Auto Ferries - C&O For Progress Hoodie
Remember the Lake Michigan Car Ferries!
This fine quality screen printed sweatshirt features the PM/C&O Lake Michigan Car Ferry CITY OF MIDLAND from a period advertisement. When Pere Marquette merged with C&O in June 1947 it brought with it a five-car fleet of giant ferries that carried freight cars and automobiles/passengers from Ludington, Michigan, to Milwaukee, Kewaunee, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. CITY OF MIDLAND was purchased as a state-of-the-art “boat” (at over 400 feet long it was a ship by any measure, but all ships on the Lakes are called “boats”). C&O purchased the most modern of the fleet in 1953: SPARTAN and BADGER. The fleet gradually declined to just the three most modern boats, but was still a successful business into the mid-1970s. By the mid-1980s the service was gone, with the boats sold. Today only BADGER is still in service seasonally, but carrying only people and automobiles.
It would be great for a trip across the Lake in this season! Or, maybe just to show your interest in this great fleet of railroad marine equipment.
