaefer Yard
A CN tower, which is no longer there. Passed by there many times looking for action at the Ford plant,
and never saw it until Bing.com (formerly maps.live.com) came along.
Anyone know what tower it was and have better pix? Looks like the
diamond is signaled pretty well.
A "tri-light" protects the single track going across the diamond, and the
sign into the yard.
4 NS's River Rouge Yard
The engine facility at NS's (formerly Conrail's) River Rouge Yard.
5 NS's Oakwood Yard
The engine facility at NS's Oakwood Yard. One of the few that has easy
access.
6 the former Michigan Central Railroad Station
Union Station, it's seen better days...... not on the map.
This lone GT engine working the Ford plant was the only moving around late
on Friday night. It comes out of the Flatrock yard south of Detroit.
Still around, but slowly being taken down one by one, are these concrete
support structures for the Ford experiment with electrification.
Between the tower and Rougemere Yard, is this building.
Not sure who it belongs to, but you can often find a CP train parked here,
as we did today (and on many of my visits back in the 1998-2002 timeframe).
The CSX cops also work out of here.
On the way over from the airport, on i94, you go over this
really cool bridge, and pass by Uniroyal's huge tire....
NEW 06/10/2009
Last Modified
05-Dec-2012