It is a summer morning in the late 1960s in Akron. Baltimore & Ohio’s Diplomat has stopped at the Akron Union Depot, which is out of sight to the right.
The train stretches under the station’s concourse, which also connected to the Greyhound Bus depot.
The Erie Lackawanna passenger station is to the left of the B&O E9A locomotive.
The EL’s westbound Lake Cities is barely visible at the station. Soon the Diplomat will be headed west to Chicago.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Here are two images of locomotives carrying roster number 7598 taken at different times in Akron. In the top image Baltimore & Ohio SD40 No. 7598 is eastbound on May 5, 1979. In the bottom image CSX C40-8 is westbound on Aug. 2, 2010.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
An eastbound Baltimore & Ohio merchandise train in Kent has just passed the passenger station behind me. The Erie Lackawanna passenger station is up the hill to the right. It is the late 1960s/early 1970s, so this image is more than 50 years old.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
I found two one-level 600 capacity metal slide boxes at a thrift store. There were about 800 slides still in them. No, I did not find the mother lode of railroad slides. In fact, there were five railroad slides, but only four were usable. Still, here are the first two.
These two photos taken by an unidentified photographer show the ex-Baltimore & Ohio passenger station and freight house at Jaite on the Valley Line connecting Cleveland and Akron. The images were made in July 1966 and at the time Jaite was being used as a train order station.
These structures still exist in Jaite as historic displays along the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.
However, they have been moved further back from the tracks and repainted into a different color.
Article and Photographs by Robert Farkas
Mike Ondecker photographed this Baltimore & Ohio locomotive at Akron Junction in Akron in the mid-1968. We couldn’t make out the roster number and were thus unable to determine the model of this unit.
Photograph by Mike Ondecker
The former Baltimore & Ohio passenger station in Deshler is being razed.
The structure, which is owned by CSX, has been in a state of disrepair for several years. It suffered significant damage during an April 2002 derailment of a coal train.
Deshler last hosted passenger trains on May 1, 1971, and CSX ceased using the depot in the 1990s.
A local historical society told CSX it was interested in buying the station, but the railroad demanded it be moved to another location. The $100,000 estimated cost of moving the L-shaped structure was more than the group could afford.
Deshler is a junction point of two former B&O routes, both of which continue to be major traffic arteries for CSX. The B&O routes were the Chicago-Pittsburgh and Toledo-Cincinnati mainlines.
The station was situated in the northwest quadrant of that crossing. DR Tower, which controlled the junction is located in the northeast quadrant.
The tower closed in 1988 but remains in use by the CSX maintenance of way department.
A railfan park is located in the southwest quadrant of the junction.
Former railroad executive and railroad historian William F. Howes, Jr., has died. He was 83.
Howes worked for the Baltimore & Ohio, Chessie System and CSX, and was known for his work in the passenger department of B&O/C&O.
An obituary posted on the Trains magazine website credited Howes with being instrumental in the development of the Chessie System Chess-C cat logo in 1972, and in overseeing the planning and operation of nearly 100 Chessie Steam Special excursions in 1977-78. He had a hand in designing the yellow, blue, and vermilion locomotive livery introduced in 1972.
He also served as president of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society from 1994 to 2003.
Howes great up in Yonkers, New York, and graduated from Carnegie Tech with a civil engineering degree in 1961.
He began his railroad career as a structural draftsman for the New Haven Railroad in 1960. He later studied for a master’s degree in civil engineering at Purdue University.
Howes joined the B&O in 1963. During his career he worked in the operating, industrial engineering, passenger services, casualty prevention, and executive departments.
In 1965, Howes was appointed assistant to the trainmaster for B&O’s Akron-Chicago Division. He would join the passenger department of B&O/C&O in May 1967 and become its director in 1969.
For the final trips of the Capitol Limited, which departed Chicago and Washington on April 30, 1971, Howes arranged to bring back for one night the famed B&O salad bowl in the dining car and found a few Deer Park spring water jugs, another B&O tradition.
The last runs of Nos. 5 and 6 fielded additional sleeping cars. The trains also carried dome cars.
Howes told the Baltimore Sun in an interview more than three decades later that the railroad was unsure if the trips that began April 30 would be the last ones because of a court challenge to the inauguration of Amtrak on May 1.
Riding No. 6, Howes said he learned at Martinsburg, West Virginia, that the court challenge had failed. “Then we knew it was the end. It was really quite emotional,” he told the Sun.
Howes noted that at the time Amtrak did not plan to operate any B&O passenger trains or use its rails for trains it did plan to operate.
Therefore, some B&O passenger employees with 30 to 40 years seniority were seeing their careers as they had known them come to an end.
Howes retired in 1988 from CSX as vice-president research and analysis. However, he continued to work as a consultant for the railroad industry and government agencies.
Aside from his work for R&LHS, Howes served as president of the Chesapeake Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts in the Baltimore-Washington area.
In 2015, R&LHS awarded Howes its Gerald M. Best Senior Achievement Award.
Howes was a co-author of The American Railroad (with Joe Welsh and Jim Boyd; Travel by Pullman (with Joe Welsh); and The Cars of Pullman (with Joe Welsh and Kevin Holland).
To read the full Trains obituary on Howes, visit https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/william-f-howes-jr-railroad-official-rlhs-president-author-dies-at-83/
It is Dec. 17, 1967, and Baltimore & Ohio No. 3836, Reading Lines No. 3615, and B&O No. 6578 are heading east through Akron. For some reason, the E units have cut off from the westbound Erie Lackawanna’s Lake Cities, which is seen on the other side of the platform.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
I was going through some slides recently when I ran across three image of former Baltimore & Ohio structures in Ohio that are no longer standing.
The top two images are of the former passenger station in Dover. I stopped by there in August 2006. Although it had an R.J. Corman sign on it, the building was no longer being used. It was razed on April 9, 2013, after being in derelict condition for several years. It was located on West Third Street.
The bottom image shows the B&O freight station in Kent. Because I visited Kent quite frequently I often saw this structure but seldom photographed it.
This image was made on July 5, 2003, when I was in town to photograph the excursion trains that used to run during the Kent Heritage Festival. CSX razed this structure on Dec. 10, 2010. It was located a short distance south (railroad west) of the passenger station.
Today I look at these images and am glad I took the time to make them when I did. I now value them more than when I made these photographs.
Photographs by Craig Sanders
Baltimore & Ohio 6972 is westbound in Warwick on Sept. 2, 1972. The track branching off to the right is the now-removed ex-Pennsylvania Railroad to Orrville and on to Columbus.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
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