From Trains Magazine:

The grand opening for the Troy Multi-Modal Transit Center is scheduled for Oct. 14, 2014. Construction work on the transit center was completed in last fall, but a property dispute held up its opening. In late September, a settlement by Troy to acquire the land and lease the site to Amtrak was reached.

This week the Troy city council approved a 20-year lease agreement with Amtrak that will cover all costs to operate the center. Amtrak’s Wolverine Service trains will use the new facility.

In 2000, a nearby property owner gave the city of Troy title land on which to build a new station, with the provision that funding for a transit center was secured within 10 years. In 2011, the cities of Birmingham and Troy were awarded a federal grant to assist in replacing the station with a new, multimodal transit center across the tracks in Troy.

However, the mayor of Troy rejected the funding on ideological grounds, thus terminating the project. The project was resurrected by a subsequent Troy city administration, and broke ground on Nov. 27, 2012, and was completed in October 2013. The legal dispute over title to the land under kept the center from opening.

The $6.6 million construction cost for the project was provided by grants from the Federal Railroad Administration.

From Trains Magazine:

Time has caught up with the famed “BO” tower in Kalamazoo this week. On Tuesday morning, signal crews working on Amtrak’s Michigan Line upgrades retired the 44-lever Saxby & Farmer interlocking machine, marking the end of the tower era in western Michigan.

For the time being, operators still work around the clock at BO, operating signals from a control panel in the tower. The signals will eventually be remote-controlled, once responsibility for MDOT’s Kalamazoo-Dearborn route is handed from Norfolk Southern’s dispatchers in Dearborn, Michigan to Amtrak’s train directors in Chicago.

The installation of the interlocking by Michigan Central, a New York Central affiliate, was approved by the Michigan Railroad Commission in January 1915, leaving BO’s original interlocking machine to end its service life just four months short of its centennial celebration.

The tower once controlled lines affiliated with the Grand Trunk Western, New York Central, and Pennsylvania, along with an interurban. Both of the lines remaining today were conveyed to Penn Central in 1968 and then split between Amtrak and Conrail in 1976. Norfolk Southern acquired both remaining Conrail routes in 1999, and then spun off the north-south alignment, the former Pennsylvania route, to Watco-owned Grand Elk Railroad in 2009. The state acquired the former New York Central route east of the tower in 2013 with NS retaining freight rights.

Amtrak and the state of Michigan are in the process of upgrading the Kalamazoo-Dearborn corridor for 110 mph speeds, which includes major track upgrades along with a complete replacement of the signal system to modern hardware that provides positive train control.

From The Grand Rapids Press:

It’s light at the end of the tunnel: the vacant, yet new, Amtrak station finally is set to connect to the rest of the region in the coming month.

City crews are slated to shut down Century Avenue SW at 8 a.m. Monday, Sept. 29, 2014, while CSX Corp. reconstructs its railroad crossing. It’s one of the last steps necessary to finally set a guaranteed grand opening of the adjacent Vernon J. Ehlers Amtrak Station, said Peter Varga, CEO of The Rapid.

The station has been mired by delays; it originally was scheduled to open in 2013. Setbacks pushed the opening to either spring or summer 2014. The end of September was considered, too, though work on the crossing likely won’t be completed until 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 10.

Fall 2014 is the safest time frame at this point as the rail itself will have to be examined before opening, officials say.

“The track work has to be inspected by CSX, that’s a separate agreement, as we own the railroad spur,” Varga said.

Work began to relocate an underground sewer line below Buchanan Avenue SW earlier this summer as it would not be strong enough to hold the weight of the spur. Officials relied on the conclusion of that project, although an analysis was conducted in 2012, before moving ahead with CSX’s portion.

Rapid officials tout the convenient location of the new station as Central Station, which serves all of the six-city bus system’s busiest routes and the new Silver Line bus rapid transit system, is just down the street.

The $5.2 million station, named after the former West Michigan congressman, will replace the old hub on Wealthy Street serving Amtrak’s Pere Marquette route. It travels two and from Grand Rapids and Chicago, with three stops each day.

More: Grand Rapids’ new Amtrak station proves costlier than expected

An additional, daily trip between the two cities could launch upon the station’s completion.

Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2014/09/crews_set_to_reconstruct_rail.html

From M-Live.com:

Forty years after debuting service in Michigan, the Amtrak Blue Water line isn’t what it used to be.

Recently Amtrak has added features like wireless internet and bicycle racks to its Blue Water train cars. Train speeds have increased to 110 miles per hour on one portion of the line, and ridership in 2013 hit a record high of 191,106.

On Oct. 1, the train line will celebrate with an extra café car, commemorative gift bags for passengers and discounted tickets. You’ll need to act fast for the ticket deal, which kicks in when a customer purchases one ticket – that allows them to purchase a companion ticket for 40 percent off. It’s valid on tickets purchased through today, Sept. 30, and rides through tomorrow, Oct. 1.

“It’ll be festive,” said Amtrak spokesperson Marc Magliari.

The train line debuted in Michigan in 1974 as the Blue Water, but in 1982 was changed to be the International Limited, which ran between Chicago and Toronto. In 2004, it was converted back to the Blue Water.

It’s been much more successful as a Michigan train than as a Toronto train, particularly after 9/11 because there were significant delays at the border crossing,” Magliari said.

The route currently serves stops from Port Huron to Chicago. It stops in Lapeer, Flint, Durand, East Lansing, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, Dowagiac, Niles and New Buffalo.

Today’s route is oriented to get Michiganders from one side of the state to the other and back in the same day, Magliari said.

Amtrak operates in Michigan with a subsidy and support from the Michigan Department of Transportation.

Source: http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2014/09/amtrak_plans_40th_anniversary.html