Hamilton Still Seeking to Save B&O Station

Hamilton County interests are still working to save from demolition the former Baltimore & Ohio railroad station.

CSX has told the city it will raze the abandoned structure unless it pays to move it away from railroad property.

The city has not yet announced how it will fund that, but Mayor Pat Moeller said he is looking into how much moving the building would cost and how it could be funded.

The coronavirus pandemic has slowed that effort, but Moeller said the city has told CSX that it wants to preserve the building.

The depot dates to the mid 19^th century. Abraham Lincoln gave a speech there during his 1859 run for president and President Harry Truman spoke there in 1948.

Hamilton was a stop for Amtrak’s Chicago-New York Cardinal, between 1980 and 2005.

The station will need extensive rehabilitation as it is poor condition.

If the city is able to find the funding, it plans to move the station several blocks away.

Among the ideas discussed for what to do with the depot are using it for a museum, restaurant or event space.

The station is currently located at the junction between CSX routes to Toledo and Indianapolis. The latter route is still used by the Cardinal.

Hamilton Seeking to Save B&O Station

Officials in Hamilton, Ohio, are making an eleventh hour push to save a railroad depot that CSX has earmarked for demolition.

The former Baltimore & Ohio station was constructed in 1885 and is in rough condition but the city wants to preserve it for various uses.

CSX wants to raze the structure as part of a clearance project and has given the city a Feb. 28 deadline to purchase and make plans to move the station.

In the meantime Mayor Pat Moeller has pleaded with CSX to hold off on the demolition.

City officials would like to move the depot four blocks away and have discussed such possible uses as making it a multi-modal transportation hub, turning it into a museum, making it a restaurant or locating a farmer’s market there.

“The more I learn about this train station, the more I started to realize that this is something special,” Moeller said. “The place does matter.”

Local historians noted that Abraham Lincoln gave a speech near the station during his trip to Washington to be inaugurated as president. President Harry S. Truman spoke nearby in 1948.

Moeller said if the station is razed it would be difficult to rebuild it. The station is listed on Ohio’s register of historic places.

The city is seeking partners to help it save the building.

“Now is the time where I think we have to get it done,” Moeller said. “Gather all the interested parties, create partnerships and get this done.”

The building will need much work. Parts of its roof have are rotted and graffit would need to be removed. But the structure of the building is said to be strong.

Ford Paid $90M for Michigan Central Station

The price of saving a historic Detroit train station and transforming it into a facility to develop new technologies in the automotive industry was $90 million.

The Automotive News reports that was how much Ford Motor Company paid to buy the decrepit Michigan Central Depot, which will be the centerpiece of a 1.2 million square foot development that also includes residential, commercial and event space.

The figure was taken from government records and means that Ford paid $150 per foot for the 104-year-old, 600,000-square-foot building.

Ford plans to develop electric and autonomous vehicles at the campus it plans to establish at Michigan Central Station.

The company is seeking more than $230 million in tax credits for the project.

Michigan Central Depot to Host Detroit Event

Michigan Central Station in Detroit will host the annual Detroit Homecoming this year, the first significant event to be held in the vacant depot since the middle 1980s.

The 104-year-old station in the Corktown neighborhood has been the subject of various renovation plans, the most recently being backed by the Moroun family of companies.

They have spent more than $8 million in the past two years making repairs that have included constructing a freight elevator in the shaft of the depot’s original smoke stack and installing 1,100 windows.

Matthew Moroun described the station development as a marathon, but insisted the race is well underway. His father, Matty, purchased the depot in 1995.

For years, the Morouns made few moves to restore the Detroit landmark, which once hosted passengers trains of the New York Central and tenants Canadian Pacific and Baltimore & Ohio, the latter using the terminal between 1946 and 1963.

After taking office in 2014, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan sought to improve what he termed the “somewhat checkered” relationship the Morouns have had with past city administrations.

Matthew Moroun and the mayor have discussed a list of issues involving the depot.

Although that list has not been made public, one known item is a request to replace the building’s numerous broken windows.

The mayor had made it known that he was tired of a former train station with broken windows defining the image of Detroit in national news stories about the city.

“I said, ‘I want you to put windows in the train station. And if you do that, everything else will be just fine.’” Duggan said.

The Morouns installed the windows in 2015 at a cost of $4 million.

Since the the windows went in, Matthew Moroun said he’s had more interest from developers with “hundreds of great ideas” for a building that has sat vacant since 1988 when Amtrak ceased passenger service there.

Moroun estimates it would renovating the station will cost more than $100 million.

“We’re looking for the right idea that’s not only popular and motivating, but also economically viable,” Moroun said. “We’re getting closer all of the time.”

Among the ideas that Duggan has for the station is housing a corporate headquarters or building high-end lofts on the 18th floor, which has a 360-degree view of greater downtown Detroit and the waterfront.

“I’m not the one who has to make the numbers work,” Duggan said. “When the day comes, I’m going to do everything I can to help make the numbers work.”

Railroad Archeology in Monroeville

The most visible reminder of the railroads past in Monroeville, Ohio, is this passenger station, which served the New York Central and its predecessor railroads. It has since been restored, but the tracks are long gone.

In the past few years I’ve found myself in Monroeville, Ohio, while chasing trains on the Wheeling & Lake Erie.

At one time, Monroeville was served by three railroads plus an interurban railway.

The railroads of Monroville included the Toledo-Brewster line of the original Wheeling & Lake Erie. This line still exists with the modern W&LE owning it between Brewster and Bellevue.

Monroeville was also served by a Willard-Sandusky branch of the Baltimore & Ohio, the Norwalk Branch of the New York Central and the Cleveland-Toledo Lake Shore Electric.

The Norwalk Branch began life as the Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland Railroad, which built between its namesake cities in the 1860s. It was later absorbed by the Lake Shore & Michigan  Southern, which in turn became part of the NYC.

The Norwalk branch was the main route of the LS&MS until it built a cutoff via Sandusky along Lake Erie, which today is the Chicago Line of NS. The Norwalk branch diverged at Elyria and rejoined at Milbury.

Penn Central continued to offer freight service on the Norwalk branch through 1976. The line was not conveyed to Conrail and was subsequently abandoned. Passenger service on the line ended in 1949.

I don’t know when the B&O branch was abandoned, but it likely continued in operation through the 1970s and possibly into the 1980s.  A portion of it still exists in Monroeville for the W&LE to serve a grain elevator.

The Lake Shore Electric last operated on May 15, 1938. Not long before then, the Eastern Ohio Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society — a forerunner of the Akron Railroad Club — ran a trip over the line.

During the 1960s, the ARRC chartered a B&O Rail Diesel Car and ran excursions between Akron and Sandusky to visit the Cedar Point amusement park.

I’ve long been fascinated by what railroads leave behind after they leave town. If you know where to look and what to look for,  you can find reminders of what used to be.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

The North Coast Inland Tail uses the former NYC Norwalk Branch. The view is from the bridge over the West Branch Huron River looking westward toward the NYC passenger station, which was built in 1863.

A train order board at the Monroeville station.

I don’t know if this train bulletin at the former NYC station is accurate.

The former freight NYC freight station still stands a short distance west of the passenger depot.

Looking westward on the Lake Shore Electric right of way with the passenger station on the left.

Looking northward toward the Lake Shore Electric (foreground) and NYC stations. The B&O tracks would have been to the right of both stations.

Looking southward on the former B&O right of way.

A relic from the days when these tracks operated as the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.

A restored property boundary marker.

A bridge pier that once held the Lake Shore Electric bridge over the West Branch Huron River.

The concrete base of what was once the northbound home signal for the B&O crossing of the NYC.

This signal cover is along the W&LE and may be still used.

These railroad ties are on the former Lake Shore Electric right of way. The LSE was abandoned in the 1930s, they probably were used as a connecting track between the B&O and the NYC.

The B&O and W&LE used to cross here. At one time there was a passenger station here that was used by both railroads. Next to the depot was a hotel and freight station. On the other side of that pile of ballast is the only remnant of track once used by the B&O.

A short stretch of the former B&O remains in place for the W&LE to serve a grain elevator. But this segment of the B&O is used only as a tail track that ends at a pile of ballast north of where the B&O and W&LE used to cross on a diamond.

 

Forlorn and Forgotten in Crestline

This photograph of the Amtrak shelter in Crestline is old, very old. It was made in September 1998 and by then Amtrak had been gone from Crestline for nearly eight years.

There are some members of the Akron Railroad Club who might remember traveling to Crestline in the dead of night to catch a train.

In Amtrak’s early years, the only service in Northeast Ohio was the Chicago-New York/Washington Broadway Limited, which also stopped in Ohio at Canton and Lima.

Crestline was a crew change point, which might be why it was chosen as the passenger stop for Nos. 40/41 rather than the much larger city of Mansfield a few miles to the east.

I haven’t been back to Crestline for many years, so I can’t say for sure if the Amshack is still there.

I rather doubt it. Crest Tower has been razed and during a track realignment project conducted since the Conrail split, the Crestline Amshack may have been removed.

There is little likelihood that Amtrak will ever use the Fort Wayne Line again through this region of Ohio.

Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders

Indiana Depot Moved to New Site in Bedford

The former Milwaukee Road passenger station in Bedford, Indiana, reposes in the morning sunlight in May 2014. The depot was recently moved to a new location and will become a community information center.

A long-vacant Milwaukee Road passenger station in Indiana has a new home and will be repurposed into a community and tourism information center.

The depot in Bedford, Indiana, was picked up and moved to a new location at 14^th and J streets. The station was moved by truck from its previous site at 10^th and J streets.

The front of the limestone station now faces the street. In time, the depot will provide tourism information and a gallery providing photographs and information about the Bedford region’s limestone industry.

Efforts to save the station began 20 years ago, led by the Bedford-Urban Enterprise Association.

The group purchased the building in 1995 and later received a $245,000 grant to replace the roof, which was leaking and deteriorating.

The station has been placed on the Indiana Register of Historic Sites and Structures.

Built in 1900 by the Southern Indiana Railway, the station came under the control of the Milwaukee Road in 1921.

The line extended from Terre Haute to Westport, Indiana, and was the only route east of Chicago owned by a western railroad.

The last passenger train to serve the Bedford station was a Bedford-Terre Haute gas-electric car that made its final trips on July 15, 1950.

The tracks by the depot were most recently used by the Indiana Rail Road, but have been out of service since 2009.

Windows Being Replaced in Detroit Station

Michigan Central Station in Detroit has long been a symbol of urban decay and unfulfilled promise.

The vacant former railroad station sits southwest of downtown Detroit awaiting a better future or even a future at all.

Over the years more than 1,000 windows have been broken, but now about 600 of them – all on the upper floors – have been replaced.

Ken Carter, a superintendent of the project for the Detroit International Bridge Co., expects all of the nearly 1,100 broken windows to be replaced by the end of the year.

The project is part of a deal between Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who owns the station and the city of Detroit.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan wants to improve Riverside Park by swapping land there for a parcel that Moroun needs to build a replacement span next to the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.

Carter said the restoration efforts at the station have thus far cost about $12 million. That includes restoring electricity and installing a $4 million elevator capable of carrying freight and passengers. The new windows will cost about $3 million.

“This building touches many people,” Carter said. “We think it’s very important to bring it back.”

The station has been empty since the last Amtrak trains called there on Jan. 6, 1988.

Vandals and thieves have since turned the station into a notorious eyesore with every window broken.

The Moroun family gained control of the station in the mid-1990s but has only recently begun to restore it. No plans have been announced for a use of the station, which was built in 1913.

The depot is of the Beaux-Arts Classical style of architecture and was designed by the Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem firms, which also designed New York’s Grand Central Terminal.

Detroit Depot May Get Needed Renovations

The long-neglected Michigan Central Station in Detroit may finally get an overhaul under a proposed deal between the city and the owners of the station.

The Moroun family would pay up to $5 million to renovate the 13-story station and installed 1,050 windows.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan would support the efforts by the Morouns to build a second bridge between Detroit and Canada. The Morouns own the Ambassdor Bridge between Detroit and Windsor.

The Morouns would also transfer 4.8 acres of riverfront property to the city and pay $5 million to upgrade Riverside Park. The city would transfer 3 acres to the Morouns that would be used to build a bridge support.

The family acquired the Michigan Central station in 1996 and in 2008 said they would renovate the massive station, which opened in 1914.

Repairs to the station’s interior began in 2011. The work included replacing the roof, cleaning up the interior, and removing broken windows and asbestos.

Last February, a St. Clair company issued a press release saying it has reached an agreement with the depot owners to replace all the windows in the station, which is of Beaux-Arts Classical style of architecture.

The depot was designed by the Warren & Wetmore and Reed & Stem firms, which also designed New York’s Grand Central Terminal.

Michigan Central depot has long been one of the Detroit’s  most infamous ruins. Amtrak last served the station on Jan. 6, 1998.

Teen Charged in Salamanca Depot Fire

A teenager has been charged with fourth-degree arson in connection with a late July fire that destroyed the former Erie Railroad station in Salamanca, N.Y.

The apprehension of the 14-year-old boy came after investigators eliminated “everything but human hand” as a potential cause, according to Salamanca Fire Chief Nicholas Bochrski. The boy was also charged with second-degree criminal mischief, second-degree reckless endangerment, and third-degree burglary. He will appear in family court to face the charges.

The station had been vacant since Conrail ceased using it in the late 1970s. Plans to renovate it for use as a railroad museum in the 1980s fell through.

The property had been under the jurisdiction of the Seneca Nation of Indians since a city lease expired in 1990. The depot was built in 1904.

Seneca Nation Treasurer Rodney Pierce called the fire “a tragic chapter in the proud railroad history of this region.” Erie Lackawanna’s Lake Cities was the last passenger train to call at the depot in early January 1970.