Former Akron Railroad Club President Craig Sanders will be back in town this Friday to present the program at the May 26 ARRC meeting.
The digital program is titled, Somewhere West of Here and will consist primarily of images Sanders has made in Indiana since moving there in June 2019.
Among the railroad to be shown are Norfolk Southern, CSX, Indiana Rail Road, Indiana Southern, Louisville & Indiana, Amtrak, the South Shore and Indiana Northeastern.
The program also will have images made on the former Illinois Central mainline in Illinois, which is now operated by Canadian National; and CSX, NS and Indiana & Ohio trains in western and southwestern Ohio.
The latter will include a visit to Hamilton, which is a southwestern Ohio hot spot similar to Berea in Northeast Ohio.
Sanders served as ARRC president from 2005 through 2018.
The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
The April 28 meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will feature a program by club president Todd Dillon on the East Broad Top narrow gauge railroad in Pennsylvania.
Dillon will show images made at the annual EBT Winter Spectacular held this past February. The highlight of that event was the first revenue run of 2-8-2 No. 16.
The EBT has been steadily working to restore its steam locomotive fleet to operating condition and No. 16 was the first locomotive to complete that process.
The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
The May 26 ARRC program will be presenter by former long time ARRC president Craig Sanders and will be titled Somwhere West of Here. More details about the contents of that program will be offered on this site next month.
Shown above are four images from Todd’s program, which aside from steam will have images of other EBT rolling stock and vehicles from the nearby Rockhill Trolley Museum
The annual Akron Railroad Club member’s night and pizza party will be held Saturday (March 25) at the New Horizons Christian Church. There will be no regular meeting this month.
There will be a $5 cover charge to attendees of the member’s night. The pizza will be served at 6:30 p.m. Doors will open at 5:45 p.m.
Attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite non-alcoholic beverages and snack items to share. The club will supply a limited supply of soft drinks and water.
Member’s night photo presentations should be limited to 10 to 12 minutes. Those showing slides should have them preloaded in slide trays. Digital images should be on a USB device.
The Feb. 24 meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will feature a program by longtime member David Mangold.
The program is titled Everything Else and will present images made in Colorado and, well, everything else. With Dave you never quite know what you will see.
Much of the program content will be on photographs Dave made between 2019 and 2020 with some images from 2022 thrown in.
The images were made before Dave began working as a locomotive engineer for the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train.
The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
If Dave is unable to present, the program will be given by Ron McElrath and show footage of his first Ohio experiences in the early 1980s with a Super 8 mm camera and then a Panasonic video camera in 1987.
The Jan. 27 meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will take attendees to the west coast and Alaska.
ARRC Secretary David Kachinko will present a program that will begin by reliving a 1973 journey he made to the Pacific Coast. Then Dave will jump ahead about three decades and 3,000 mile north to show the Alaska Railroad’s Millennium Special Tour of July 2000.
The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
At its annual meeting last November, ARRC members in attendance re-elected the current slate of officers to continue in their positions for 2023.
Aside from Kachinko, officers include Todd Dillon, president; Bill Kubas, vice president; Paul Havasi, treasurer; and Ron McElrath, newsletter editor.
The Akron Railroad Club will be holding its annual end of year dinner on Saturday (Dec. 3) at the New Era restaurant in Akron. The event is limited to 40 participants.
The program will be presented by ARRC President Todd Dillon.
His program will focus heavily on the Chicago Transit Authority’s 75th anniversary. This will include photographs from the Chicago elevated and the Fox River museum and the Illinois Railway Museum.
Also included will be photographs from the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad and a Nickel Plate Road 765 excursion in Indiana.
Shown above are a few images from Todd’s program that he will present on Saturday night.
We recently learned that former Akron Railroad Club member James Jeffery died on Aug. 26.
Mr. Jeffrey, 82, was a lifelong resident of Cuyahoga Falls and worked at Stow-based MACTC for 44 years before retiring.
He joined the ARRC on Jan. 27, 2012. During meetings he would typically sit in the front row toward the left side.
ARRC membership rosters during his time in the club misspelled his name as “Jeffries,” an error that apparently was never corrected.
The obituary for Mr. Jeffery published in the Akron Beacon Journal, said he is survived by his wife, Patricia; daughters Kimberly Jeffery and Lisa (Allen) Emmendorfer; and six grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. Memorials were to be made to Cuyahoga Falls Firefighter Memorial Foundation or to the Northwest Avenue Church of Christ in Tallmadge.
The November meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will take attendees to eastern mountain railroad operations of CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Longtime ARRC member and veteran railroad photographer Don Woods will present a slide show titled Go East Old Men.
The program will feature images made during a trip with his fellow ARRC member and traveling companion Dave Shepherd in 2021 to to Cumberland, Maryland, and eastward toward Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, (Rockville bridge), then westward on the Pittsburgh Line of Norfolk Southern back to Altoona and home.
The meeting will be held on Friday, Nov. 25 at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road, in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
During the business meeting, attendees will elect officers for the 2023 calendar year. Nominations for officer positions will be taken from the floor.
The following day, Nov. 26, ARRC member Bob Rohal will host an open house at his home in Kent of his HO model railroad layout.
The ARRC also plans to hold its annual end of year dinner on Dec. 3 at the New Era Restaurant in Akron.
Attendance at the event will be limited to 40 people. No program for the event has yet been announced.
It’s a nice warm fall Sunday afternoon in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The Akron Railroad Club is having a picnic at the Valley Picnic Area along Riverview Road south of Peninsula. Chef Marty Surdyk is cooking burgers and dogs on the grill and other goodies are laid out on a table.
The impetus for the picnic is about to arrive, so many of the attendees have walked a short distance to get a better view of the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad tracks.
Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 767 — yes you read that right — is on the property to pull excursion trains on the CVSR. You know this locomotive as No. 765, but for the 2016 runs on the CVSR the engine was renumbered 767.
There is a long story behind why the 765 operated as the 767 for two weekends on the CVSR in September 2016. It goes back to the 1950s when Nickel Plate Road No. 767 participated in a grand opening ceremony in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to mark the completion of a track elevation project through downtown Fort Wayne.
When the NKP offered to give the city a retired steam engine to put on static display in a park, officials requested No. 767. But the 767 had been scrapped and in a bit of subterfuge, the railroad sent No. 765 renumbered as No. 767.
That sleight of hand went unnoticed for years until the Fort Wayne Railroad History Society began restoring the 767 to operating condition and discovered it was actually No. 765.
In summer 2016 a ceremony was held in Fort Wayne to mark the beginning of the Headwaters Junction project. That railroad-themed park will someday be the home of the 765. For that ceremony the 765 was renumbered 767 and it continued to wear that roster number during its two weeks on the CVSR in September.
But getting back to the ARRC picnic, the afternoon northbound trip that originated in Akron is coming with the 767 trailing.
We’ve gathered on a slight hill along Riverview that offers a clear view of the tracks. Cameras are poised to capture the 767 as the excursion train goes past the photo line during its trip up from Akron.
We’ll repeat all of this in another hour when the 767 pulls the train back to Akron and past the picnic area.
The ARRC would hold another picnic in September 2017 when the 765 returned to the CVSR for another slate of excursions. That year it operated as 765 and carried a tribute to Jerry Joe Jacobson, who had died earlier that year, on the sides of the locomotive below the cab.
In looking at the 2917 image, which shows the excursion returning to Akron, I’m struck by how Riverview Road was almost empty when the 765 arrived. Some years there was a posse of vehicles chasing the train along Riverview, including one guy who paced the steamer and backed up traffic in the process.
In both 2016 and 2917 the CVSR’s regular train, the National Park Scenic, operated, thus giving us another train to watch. In later years that would not be the case when the 765 was running excursions.
The 2017 picnic would be the last time the ARRC held an outing in the Valley to picnic and watch the steam train.
The September meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will take attendees to the coalfields of the eastern United States.
Akron resident Richard Thompson, a former ARRC junior member, will show digital images of coal railroads.
He will show Norfolk Southern operations on the former Virginian Railway and CSX trains on the former Clinchfield Railroad. The meeting will begin on Friday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road, in Akron.
After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.
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