Join the discussion on the following article:
Former Pere Marquette coal dock subject of preservation effort
Too bad the Soo Line (Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie, later Canadian Pacific, and then Canadian National, nee Wisconsin Central) ore dock at Ashland, WI couldn’t be saved. That was an impressive structure!
I don’t get the part about the structure losing its identity if it’s restored. I would think that if the corrosion is stopped, concrete could be restored to approximately its original profile. It would probably be impossible to fashion the chutes (three of them, I believe) that filled the tenders, or the mechanisms that loaded the dock from hoppers (at ground level, into a pit beneath the dock itself).
I’m a native of Grand Haven, and I became cognizant of such things at the tail end of steam, but I suspect that the dock had already been retired by then. Later on, when I could wander around, I found the concrete supports for a steel water tower, which I never saw. There was also a turntable, which was removed in the early 1960s and the pit filled in (Harbor Drive runs over the site, I think).
The area also includes a GTW caboose, a Pere Marquette caboose, and a PM automobile car, as well as some signals (including an grade-crossing wigwag that used to be at the PM/C&O Pennoyer Street crossing, which can be operated when members of the preservation organization are present).
What a novel idea. What better way to accent a locomotive display than a large (and scarce today) example of the infrastructure once required to service the railroad industry.
At least three other concrete GTW coal docks survive: Durand and Pontiac yards, and one on the CN mainline in Lansing. For several years in the early '60s the 1223 was displayed at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit.