Paul Woodring grabs a handful of pizza as Tom Goughnour checks out another pie during the Akron Railroad Club’s member’s night event held on March 31.
Thirty-four Akron Railroad Club members and guests munched on pizza and snacks, and watched 13 slide and digital programs last Saturday during the annual member’s night event.
They put away five pizzas from Marcos and two from Hungry Howie’s
The event was held in the social hall at the New Horizon’s Christian Church and attracted a few members who we have not seen in a long while.
ARRC President Craig Sanders led off the presentations with a digital program titled Off the Mainline. It was a tribute to regional and short-line railroads in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Among the roads featured were the Decatur Junction, Vandalia, Eastern Illinois, Indiana Northeastern, Great Lakes Central, Lake States, Adrian & Blissfield, Mid-Michigan Railroad, Elkhart & Western, Cleveland Commercial, Connotton Valley, Ohi-Rail, Ashland Railway, Buffalo Southern, Grand River Railroad, and the Western New York & Pennsylvania among others.
Edward Ribinskas highlighted 40 years of railfanning and photography with a presentation that was heavily focused on steam locomotives. Among the steamers he showed were Norfolk & Western 611 and 1218, Nickel Plate Road 765, Western Maryland 734, Milwaukee Road 261, Southern Pacific 4449, Pere Marquette 1225, Gettysburg 76, and locomotives at Steamtown, Cass, East Broad Top, and the Owosso train festival among others.
Interspersed in Ed’s program were images of Amtrak, the Bessemer & Lake Erie, Denver & Rio Grande Western, and VIA Rail Canada.
Todd Dillon’s program had a strong Norfolk Southern flavor, featuring trains that he has photographed in recent months at such places as Alliance, Leetonia, Altoona, Mingo Junction and various locations in Pennsylvania.
We saw the Meadville Line (former Erie Lackawanna), the GoRail unit, and the Penn Central and Reading heritage locomotives.
Todd also threw in some Amtrak and Bessemer & Lake Erie action.
Bob Rohal introduced his program by saying it was a little of everything. It included CSX, Norfolk Southern, the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway and Ohio Central, all of it in Northeast Ohio.
Bob took us inside LTEX at McDonald, gave us an anatomy of a derailment with photos, and showed images made when he worked at Shelly Materials in Kent.
Blaine Hays has authored books on traction and it was a focal point of his program with vintage and modern images of what today are the rail lines of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.
He also threw in some photographs of the Erie Lackawanna’s Cleveland-Youngstown commuter train, New York Central passenger trains in the 1960s, and the Conrail executive train.
But Blaine also had some steam locomotives, including former Grand Trunk Western 4070 when it was operating on the Cuyahoga Valley Line, now the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.
He told a story of how in 1969 a touring steam locomotive visited Cleveland Union Terminal.
Blaine asked his supervisor at Higbee’s Department Store if he would use his lunch hour to photograph the locomotive.
The supervisor said no but Blaine got his photographs anyway. Two weeks later he received a letter saying he had been fired by Higbee’s.
Dennis Taksar made a trip to the mid South to photograph the Paducah & Louisville Railroad in Kentucky. During that trip, he also stopped by the former Illinois Central Railroad shops in Paducah, which are still in operation under different ownership.
Dennis also showed us some action on Canadian National in Kentucky and Memphis on the former IC mainline between Chicago and New Orleans.
Among the Memphis attractions that Dennis showed were the “Pink House” in Memphis, which was once the home of Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain founder Clarence Saunders; the Beale Street nightclub b district, and boats on the Mississippi River.
There also was some BNSF action around Memphis and a few short line railroads in Kentucky and Tennessee to. Dennis even worked in the Casey Jones motel in Mississippi.
Tom Fritsch wrapped up the digital presentations by showing a variety of special Amtrak trains that have passed through Northeast Ohio over the years.
This included the publicity special that stopped in Akron in 1990 to promote the reroute of the Broadway Limited via Akron and Youngstown, the X2000 train, a Talgo train, and a turboliner train that ran a charter trip to Cleveland in 1995 from Columbus to coincide with the first playoff game in several years for the for the Cleveland Indians.
Tom also showed a commuter train demonstration project that operated in Cleveland several years ago using an Amtrak F40PH locomotive and Caltrans bi-level commuter cars.
Paul Woodring opened the slide presenters programs by showing a program titled Over, Under, Around and Through.
It was a potpourri of images made over the years in various locations of trains going, as the title suggested, over, under around or through something. That meant a lot of bridges and tunnels.
Among the sites we saw were CSX in Baltimore; a tunnel in Bellows Falls, Vermont; Nickel Plate Road 765 and Pere Marquette 1225; street running Dresden, Ohio; the Greenbrier Limited; the Atlantic City line used by New Jersey Transit and, at one time, Amtrak; Amtrak’s Capitol Limited, and Amtrak trains on the Northeast Corridor.
Paul showed a few images from ARRC longest day outings in Marion and Deshler and one image of a steam locomotive in China.
Bill Kubas took us to Sand Patch where we saw Amtrak’s Capitol Limited and various CSX trains. We also saw fellow ARRC member Don Woods.
Marty Surdyk showed slides from a program he had intended to give last year titled Things I Haven’t Seen for a While. It was a selection of images made at least decade or two ago.
This included Conrail in the Cleveland area, a diesel excursion train from Toledo to Bellevue on the NS Toledo District, a CSX RoadRailer train out of Cincinnati pulled by F units, and the RTA Waterfront line in Cleveland.
Marty said he recently calculated that since he began photographing trains in 1981 he has exposed 925 rolls of slide film making 33,300 slides.
Jim Mastromatteo’s program also had a “what I’ve done lately” theme. He kicked if off with a visit to the Detroit streetcar system known as the QLine.
He then returned to Northeast Ohio to show action on CSX, Norfolk Southern and the Wheeling & Lake Erie, most of it in Akron or Alliance.
Jim’s program wrapped with some NKP 765 action on the CVSR.
Mark Demaline opened his program with slides of airlines that don’t exist anymore. This included Braniff, Wright, and Western Pacific among others.
Many of the planes we saw are no longer in scheduled commercial service in the United States, including the supersonic Concorde.
Mark then switched to railroads, showing us some old Maryland Rail Commuter trains around Point of Rocks, Maryland. Related to that, he showed Chessie System freights passing the landmark Point of Rocks station where the former Baltimore & Ohio split into line going to Washington and Baltimore.
Also in Mark’s program was some action on B&O branch lines in Ohio, including the now abandoned line to Fairport Harbor via Painesville.
David Mangold, as is his “style,” assembled his program during the event. The good news is that none of the images were upside down or sideways. But to Dave’s chagrin he managed to get a couple of images backwards.
The program highlighted places where Dave has worked over the years, including Chicago, Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio.
Most of his Conrail images were made when he was working as a conductor for that carrier.
Rick Varga will present Kodachrome slides made during the 1980s and 1990s. The program will include images of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, Conrail and CSX.
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