Where is Durand Railroad Days located?

Durand Railroad Days is located in Durand, MI.

How do I get tickets to Durand Railroad Days?

Tickets and current schedules are available on the operator's official website at http://www.durandrailroaddays.com/.

Photo by Michael Mol, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Durand Railroad Days

Durand, MI

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Upcoming Events

No ticketed events are currently listed for Durand Railroad Days. Many heritage operators publish schedules seasonally or run on regular open hours instead of dated events.

Check the operator’s website for current hours and special runs, or subscribe to event alerts and we’ll email you when something is scheduled.

About Durand Railroad Days

Welcome to the Durand Railroad Days Festival CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF FUN! Watch as the procession marches toward the downtown area from the high school access road.

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History

Durand Railroad Days is the annual May festival of Durand, Michigan — celebrating 50 years by its organizers' count — and it centers on Durand Union Station, one of the state's most popular spots for railfans. The station that anchors the festival was built in 1903 by the Detroit firm of Spier and Rohns where the Grand Trunk Western and Ann Arbor railroads crossed, was nearly destroyed by fire in 1905 and quickly rebuilt, and at its peak handled 42 passenger, 22 mail, and 78 freight trains a day while serving close to 3,000 passengers daily. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971, the depot was nearly demolished after the Grand Trunk Western closed it in 1974; the city of Durand won an injunction to stop the wrecking and bought the building in 1979 for one dollar. Today it is city-owned, leased in part to the nonprofit Durand Union Station, Inc. for preservation, and still serves Amtrak's Blue Water trains.

The Trains

The festival fields no rolling stock of its own; the draw is Durand Union Station and the live railroading around it. The depot houses three small railroad history museums — the Michigan Railroad History Museum, the Grand Trunk Western Railroad Museum, and the Ann Arbor Railroad History Museum — plus the large layout of the Durand Union Station Model Railroad Engineers club. Outside, the station sits at Canadian National's busy mainline junction of the Flint and Holly Subdivisions, with Great Lakes Central and Huron & Eastern trains operating nearby and a freight yard used by all three carriers just to the north — the action that makes Durand a railfan magnet, especially during the festival.