MCS video from 1980s.

**buildingsofdetroit** · July-13-10, 11:11 PM

Anyone save the link to that old TV special on Michigan Central Station right before it closed? I can't find it on YouTube.

**rjlj** · July-13-10, 11:25 PM

You don't want to watch that. It will depress you.

**mcsdetroitfriend** · July-14-10, 01:06 AM

Garnet Cousins [[the guy in the video) swears he has a copy somewhere in his house and he told me he would loan it to me to be digitized, if not I have other ways to get my hands on it, the problem is I am in europe until october, but I will try my hardest.

Ravine · July-14-10, 05:04 AM

Originally Posted by rjlj

You don't want to watch that. It will depress you.

Oh, please stop with that.
Depressing? Depressing why? It may not be automatically depressing.
Trains run deep in my blood-line. Really deep. Maybe as deeply, or deeper, than just about anybody around here. Deep like blood & sweat, life & death. Even the sound of a train, off in the distance, summons up a ghost inside me. Literally, a ghost.
I love trains. I'll watch a bad movie, if the damned thing is set on a train. I wish they were still running, carrying passengers as well as freight, the way they once did.
But, they're not. It's over.
So, the train station, relative to its original purpose, is obsolete, and while it was a magnificent structure, nobody jumped up to keep it in shape and put it to use for some other purpose. Now, it's shot to hell, just sitting there like a screen for the sunlight and wind to come through. That's sad, but moaning and hand-wringing won't change it.
I'd love to see the video. If it features archival footage from when the station was up & running, and interviews with folks who were part of the business, I wouldn't be depressed; in fact, I believe that I would enjoy it like a plate of good Crab Alfredo. And, if it's nothing more than the aforementioned moaning & hand-wringing set to footage of the station in its current condition, that's OK, too, although I wouldn't watch it, because there is nothing worthwhile, for me, in that kind of pathetic foolishness.

Depression, and a plethora of sources for it, are all around us, especially if we refuse to accept the way things are and wail and gnash our teeth over things that are irreversible.
I adored Tiger Stadium, and I miss it very much, but it is impossible that I could ever find any video of it-- even one featuring it in its final state of distress & abandon-- to be depressing.
Life goes on, with or without us. Clinging to sadness over things that we cannot do anything about is like dying over & over & over again.
Now, that's depressing.

**Pam** · July-14-10, 07:16 AM

I wish they were still running, carrying passengers as well as freight, the way they once did.
But, they're not. It's over.

You make it sound like there are no passenger trains at all anymore. You know that's not true.

Ravine · July-14-10, 07:58 AM

Right, Pam, of course, but I'm just saying that the days of trains running folks back & forth across the country, and to & from work every day, are pretty much over. Formerly commonplace; now, the exception.
The train used to run in one end of the Fort Street Post Office and out the other, dropping off & picking up!!
The Algoma Central [[sp?) sight-seeing train trip in Canada was sweet, when I took it in the early '80's. I don't know if they still do that.
God I love trains

**rjlj** · July-14-10, 08:17 AM

Shit man, should have inserted "sarcasm" in my statement. Your rant depressed me. What is sad to me is that trains are dead in Michigan and the majority of the county but in other parts of the world they are utilized much more and are not considered obsolete. Who's knows what our region could have become if Detroit's population did not deline and public transit was the focus rather than sprawl.

**buildingsofdetroit** · July-14-10, 11:52 AM

OK, let me try that again, does anyone have a link saved to the video? I can't find it.

**EastsideAl** · July-14-10, 12:11 PM

The video appears to have been removed from YouTube so I believe that the old link no longer works. However, here is a live link for the video I think you're looking for from 1987:
http://www.yourememberthat.com/media..._Central_1987/

**buildingsofdetroit** · July-14-10, 02:52 PM

Originally Posted by EastsideAl

The video appears to have been removed from YouTube so I believe that the old link no longer works. However, here is a live link for the video I think you're looking for from 1987:
http://www.yourememberthat.com/media..._Central_1987/

Thanks, Al!

**Pam** · July-14-10, 07:42 PM

Originally Posted by Ravine

Right, Pam, of course, but I'm just saying that the days of trains running folks back & forth across the country, and to & from work every day, are pretty much over. Formerly commonplace; now, the exception.
The train used to run in one end of the Fort Street Post Office and out the other, dropping off & picking up!!
The Algoma Central [[sp?) sight-seeing train trip in Canada was sweet, when I took it in the early '80's. I don't know if they still do that.
God I love trains

You could still hop a train out of here if you wanted to. Another option is go to Windsor and catch a train there. I did Windsor to Toronto by train a couple of years ago.

http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/Conten.../1237405732511

**mpf** · July-14-10, 09:02 PM

damn, 3000 employees at 1 point.

Ravine · July-15-10, 07:47 AM

rjlj, I'll not thread-jack with more ranting, but keep in mind... This was the Motor City. Public transit has never been something on which we focused.
That's sort of antithetical to the whole car-building thing.

**Gistok** · September-06-10, 10:24 PM

Wow... I just came across this beauty showing 4 minutes of b/w footage of the MCS taken in 2002. Starts 1 minute into this arts film.... after 1 minute of viewing a medieval painted image of the Tower of Babel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-y2I0TYxb0

Naqoyqatsi was the 3rd of 3 movies in the "Qatsi" trilogy of.... Koyyanisqatsi [[Life out of balance), Powaqqatsi [[Life in transformation) and Naqoyqatsi [[Life as war).

The music to these by Philip Glass is amazing. And the scenes of the MCS have a hauntingly beautiful quality to them...