Eastern Railroad Discussion > I caught up with the LORAM RG 316 in Flint, Michigan, on Thursday

After a couple appointments were completed in Flint, Michigan, I headed for home in Battle Creek. But....for some unknown reason my trips back home seem to always follow the CN Flint Subdivision. And almost to Durand I looked back to the east and saw something way in the distance that got my curiosity aroused.......so I headed back toward Flint. As I got closer to the west end of the Flint Bristol Road Yard I could see a huge cloud of...well dust and smoke from the Rail Grinder.

I had hurry to get ahead f it, and found a decent spot to wait for it to come along. It didn't take too long to show up. These guys were not wasting any time grinding rail. But just before they reached my location they stopped and backed up...maybe a mile or so, and made another pass at the rail on a curve. There was another location with a curve further east and they stopped there too and backed up to have another go at it.

All in all I got five separate videos, each about a minute and 30 seconds or so. I used four of them to create the video shown here.
The first segment is on a bridge that crosses over top of I-75. And in this one there are two bridges overhead. The one nearest the camera is Northbound I-75 to Eastbound I-69. The other one further away is Northbound I-75 to Westbound I-69.
The second and third segments are at the same location. They went past me and then backed up, so I got another one at the same location.
The fourth segment is just a quarter mile or so west of where the GTW Flint Depot stood for probably 40 years or so.
At this location the grinder is on Main One. The other three show the grinder on the Main Track. Just to the west of where the grinder is in the last part is CN Flint - MP Flint 270.0 CN Flint Subdivision, Flint, Michigan. From that location west, all the way to CN West Flint - MP 263.8 CN Flint Subdivision, Swartz Creek, Michigan, the south track is a Yard Track, called the Flint Thoroughfare, maximum speed limit 20 MPH.

The two photographs that I've added show the Flint Bi-Level Docks. 6 tracks, five cars each. Bi-Levels only. Never loaded a Tri-Level here, but over the years they've loaded thousands and thousands of Bi-Level loads of trucks. It's right across the tracks from where I was sitting. For anyone that may know some history about the GTW, where I was sitting is where the original Torrey Yard Office used to be located. I hired out in that building in February 1971.

The other photograph shows a few of the spare grinding wheels stacked on the deck and some hanging from hooks along both sides of these machines.

I had a video of this same machine working in Battle Creek a few days ago. I hope this one gives a better view of what these machines do.

Ron
 

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