It's the end of the line for a local landmark in Michigan City.
The Michigan City coaling tower will be demolished by Amtrak between Monday and Friday. A few trains between Chicago and destinations in Michigan will be cancelled as a result. Alternative bus services will be provided between Chicago and New Buffalo for some but not all of the trains.
The Michigan Central Railroad built the coaling tower a century ago on tracks that run parallel to Dunes Highway in Michigan City. The tower dumped coal into steam-powered locomotives from overhead, refueling them midway through long trips.
The massive concrete structure has not been used for more than 70 years, as railroads stopped using steam-powered locomotives a few decades after it was built in 1923. Trains switched to diesel.
Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said it's been obsolete since the 1950s and has been deteriorating.
"It's like an old TV antenna that's no longer being used," he said. "You want to take it down before it comes down in an uncontrolled manner."
Amtrak fears the coaling tower poses a possible threat to Amtrak's Wolverine and Blue Water trains that pass under at least eight times a day. It's taking down the coaling towers in Michigan City and Augusta, Michigan, next week.
Amtrak, whose Hammond/Whiting and New Buffalo stations are on the Wolverine line, took over the rail line from Michigan Central in 1976. It has long wanted to remove the coaling tower.
"This has been under discussion for several years," Magliari said. "The timing was largely due to budget. It has not been used for its intended purpose since the 1950s. It is deteriorating. No coal has been tendered into steam locomotives since the 1950s."
Few coaling towers remain, though there's one on CSX tracks near the New Buffalo Railroad Museum in Southwest Michigan.
Some called for the Michigan City tower to be preserved.
Former Michigan Central Railroad employee and railfan Cody Kearns started a change.org petition to try to save it.
LaPorte County resident Jonathan Thomas wrote about the tower's impact on the landscape in an essay on his Ephemera blog.
"It is not exactly what many would call beautiful," Thomas wrote. "It’s a hulking mass of concrete sitting over some railroad tracks. It has been out of use longer than it was ever used. But it has been part of our built landscape since it was constructed about 100 years ago."
The slowly crumbling coaling tower long served as a point of reference for both locals and visitors.
"We don’t really build things to last in this country, but this coal tower has survived a century, even while being completely useless for half a century," Thomas wrote.
The loss of the coaling tower feels symbolic amid a time of massive redevelopment projects around Michigan City, where construction cranes now tower over the historic downtown, he argued.
"There will be a lot of change coming to the Michigan City lakeshore in the coming years," Thomas wrote. "The NIPSCO plant will be shutting down and demolished. The State Prison should be shutting down, and new buildings are being constructed with funding from Chicago developers. I hope that in the process of this new renaissance in Michigan City, we don’t completely sweep away the heritage and landscape that made this place unique."