What to do in Battle Creek, MI

Probably go watch Kellogg's make corn flakes....

Last time I was through I recall reading that Kellogg's had stopped offering the in-plant tours.

Hi Frank,

If you're looking for train action, make sure to stop by the Amtrak station on Capital Avenue, right across the street from the Kellogg Arena. There are roughly 50 trains a day on the CN tracks- 8 Amtraks, 3 NS, and the rest are CN. Lots of "foreign power" works between Chicago and Battle Creek, plus the usual CN/IC/WC/GT stuff. Best times are 7am-11am and early evening.

Ian

Like watching legislation or sausage being made?

As already suggested there's lots of action at the Amtrak station downtown. Good hobby shops are pretty much non-existent. The only one that carries anything train related is Meyer Toy World on the north side of town, but unless you're looking for older HAM, Riva, or Athearn items it's not worth your time. I've heard there's a club hiding in town somewhere but I've never actually seen evidence of it. Inquiries a few years ago at some local shops came up with nothing.

As for the Kellogg experience, there is Cereal City USA in downtown that has a simulated cereal factory inside. It's not too cheesy but I think they have limited hours of operation.

Train-wise, if you can manage to sneak into the CN's Battle Creek yard, there's always a bunch of power on hand (I'm not advocating trespassing though). NS's Hinman Yard is just south of there, with a neat corn syrup transloading facility on-site. The yard office would make any Conrail fan proud- built in the mid-80s, solid brick, with a brick Conrail sign in front. Nice place; sorely under-utilized.

Lots of KELX boxcars in the vicinity, along with ADM and Corn Products corn syrup tank cars.

Ian

I've not been through there recently, but are the old Grand Trunk Western steam/Diesel shops still there? I haven't heard that they'd been torn down. It's an impressive big old RR building. The last time I was in there, about twenty years back, they were still doing lots of heavy Diesel repairs. I don't know what's happened since the CN-NA reorganization of GTW.

They also had a bunch of big steam powered ventilating fans, etc. in operation inside the shop. Several big one cylinder horizontal steam engines driving room-sized 'squirrel-cage' fans. They had lots of steam, for other purposes, so it was economical to operate this antique machinery. The steam fans were located up in the 'attic' of the shop, at about the level of the top of the bridge-crane beam-rails. The upper levels were also great places to look down on the whole shop below.

In the 'good old days' you could often talk your way into the place, look around, and take photos. I suppose that's a lot harder to do today.

Dan Mitchell ==========

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