Columbus Interurban Terminal

Much like Lima, Ohio, the city of Columbus, Ohio was also home to an interesting interurban terminal of decent size. Like that one, this one was also a product of the Ohio Electric Railway, an electric interurban railroad that served much of western and central Ohio during the early part of the twentieth century. The Columbus station had both passenger and freight facilities, located in two adjacent buildings fronting on Third Street, between Rich and Town. Like the Lima facility, it had individual canopies/trainsheds situated between or alongside the tracks, rather than a large trainshed covering all of the tracks and waiting area, like at the Indianapolis, Muncie, or Akron interurban stations.

Alas, unlike the one in Lima, it hasn't survived, but there are a few web pages out there with some decent coverage, including one with the content from a 1912 Electric Railway Journal article. A number of photographs of it exist in various publications, including in Jack Keenan's excellent 1974 book Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad: Ohio's Great Interurban System. There's at least one photograph of the station in use available online in the Cincinnati & Lake Erie gallery on New Dave's Railpix, copied below.

Photo of C&LE 110 at the Columbus station, from Bill Volkmer collection.
Found at http://www.newdavesrailpix.com/candle/htm/usr_h_candle_110_columbus_1938_cle15.htm

Lima Interurban Building

On July 1 of 2005, I took a long and winding drive through northwest Ohio taking photos of remnants of the interurban electric railroads that once stretched through the area. In particular, I made a stop in Lima, Ohio, where in 1910 the Ohio Electric (later Cincinnati & Lake Erie) Railroad had built a two story brick passenger station at the northwest corner of Market and Central. This was a more modest interurban station than those found in Saint Louis, Indianapolis, or Akron, as befit a smaller city, but it was still an attractive structure. Thankfully, it still stands today, housing the Allen County Board of Health.

Photo of front of former Lima interurban terminal, taken July 1, 2005.
Tracks and canopies were on the other side.

The building had a deep lawn with landscaping in front, and the three station tracks were in the rear. The mainline ran east-west on Market Street, with tracks on Central and Union connecting the station tracks to the mainline. This track arrangement allowed the trolley cars to enter whether they were headed east or west, and leave in either direction as well. Heading eastbound led to mainline to central and southern Ohio. Westbound led to three different lines that branched off toward the northern part of Lima.

Very rough approximation of track plan at Lima station

Waiting passengers were protected from the worst of the elements by canopies running parallel to and between the tracks. The area where the tracks and and canopies once lay is now a parking lot, with little of interest to see. Electric trolleys ran from this station to Fort Wayne, Indiana; Defiance, Ohio; Toledo, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan; and to points in southern and central Ohio, such as Springfield, Columbus, Dayton, and Cincinnati. By 1938, though, the trolleys were all gone; some of the routes had been abandoned earlier in the decade, in the depths of the Great Depression.

I understand it may have seen service as a bus station for some time, but that was no longer the case when I visited in 2005. However, Greyhound's modern Lima bus station is located at the north end of the same block, facing High Street.

Historical marker for the building.

Too Late!

I first heard about Trolleyville USA sometime in the early years of the 21st century. It was a trolley museum of sorts up near Cleveland, a collection of privately-owned vintage trolleys that ran on a stretch of track that had been laid out when a mobile home park had been opened, sometime after World War Two. Unfortunately, their web site was not frequently updated, and when I checked it out I kept finding notices about closings, reopenings, temporary suspensions of services, etc. For years whenever I thought of it and checked their web site, the web site was either offline, years out of date, or proclaimed a temporary closure.

One day in 2006, almost exactly eleven years ago, I decided to drive up to that neck of the woods and see for myself what the story was. That's about 3.5 hours of driving, so I had a few other things on my virtual agenda if Trolleyville didn't pan out. And in fact, it didn't.

Interurban trolley car (formerly Chicago Aurora & Elgin 453) being prepared
for shipment from the defunct Trolleyville USA on March 29, 2006.

I arrived to find all operations shut down, the storefront office/station empty, and collection being hauled off. Their immediate destination was a dingy warehouse on the Cleveland lakefront, but that's a story for another day.

Akron Terminal Station

The Akron terminal station was constructed by the Northern Ohio Traction & Light Company, which once operated a system of interurban electric railroads in northeastern Ohio, roughly centered upon the city of Akron. When the new terminal building was constructed on the corner of Main Street and West Federal Street in 1918 it was a four story stone and brick building with waiting room, stores, and offices, behind which sat a steel train shed covering eight tracks. Behind the shed were some smaller brick buildings and a substation that fronted upon High Street, the road paralleling Main but a block eastwards.

Akron Interurban Terminal, from the northwest

As the interurban trolley gave way to the bus, buses began to use the station as well, and by 1932 it became station for buses only, while it continued to serve for some time as the headquarters of the power company. In recent years it has been used for county offices. It remains mostly intact (save for tracks), although two additional stories were added to the main building. The surroundings have changed dramatically, however. When built it stood on a corner, but the road to the north was eliminated and a highway constructed just a bit further north. The intersection was realigned and the area to north and to much of west became parking lost.

West facade. 

Interurban cars reached the train shed by way of a track that turned off Main and then ran along the south wall of the building, through where the gate is now. They departed by turning left/west onto West Federal Street and then turning again north or south onto Main. For 14 years, passengers could catch an electric interurban trolley car, or even a multi-car train, to various points in northeastern Ohio. At one time passengers could ride from Akron north to Cleveland, east to Ravenna, west to Wadsworth, and south to Canton, Massillon, Dover, New Philadelphia, and Uhrichsville. Via connections with other electric interurban railroads at Canton, Ravenna, and Cleveland, a rider could reach much of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York. At Cleveland steam railroads and steam boats offered even more transportation options.

View from the North

While this station is smaller and less impressive than the one that once grace Indianapolis, it does have one amazing attribute that great structure lacked. The station building in Akron is still extant, with train shed, long after the larger structure in Indianapolis was demolished. In fact, which several impressive interurban stations remain here in America, I believe that only the one in Akron retains a train shed, that wonderfully-obvious sign of its railroad past.

Electrical substation on High Street. It converted AC to DC for use by the trolleys.

Illinois Terminal Railroad Station in Saint Louis

In the early part of the Twentieth Century, the Illinois Traction System operated a series of electric interurban railroads in central Illinois and southwestwards to Saint Louis, Missouri. It had its own entrance to Saint Louis over the McKinley Bridge, named for the company's founder, William B. McKinley (the congressman, not to be confused with the U.S. president). In 1928 the system was reorganized as the Illinois Terminal Railroad, merging with several shortline steam railroads in the Saint Louis area. In 1930 it replaced its original freight and passenger stations in Saint Louis with a new building on the north edge of the central business district. The freight and passenger facilities were located in the basement. For about a quarter century, long passenger distance trains to central Illinois and suburban service to Alton, Granite City, Venice, and other Illinois towns operated from the basement. Now it is the home of the Globe Democrat newspaper. The only obvious trace of its railroad past is the railroad car in the bas relief work above the front door.

The station as it appeared on the morning of March 24, 2017.
Next time I should come by in the afternoon for better light.

A Few Glimpses of the Past

I've linked to some of Volkmar's modeling efforts in the past. He recently updated his blog with three photos of scenes depicting circa 1918 electric railroading in the heart of the Midwest. Check it out if you have any interest in the subject, or just want to see a well-modeled and photographed view of the past.

Isle of Man: A Paradise for Fans of Vintage Railways

I was looking at something on Google Maps last night and for some reason my attention was drawn to the Isle of Man, an island situated in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland. The rail lines I saw caused me to dig further and do a bit of research online. I discovered that the Isle of Man is, for a relatively small island, home to a number of vintage rail lines from the late Victorian.

All of the railways are narrow gauge, and by mileage the majority of the trackage is three foot gauge. Many of these lines operate with their original equipment, or at least with vintage equipment. The largest two originate from either end of the city of Douglas. The Isle of Man Railway operates about sixteen miles of line south from Douglas to Port Erin, and is steam operated. It is the remnant of a larger railway system that once served much more of the island. The Manx Electric Railway operates about 17 miles running north from Douglas through Laxey to Ramsey, and is operated by electric interurban cars. Although it lacks street running and some of the equipment is of odd design, it is otherwise a close match for American electric interurban railways.

At Laxey a connection is made with the electric-operated 3'6" gauge Snaefell Mountain Railway that ascends the mountain of the same name. Snaefell is the highest peak on the Isle of Man, reaching over two thousand feet in elevation, which is made more impressive by fact that it reaches that height a bare four miles from the sea. Also at Laxey is the Great Laxey Mine Railway, a short 19" gauge railroad running from a former mine to a former mill, which is operated by tiny steam locomotives and despite its short length runs through a tunnel under the Manx Electric Railway.

Before reaching Laxey, the Manx Electric Railway also passes near the western terminus of the 2' gauge Groudle Glen Railway, which operates steam-hauled trains on a short run to Sea Lion Rocks, a rocky headland on the Irish Sea northeast of Douglas. Also, at least until 2016, the Douglas Bay Horse Tramway operated horsecars along the coast in Douglas, but its future is uncertain.



Check out the Wikipedia page for "Rail transport in the Isle of Man" for a decent starting point on learning more.

Snow-motion Footage

It seems that everybody is linking to the slow-motion video of a train pulling into the snow-covered tracks of a New York station. You can see it coming, so to speak, even if too many passengers standing on the platform were rather oblivious. You can check it out for yourself over at this post on Peter Grant's blog, among other places. It's kind of. . . cool. Maybe even cold. ;)

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I don't know if I've posted about this here before or not, but here goes. The BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) railroad has track running down the center of Houser Way in Renton, Washington. That's not too unusual, and in fact used to be fairly common, but over the past century or so towns and cities throughout the US have pushed to have railroads reroute their tracks onto private rights-of-way, and as the inner city industries that once required rail service go out of business. So it is a little more rare these days than in decades past. But in this case, it is even more unusual, as the tracks in question carry trains to the Boeing factory. Among the more notable freight those trains carry are the fuselages of Boeing 737 airplanes from a Boeing facility in Kansas to the facility in Renton where final assembly takes place. Linked here is footage of a train carrying several such a load down the street, past parked along the sides of the road and across the route of cars travelling the cross streets. So, we have planes, trains, and automobiles.

C&LE Red Devil model

Over on the Interurban Railways blog I saw that Volkmar designed a CAD model of the Cincinnati & Lake Erie (C&LE) high-speed, lightweight trolley car known as the "Red Devil." Moreover, he has 3D printed an N-scale (1:160) model of this marvel of 1929-1930 engineering. The real ones used to run from the outskirts of Cincinnati to Dayton, Columbus, Toledo, and Detroit at speeds of up to about 90 MPH. They passed by about a mile from where I'm typing this. Very cool.

A single-rail tramway

Yesterday I posted a copy of a Street Railway Review article from 1897 on a French single-rail railway system.  In discussion over at Baen's Bar, I also brought up another system used in India and Burma, which looked far less useful.

Street Railway Review Volume X Number 1, page 53

Horse-drawn ground-level monorail

While I was doing some reading of old railroad journals for other purposes, I ran across this interesting monorail and horse approach.

Street Railway Review, vol 7, page 169 (1897)

Neat railroad model

Over at the Interurban Railways blog there's a cool post with photographs of models of interurban electric railroad cars (i.e. intercity trolleys or trams) in the Indianapolis Traction Terminal.  The models were created through 3D CAD work and 3D printing.  The portion of the terminal that was modeled was created, IIRC, through a combination of CAD work and both 3D printing and laser cutter work.  All of that was followed by with some hand work assembling and painting.  Then an awesome set of photos were set up and taken.  I think they totally capture that golden light that comes late in the day, before twilight.  Amazing work, beautiful pictures, and quite innovative.