GAYLORD — Watco, a rail, terminal, port and logistics company, has now taken over operations of the Great Lakes Central Railroad in Michigan.Watco has been an equity investor in the Great Lakes Central since 2013 and now assumes full operational responsibility. Great Lakes Central (GLC) has about 60 employees and is the largest Class III regional railroad in the state and spans approximately 400 miles, according to Jimmy Patterson Jr., the senior vice-president of operations for Watco.
“It starts in Ann Arbor and runs up through Owosso and Cadillac and branches out to Traverse City and then on up to Petoskey,” Patterson said. “(GLC) moves a wide range of commodities from agriculture to scrap metal and a little bit of everything in between.”
The Great Lakes Central line runs through Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties along with others in Northern Michigan. Patterson said GLC moves an average of 15,000 rail cars per year.
“There is no passenger service except during the Christmas season they do some ‘Polar Express’ out of Owosso,” Patterson said, referring to the Steam Railroading Institute’s annual North Pole Express pulled by the historic Pere Marquette 1225 steam locomotive.
When asked about the possibility of passenger rail service on the line in the future, Patterson replied “never say never.”
“But there would have to be a substantial investment to the infrastructure to meet regulations for passenger service,” he added. “Our first goal is to meet with the existing customers, which our sales team is doing this week, to find out what kind of organic growth and demand is out there. I believe there are some lanes of traffic that have the potential to grow.”
Patterson said railroads are still viable in the rural Midwest.
“We consider ourselves to be the first mile, last mile operator,” he said. “We are like the brown UPS trucks running around delivering and picking up packages and then we take those packages and hand them off to the Class 1 railroads to go across the country or to be exported out of the country.”
Patterson said Watco, which is based in in Pittsburg, Kansas and has nearly 5,000 employees, has two other railroads in Michigan, including the Grand Elk Railroad out of Kalamazoo and the Ann Arbor Railroad, which operates from Ann Arbor to Toledo.
“Some of our customers may only ship 150 cars a year while others may ship 5,000 cars a year,” he said. “Potentially we may increase (employment), especially if we have more traffic and more carloads which means we would need more people.”
— Contact Paul Welitzkin at pwelitzkin@gaylordheraldtimes.com
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Rail operator takes full control of Great Lakes Central line in Michigan
Reporting by Paul Welitzkin, The Petoskey News-Review / The Petoskey News-Review
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