these are a few of my favorite things!
below photo was taken by the same photographer, and was used as a postcard... that's the same car at the gas pump.
A group of investors established the Grand Rapids, Grand Haven, and Muskegon electrical railroad corporation in 1899.
(there is an 1882 Shay Locomotive in Grand Haven, on N. Harbor Dr)
(there is a WW2 sub in Muskegon, the Silversides)
Two years later the company also purchased the electrical generating equipment, 16 passenger cars, 3 freight cars, 1 open sight-seeing car (used in Highland Park/Grand Haven Beach).
The number of Model Ts on Michigan roads grew quickly and with the development of paved highways along interurban routes in the 1920s, the interurban began to lose money.
The interurban line was purchased in 1925 and went into receivership the following year and finally closed and was abandoned in 1928.
The equipment and the rail cars were auctioned off and the railroad ties were sold to the farmers along the route by the ¼, or 1 mile section for use as long-lasting fence posts. The rail cars were used by their new owners for homes, cottages, and some became roadside diners that were popular at the time.
The interurban cars were all given mythological names as well as numbers.
Merlin, also known as Car #8, was built in 1901 and ran the rails on the lakeshore for the total time the business was active. The sale of all the G. R. G. H. & M. equipment resulted in Merlin being moved to Whitehall, Michigan where it became a roadside diner.
It's now next to the interurban depot and substation in Coopersville
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