Today’s two for Tuesday focuses on the Baltimore & Ohio in the 1970s. In the top image, B&O GP35 No. 3559 leads an eastbound near Kent. The bottom image was made in Youngstown. Leading a train through the area is B&O GP40-2 No. 4161. The unit has already received Chessie System paint unlike its two running mates in this gritty industrial scene that captures well railroading in the Mahoning Valley when steelmaking was still king.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
Baltimore & Ohio GP9 No. 6454 is westbound in Kent in the late 1960s. The Geep was built in August 1956 and would later join the roster of the Maryland Midland. The photograph was just able to get beneath the pole line.
Photography by Robert Farkas
Baltimore & Ohio F7A No. 4580 is eastbound in Kent in the late 1960s. On the left side, a small portion of the B&O passenger station can be seen.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Here are the first of a series of black and white images from Northeast Ohio taken during the late 1960s to early 1970s. Often ex-Akron Railroad Club member Mike Ondecker was with me when these images were taken.
In the top image, Chesapeake & Ohio No. 4011 is stopping at the Kent B&O passenger station in the late 1960s.
She is pulling the westbound Diplomat more than likely around Christmas because of the three E-units needed to power the train. After leaving Kent, her next stop is B&O’s Akron Union Station.
In the second image, eastbound B&O 6411 heads toward Kent on a winter day. This was taken from east of the B&O passenger station.
I ran across this in a group of negatives I hadn’t looked at in decades. As I recall, this was the Baltimore & Ohio railroad bridge that left the mainline to interchange with the Nickel Plate Road/Norfolk & Western in Kent. The bridge was west of the passenger station. I was told the rails were removed and the bridge itself was unsafe in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
It is the late 1960s in Kent and every locomotive and box car you see is from a now fallen flag railroad. Visible are an Erie boxcar, two Baltimore & Ohio locomotives, and box cars from the Santa Fe, Northern Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, and the Great Northern.
The temperatures have been in the 80s recently with high humidity, but here’s a “cool” Baltimore & Ohio shot from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Eastbound B&O 4580, 4648 head a freight through Kent. With footprints on both sides of the tracks, it is likely B&O was still serving Kent with passenger trains when this was taken.
Here is the Kent you’ll never see again. It’s the late 1960s, and the Erie Lackawanna is still alive. The passenger station is still in use and there is an Erie boxcar sitting south of the station. The Baltimore & Ohio freight heading west has a wagon top caboose. There is no park where the river flows as there is now and the cars seen in the image are true collector’s treasures today.
A photo made by Akron Railroad Club member Bob Rohal was published in the Record-Courier last Friday.
The photo was made in 1958 of a Baltimore & Ohio mail train passing through Kent. Rohal made the photograph atop the Main Street Bridge.
The caption mentions that an Erie Railroad passenger train was due about a half hour after the passage of the B&O train.
However, the caption incorrectly states that B&O passenger service in Kent ended year before the Erie Lackawanna discontinued its last passenger trains in January 1970.
The B&O continued to operate four passengers trains a day through Kent until the coming of Amtrak on May 1, 1971.
The caption also mentions that Erie employee Otis Taylor was waiting at the Kent station to put water into the passenger train’s locomotives.
“Little did I know that in three years along with my Journeyman Jimmy Powell I also would also be putting water in the Passenger Diesels after Mr Taylor retired,” Bob wrote in an email message.
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