Huron & Eastern

Company History: The Huron & Eastern began service in 1986 on a line from Kinde to Croswell, Michigan that they purchased from CSX. Two years later, they bought the adjoining route from Saginaw to Bad Axe, also from CSX (these were former Pere Marquette routes.) At that point, the HESR was 141 miles long. Three years later, in 1991 they took over as designated operator of 48 miles of former New York Central trackage that had been operated by Tuscola & Saginaw Bay.

For more than a decade, the HESR was powered by a half dozen geeps (one 7 and five 9’s.) These units were painted in something very similar to Pere Marquette’s passenger paint scheme. Around 1999, they began to acquire variations of EMD’s GP38 model to assist with the growing traffic. Each of the locomotives has a name in addition to a road number: County of Huron, County of Sanilac, City of Bad Axe, County of Tuscola, County of Saginaw, and so on.

In March of 1992, Huron & Eastern became the first railroad in the RailAmerica family of shortlines (Saginaw Valley Railway was acquired the same month.) In 2004, the Saginaw Valley and the Central Michigan Railway were merged into Huron & Eastern bringing the HESR mileage up to 384 making it a bit longer than Central Vermont in relative size. HESR joined the Genesee & Wyoming family of shortlines, along with the rest of the RailAmerica group, in 2012. HESR moves around 650 cars in a typical week.

Successor/Parent History: Known today as the largest of the shortline holding companies, Genesee & Wyoming began as a shortline by that name in 1899 with a 15 mile line between Retsof and Caledonia, New York, just south of Rochester. In 1982, they extended southward to Greigsville by buying a former Lackawanna line from Conrail. In 1985, another purchase extended their reach north to Rochester and southwest to Silver Springs. This brought the mileage up to about 90. The Wyoming in the name is a reference to the Wyoming Valley.

In 1977, the railroad set up Genesee & Wyoming Inc. as a parent company. In 1985, they began to buy other shortlines and launch new ones as various Class One routes came up for sale or lease. Each of these lines operates under their own names but share the orange, yellow and black GNWR paint scheme, variations of which have been used by GNWR for decades. The logos of these related lines also use the GNWR style but with different wording and the occasional personalized element.

As of this writing, the Genesee & Wyoming family includes 121 shortline and regional railroads spread across North America, Europe and Australia. As of 2019, G&W became a subsidiary of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. G&W has also bought other shortline groups, notably Rail Link in 1996, Summit View (the Ohio Central System) in 2008, Rail Management in 2005,.CAGY Industries in 2008, and largest of all RailAmerica in 2012.

Ironically, the Genesee & Wyoming Railroad was merged into the Rochester & Southern in 2003. The GNWR exists as a paper railroad but the logos on the diesels patrolling the old GNWR now say Rochester & Southern or the neighboring Buffalo & Pittsburgh.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.