Decline of the Railroads By the end of the 1960s, most railroad companies struggled to operate profitably. Automobiles and airplanes provided increasingly inexpensive and efficient alternatives for passenger travel. Trucks, which could travel to cities where there might not be railroad stations, were used to haul freight. Trucks or planes increasingly carried even mail service, which once depended on trains. The only goods left for the railroad were large, bulk shipments such as coal or grains. On April 1st, 1976, Ann Arbor Railroad Company -- a company which operated its longest railroad lines just twelve years earlier in 1964 -- declared bankruptcy. Click here for a newspaper article about "The End of an Era." While the company was taken over by ConRail, it continued to struggle with ever-increasing costs of operation. Travelers opted for their private cars or airplanes to get from place to place. Cargo was also increasingly shipped by air -- which was much faster than ground transportation. In the 1970s, Darrell D. Powell, a former employee of the Ann Arbor Railroad Company, wrote many poems about the railroad in memory of "Annie" - a nickname for the Ann Arbor Railroad Company.. Click here to read "When I was Young Man," a brief history about one man's reaction to the railroad's decline. Today, Amtrak still operates a railroad station on the site of the former Michigan Central Railroad station for passenger trains. And although railroad travel is experiencing a small resurgence as a "nostalgic" -- and inexpensive -- form of travel, it no longer holds the central role of freight and passenger transportation that it once enjoyed. Questions for discussion: Why did cars, trucks, airplanes replace railroads? What are the disadvantages and advantages of these newer forms of transportation compared to trains? Reviewing the newspaper article about the railroad's decline, do you think employees were significantly affected? From reading this topic and the poem, what do you think the "changes in ownership and problems with the railroad, and business that comes and goes" in Darrell Powell's poem might mean? How important do you think railroads were to Ann Arbor? More about Ann Arbor's Railroads

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