The Mahoning Street coal dock and roundhouse in Cleveland of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway. (Photo courtesy of the W&LE Collection of Cleveland State University)
Tucked away in file boxes in the special collections of the Cleveland State University library are more than 1,500 photographs of the original Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway. Most of the collection is images of bridges that the railroad had made in the late 1920s as part of a bridge inventory. The collection also includes a few other gems involving trains and such structures as stations and yard offices.
Stephen Titchenal will show a few of those images during his half of the program at the next Akron Railroad Club meeting on Friday, Jan. 27.
Tichenal’s program, which will be a PowerPoint presentation, will focus on the Cleveland end of the W&LE. He will show where the images were taken and, in some cases, a then and now photo. The archival photographs were originally collected by John B. Corns, who later sold them to the CSU library.
Also part of the program will be some “live” examples of using GIS technology to trace abandoned rights-of-way. Resources include railroad valuation maps, historic aerial photos, topographic maps, plat/property/tax maps and high resolution digital elevation data. Although processed using a GIS, research can be shared using free applications such as Google Earth. Smart phones even allow the researcher to easily take some of these resources in the field, showing your current location on the historic aerial photo or map. An examples of Tichenal’s work is available at http://railsandtrails.com/pdf/
The ARRC meeting will begin at 8 p.m. with a half-hour business meeting followed by the program at approximately 8:45 p.m. The club meets at the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road, in Akron.
Some members gather at about 6 p.m. for dinner at Duffy’s Grill, 231 Darrow Road. Following the meeting, members meet at the Eat ‘n Park restaurant at Howe and Main streets in Cuyahoga Falls for a late dinner, desert or early breakfast.
Visitors are always welcome at Akron Railroad Club meetings.
