Ypsilanti Southern Railroad

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Our story ---By: Jerry Murray

Our story begins in 2010 when our family joined the Great Lakes Live Steamers. While My dad had always been into trains and had shared his love of trains with myself (Jerry) and my younger brother Josh. So in 2010 after joining the club our next step was to figure out what to get for a train. It had to be a Chessie System engine for sure but the locomotive power was still an undecided question. I wanted something no one else had. My dad was wanting a GP30, but I was not sure. One day while looking through a book about Chessie Locomotives I came across the GP15T. I instantly liked the locomotive, after showing it to the family and doing some research online to see if anyone else had a 15 we picked it as our power. Next was picking the number. I wanted 1515 as I liked the ring of it. My dad wanted 1500 as it was the first in the series. That issue was settled when I bought a HO scale GP15T number 1502 that became our number. So in the end 2012 we placed a order for GP15T #1502 from the West Bend Railcar Shops in Wisconsin. in the course on 2 1/2 year’s we had it built and picked it up in may of 2015.

Flash forward to 2016, after seeing how cool it is to have a indoor track at a train show and talking it over with the family decided to purchase 100 feet of rail from a friend in the winter of 2017. Our name originally was Chessie on the Go. But I decided that I wanted a name that sounded a little more railroad thus the Ypsilanti Southern Railroad was born. The name is derived from the Township we live in and Norfolk Southern the freight railroad that run’s though our town. In February 2017 our first event was the Ann Arbor train show. This is where we really got a taste of how to really do this. On the job training sometimes really is the only way to go. Since then, we have gone on to do the Greater Toledo area train show and the Village of Clinton Fall Festival and Tecumseh Appleumpkin Festival.

Other then the train shows our train has traveled to the White Creek railroad as well as run on the GLLS tracks in Royal Oak and Southgate MI. , Length54 ft. 11 in (16.74 m), Loco weight 246,000 lb (111,600 kg) Fuel capacity2,400 imp gal (11,000 l; 2,900 US gal)

Here is the Spec’s on the real GP15t.

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