Perhaps "Oddest" rather than weirdest. Perhaps "Most Surprising". However you look at it, the hopper car on a concrete supported steel trestle, is one that doesn't seem to make sense. Let's take a look.

The land on which the steel trestle sits is part of the property dominated by the building at 201 Depot Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The neat building was built in 2006, is two stories tall with a parking garage under the upper two floors. Obviously, the property where the trestle sits was acquired and a decision was made to keep the trestle intact. What business was located there is not certain, but my guess is that it was a coal dealer, with coal dumped right through the trestle from the coal hoppers. However, there could have been some kind of an industry with the trestle serving doors located in an adjoining building. Perhaps someone knows. The first weird thing is why wasn't the trestle just destroyed at the time the building was built? Certainly a man with a torch could have made relatively short work of the steel and the scrap monies generated could have been applied against the total cost of construction. But for some reason, the trestle was kept in place. The trestle IS used to hold the street address (201) of the building (second photo), but keeping the entire trestle intact for just that reason, doesn't seem to make sense. The trestle's continued existence is very surprising, to say the least.

The second odd thing, is the hopper car located on the trestle itself. Certainly the hopper car just wasn't left there, but had to be purposely brought in. The car is lettered for the Detroit & Mackinac, and may have been acquired from that road. A small set of letters (seen in the first photo) with the address of the building have been added to the car. But this is hardly a major piece of advertising. Perhaps at one time, the plan was to paint and letter the car to make it more prominent. If so, that has not been done. However, the side of the car facing the street and parking lot entrance HAS had its Detroit & Mackinac lettering "touched up" at some point. A comparison with this street side (photo 1) and the "back side" of the car (photo 3), shows that.

Finally, a word about the coal hopper itself. Although lettered for the D&M, there is a faded Penn Central herald still visible in one corner of the car. There is also a built date showing, what appears to be, 1959. If that date is correct, then the car was probably built originally for either the Pennsylvania Railroad or the New York Central. There also appears to be some lettering still showing that the car was leased to, or in service for, some chemical company. Perhaps when it was on the roster of the D&M.

Now there may be "weirder" rail preservation stories out there, but until I hear of them, this one is number one in my book.

Les

Pretty awesome way to display a RR piece. Can get great pictures with no fences. Seems pretty vandal proof, no “tags” and not easy to get to.

Bob D.

A couple of additional photos, including one from the "rear" of the trestle looking toward the building and Depot Street (first photo). By the way, the Detroit & Mackinac didn't serve Ann Arbor, but the New York Central did. The NYC line is still intact and is probably the line that connected to the trestle. AMTRAK still runs over the line and in fact, the station serving Ann Arbor is located a short distance beyond the 201 Depot Street building location.

Les

A really good restoration project for the owner or community to get behind. As is, could be interpreted as an eyesore, yet painted and lettered, it would be a great symbol of community heritage.

During a site walk though before the new building was constructed, someone probably commented..."wouldn't it be neat lf...." And so that's how it came to be.

The choice of railcar was also likely random in the same fashion.

The result...corporate yard art.

Interesting that the last two piers are new construction.

-Hudson

Hudson -

Yes, near the entrance to the building. They obviously wanted a better appearance at that point.

Les

The building is the home of the Smith Group landscape architecture firm. It makes a little more sense that an architecture firm would want something unique to mark their footprint.

https://www.smithgroup.com/our-firm/locations/ann-arbor

It would be a rather nondescript office building without the trestle & car.

David -

Thanks. Yes, it appears that the Smith Group has leased one of the floors in the 201 Depot Street building. But the developers of the building appear to be the First Martin Corporation, which apparently has many Ann Arbor buildings in its portfolio, both newly built and older historic buildings. So it seems that First Martin are the folks that left the trestle on the property, incorporated it into their plans and also moved the old coal hopper up on that trestle.

Les

What I can't tell is how far does the track/trestle go in the other direction? I see it ends at the building but it seems to disappear into the tree area.

A grainy aerial photo from 1955 on https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer suggests the MDOT line was double tracked with a spur north of the trestle looks to be connected the trestle. It appears in the image there are "bays" between the supports, where as suggested earlier, if this was a coal dealer, where trucks could have backed up under the tracks to be loaded. The yard appears to be in use.

In 1955, it looks active. In a 1963 image, it looks like the area has been cleaned up. By 1992, the MDOT track is single tracked. The area is green and over grown in a 2005 image, and in the current configuration in a 2009 image. I think the hopper is in place in 2009. It is interesting the hopper appears to be placed over the two openings that look to be the primary unloading bays in the 1955 image. It would be interesting to hear the story if that isn't by accident!

Bob

It seems like what was intended was more of a pop art display rather than a display of historic railroad equipment. For the artistic effect of a gritty industrial theme, the hopper car and trestle iron are intentionally left unpainted. Part of the effect is also the seemingly out of place surprise of the trestle and hopper in that otherwise modern setting.

All of that may be fine as artistic expression, but I would think that most viewers would miss that point entirely and interpret what they see as an operational railroad setting. It looks like that more than anything else, and people would not look deep enough to conclude that it is a display.

I think it needs a lot of new ideas and changes to make it understandable as what it is intended to be.

Could the original building on the site have possibly been a power or steam heating plant for some facility? There is a hopper car now on display on the campus of Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania that is on the site of a siding that once served such a plant for the college. The trestle and supporting pilings are long gone but you can see where the dump site was for the coal.

Bob - Thanks for the info. For some reason, I couldn't pull up your referenced aerial photo. Would have liked to see what the area looked like in 1955. The fact that the hopper car was there in 2009 makes sense as the building was reportedly erected in 2006. I also noted a rather poor photo on the First Martin Corporation site for the building that shows the hopper car without the Detroit & Mackinac lettering spelled out and the reporting marks and road number very faded. In other words, someone apparently went up there and painted that lettering on the car on that one side, AFTER the car was in place! That may also have been when the small lettering with the street address was added. The D&M lettering looks pretty authentic but I'm not sure how historically accurate it is. Anyway, it seems as if the building owners took at least some care in keeping the lettering authentic.

Les

Photo from Google of the Shippensburg display. Photo by Jim Stanton