Farewell to BO Interlocking Tower - Kalamazoo, Michigan

On March 7th, we decided to ride Amtrak from Ann Arbor to Kalamazoo and back. We boarded the early westbound train 351 at 740 AM, which was pulled by two P42DCs. Ann Arbor is the most popular station on the Amtrak Michigan Line, and averages about 155,000 passengers every year. Many of these riders are students from the University of Michigan. In Kalamazoo, we deboarded the train and set up our cameras at North Church Street. Kalamazoo is home to Western Michigan University, and is the second most popular passenger station in Michigan, with an average ridership of 120,000. After filming our train as it departed Kalamazoo, we visited BO Tower to capture Amtrak's Blue Water Service train, number 365, arriving at Kalamazoo station. Milepost 143.3 is where Amtrak takes ownership of the former Michigan Central Main Line to Porter, Indiana. Amtrak took ownership of this segment in 1976 upon the start-up of Con-Rail. Michigan Central's Botsford, or BO Tower, was opened on October 2nd, 1914. The tower was named after the Botsford Paper Mill Company, which located its tracks east of downtown in 1892. Michigan Central built a new yard to handle the paper mill traffic around 1904. It too was named Botsford, and is still in operation today. The 44-lever interlocking tower was responsible for handling trains on the Grand Trunk Western, New York Central, and Pennsylvania railroads, as well as an interurban line. The present-day lines are operated by Watco's Grand Elk Railroad and Amtrak. Watco renamed the yard to Gearheart a few years ago after a long-time retired railroader. In 2018, we interviewed historian Graydon Mintz, the author of Railroads for Michigan, to learn more about BO Tower. Mintz actually worked at BO in the late 1950s. Oh, I bet I worked there a dozen times over the years. To me, it was probably the best interlocking tower to work in. It was a challenge. We had yard engines going around town. We had three or four shifts of yard engines going here, there, and the other place. They all had to be shuttled in between, because the airline had been partly torn up, so all the freight traffic came through Kalamazoo, and you had all the passenger trains. To keep all of it from flowing, it was a challenge. It was a challenge, but I always liked BO. It was just a good job to work. We had good people and good crews to work with. I remember looking out the tower window out to the south, across the main line, and there was a long white building out there. I always wondered, it's funny, that looks like a passenger station. Lo and behold, it was at one time. There was a place, a depot across the tracks from BO Tower called Kalamazoo Junction. Passengers changed trains from the Michigan Central to the GR&I through that depot. I worked on the railroad, the signal department had it. It's gone now, but kind of kitty-corner across the diamond at BO Tower was the roundhouse for the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, and that's still part of it there yet, behind Bell's Brewery. At the time this video was recorded, BO was one of only two manned interlocking towers remaining in Michigan, with the other being on CSX rails at Delray, just outside of Detroit. It was also the oldest still in use within the state. Norfolk Southern personnel operated the tower until it was closed on October 24, 2016, when Amtrak took over dispatching of the Michigan line. The interlocking was upgraded to remote control so that the junction could be operated by the Amtrak train director in Chicago. After closing, several preservation efforts began with the intent to move the tower to another location. So something like this is a vital piece of our history, not just to Kalamazoo and southwest Michigan, probably to the Midwest in our country. Nate Hatton, a train conductor working to save the tower, says up until recently the tower was still used. Up until 2016 there would be a tower operator and a tower controlling train movement throughout Kalamazoo. Now everything is controlled remotely out of Chicago. MDOT now owns the tower and says it is open to having it restored, but anyone who saves it would have to pay to relocate it because the tower sits too close to the tracks. We're pretty hopeful that we can get maybe the community involved, maybe some local businesses, people interested in preserving this vital piece of history that we have here. Hatton would like to see the tower moved to another section of track in Kalamazoo and turned into a park where people can come and watch the trains. A lot of these towers around the country have been repurposed as museums and campuses, places where the community can come together. While hope is still alive, the future of the tower remains unknown, with MDOT planning to schedule it to face the wrecking ball in 2020. Their timeline is early next year. If we don't come up with a solution, they're going to want to tear it down. On Tuesday, December 28, 2021, the structure was demolished. After catching train 365, we boarded eastbound Wolverine 352 for our return back to Ann Arbor. We were happy to ride in the seasonal Superliner coaches, which made for a unique experience. At Ann Arbor, we debarked and recorded the train's departure. Note the plume of black exhaust fumes as the train accelerated out of town. Thank you for watching Delay in Block Productions. We hope you enjoyed reminiscing with us as we looked back at some of our favorite Michigan line memories from the last decade. Until next time, happy railroading.