{"id":9004,"date":"2007-09-21T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-21T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2007\/09\/21\/birmingham-mi-to-ann-arbor-mi-via-train\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T11:36:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T15:36:06","slug":"birmingham-mi-to-ann-arbor-mi-via-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2007\/09\/21\/birmingham-mi-to-ann-arbor-mi-via-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Birmingham, MI to Ann Arbor, MI via Train"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Train Arriving at Birmingham Platform
(Click for more photos (photo gallery retired)<\/em>…)<\/center><\/p>\n

Back on July 7th<\/sup> Danielle and I decided to head to Ann Arbor for the evening. However, instead of driving there, we decided to take the train from Birmingham at around 5pm, then back at about Midnight. While the ticket cost was around $80 for the two round-trip first-class tickets and gas would have cost around $18, it was a nice diversion from the normal drive.<\/p>\n

Along the hour-ish ride we passed through some rather interesting areas, seeing everything from a state trooper attempting to drive around the gates<\/a> and TURTL graffiti<\/a> to someone with a pickup slinking around an abandoned building (stealing copper?)<\/a> and a giant chicken on KIDZ PLAYLAND<\/a>. There was also the typical landfill<\/a>, rail yard<\/a>, and wetlands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once we arrived at Ann Arbor we walked up the stairs<\/a> and road<\/a> to Zingerman’s Deli and Next Door<\/a> where we had dinner. I actually ate a rather substantial bacon-laden sandwich, Zingerman’s lovely Jen’s Pimento Parti<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After eating we wandered around the town a bit, eventually meeting up with and a very tired (and lost) . After a bit more wandering around, including back to the train station, waited until it arrived<\/a>, then made our way back to the Birmingham station, where we arrived just after 1:30am<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the way, the Birmingham platform is pretty crappy. It’s nothing but a track-level concrete platform<\/a> located at the end of a road<\/a>, and is fitted with a very uninformative information display<\/a> and a “shelter” which does little but retain heat and stink of urine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The train itself was decent, but nowhere as nice as UK trains. The ride was smooth, but slow. Staff was courteous, although not particularly friendly. The inside of the train feels like sparse 70s engineering. I’m not sure if I’ll take it to Ann Arbor again, but I’d definitely consider it for transit to Chicago. Without all the hassles of air travel (able to bring whatever you want on board, no security, etc) is rather nice, and the ticket cost is about the same as flying.<\/p>\n

(Yes, I did just get these pictures uploaded this week. If you’d like to see all of them, please look here (photo gallery retired)<\/em>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Train Arriving at Birmingham Platform(Click for more photos (photo gallery retired)…) Back on July 7th Danielle and I decided to head to Ann Arbor for the evening. However, instead of driving there, we decided to take the train from Birmingham at around 5pm, then back at about Midnight. While the ticket cost was around $80\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,34,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-moved-from-livejournal","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24635,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004\/revisions\/24635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}