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The first incarnartion of the Ann Arbor Railroad was long dead and all of the trackage north of Ann Arbor was owned by the state by the time the Michigan Interstate fell apart in the late 1980s and was purchased by Groupe I&M. The railroad came with a collection of 8 GP-38s, which were kept, and a small pile of elderly alcos, which were immediately sold or scrapped.

Nothing changed over the next 30 years. The GP-38s kept plugging along, and aside from the occasional visit from one of the I&M’s big EMDS & GEs, provided all of the power the railroad needed.

After the D&H and Ontario Southwestern purchased Groupe I&M, the Annie was put under control of the OSW, which started a project to replace their old GP-38s with garage sale Alcos and newly built ILW “RS-38” locomotives.

In 2024, as part of the CTRC project, the Ann Arbor was electrified, displacing all of the diesels and replacing them with new J4 motors and some of the class DP3 electro-diesels that had been displaced from the D&H & I&M by the ongoing electrification. And as lagniappe, MDOT, which had been planning to restore railroad service on the old Ann Arbor line to Frankfort, awarded the build-operate contract to the Annie, which started rebuilding the line (including long stretches of rail-with-trail) in the spring.