Manchester developed into an important railroad town with two rail lines that supported its commerce, travel, agriculture, and manufacturing from 1855 through the 1930s and beyond. Plans for rail connections through the area began in the 1830s, and the first line reached Manchester in 1855 when the reconstituted Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad built a connection from Tecumseh to Manchester, later continuing to Jackson and carrying the village’s first passenger and freight traffic between Jackson and Adrian. This line, whose station included passenger and freight depots, a water tower, fuel storage, and yards, underwent many later name changes and consolidations, provided regular passenger service until the late 1930s, and ceased business in 1964. Manchester’s second railroad, the Detroit, Hillsdale and Indiana Railroad, was constructed in 1870 after a strong local campaign to secure a second route with direct east-west connections between Detroit and Chicago. Its construction included a major cut through a hill west of the Mill Pond and a 370 foot wooden trestle bridge across the pond. The first train came through on September 23, 1870, and the new line reinforced Manchester’s unusual position as a small town served by two railroads. Passenger trains arrived several times a day from the 1870s into the early 1900s, freight yards handled cattle and supplies, and local businessmen maintained pens and sidetracks for livestock shipping. After 1910, all passenger traffic for both lines was handled at the new Union Station depot in the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern yard, while the former Detroit, Hillsdale and Indiana depot handled freight. The second line merged with the first in 1881, eventually also became part of the New York Central Railroad, and ceased operations in Manchester in 1961. The two rail lines crossed northwest of downtown at the Junction, where trains could transfer between branches. By the early 1900s, the railroads employed more workers than any local business except farming, and they enabled residents to travel, send wheat, ice, and manufactured goods to distant markets, and receive supplies, mail, catalogue orders, and visitors. After railroad operations ended, former rail properties were sold or repurposed, including conversion of depot yard land into Chi-Bro Park, development of the Manchester Shared-Use Trail beginning in 2015, and creation of a riverfront park on adjacent land beginning in 2017.