In 1972 the Akron & Barberton Belt leased from Precision National some rebuilt GP7s. No. 4201 is in shown in Barberton on Oct. 10, 1980. No. 4201 was one of just two A&BB locomotives to receive an emblem, which is slightly visible beneath the windows. The Geeps were brought in to replace worn out Alco and Baldwin units.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Our periodic two for Tuesday feature today takes us trackside in Barberton on the CSX New Castle Subdivision. In the topimage CSX AC44CW No. 499 leads the eastbound Q342 through Barberton on May 11, 2021.
The bottom image was made the same day. CSX ES44AC-H No. 3162 has train Q216 in hand rolling eastbound.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
Nice weather for the first day of May 2021 has railroad photographs out to catch what they could find in Northeast Ohio. Here are a trio of images made on the CSX New Castle Subdivision west of Akron.
In the top image, a Canadian National SD75I leads train Q276 around the curve in downtown Warwick on the single track segment.
In the middle we see AC44CW No. 402 on the point of an eastbound in Barberton.
Finally, GP40-2 No. 6415 sits in Warwick at a new fueling facility. This unit is stored here between runs of local D750. The apparatus visible toward the rear of the locomotive is a plug in for the crankcase heater.
Photographs by Robert Farkas
Baldwin Locomotive Works built S12 No. 27 new for the Akron & Barberton Belt in May 1951. The switcher would toil for the belt line railroad for two decades before being scraped in March 1972. It is shown working in Barberton in late 1967 or January 1968.
Akron & Barberton Belt Alco S12 No. 28 is in Barberton in December 1966. It looks like No. 28 is switching the big PPG/Columbia Chemical yard, which today is a park.
After finishing its work in the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway yard in Akron, Wheeling & Lake Erie GP9R No. 4602 and its train is heading back to Barberton using the ABC’s own track instead of the more commonly used CSX trackage rights.
The top two images were made on Nov. 27. No. 4602 is the only locomotive of this model on the W&LE motive power roster.
It is equipped with remote control switching capability for yard work.
As can be seen in the bottom image, which was made on March 28, 2011, in Orrville, the 4602 once worked for the Grand Trunk Western and for a time still wore its GTW livery, albeit with the name of is former owner blotted out.
Sometimes we forget local railfan history, or how blessed we are to have been a part of it.
It is the late 1960s/early 1970s in Barberton at the Akron & Barberton Belt engine facility. A&BB No. 28 (Baldwin S12) is at the front left with A&BB No, 5408 (Alco RS-3) behind it.
On the right is Norfolk & Western 2547 (Alco RS-3). Whatever day I took this around 50 years ago, I never realized how thankful I can be for having photographed these fallen-flag builders’ locomotives on a fallen-flag railroad. Even the engine facility as seen here is gone.
Yes, we have the Akron Barberton Cluster here with a different engine facility, but it just isn’t the same. On Thanksgiving Day, also count your railfan blessings. You might be surprised.
A story about the April 30, 1951, collision in Barberton of an Erie Railroad passenger train with an Ohio National Guard M4 Sherman tank appears in the fall issue of Classic Trains.
The article was written by Dan Olah, a resident of North Bend, Washington, who retired after a 33-year career with Burlington Northern and BNSF.
As a child living in Northeast Ohio, he was was given by the widow of a former Erie conductor an envelope with 16 photographs of the aftermath of that 1951 collision but which came without any details as to where it was and when it occurred.
After graduating from high school, Olah was a relief clerk at McCoy yard for the Erie Lackawanna in Akron.
Some of the former Erie workers in Akron he approached remembered the collision, but didn’t have any details about it.
The Classic Trains article, titled Mystery at Barberton is about his quest to learn about the crash, a process that led him to contact a certain former Akron Railroad Club president who has published two books about the railroads of the rubber city.
I provided him some information about the collision that I had gleaned from newspaper articles published at the time.
Olah writes that it took him more than 50 years to solve the mystery of where those photographs were made and of what.
The crash at the Fairview Avenue crossing left three guardsman dead while five crew members and three passengers aboard the Lake Cities were injured.
Veteran photographer George W. Hamlin described the Baltimore & Ohio as a relatively “traditional” railroad largely because of the older equipment that dotted its motive power roster and the carrier’s tendency to use traditional operating practices.
To some degree, Hamlin recently wrote on the Trains magazine website, this stemmed from the B&O’s lack of robust financial success.
One sign of a railroad facing financial tough times is a tendency to give motive power a minimalist appearance, often painting units in a solid color with nothing more than roster numbers and the name of the road as garnishment.
Then again the Norfolk & Western took this approach and it wasn’t done because the coal hauler was losing money or struggling to survive.
The minimalist look was particularly pronounced on B&O passenger locomotives, which at one time sported a livery of royal blue, black and gray with gold stripes and the capitol dome herald on the nose.
In the 1960s the B&O motive power livery was simplified to solid blue with gold lettering and a gold stripe just on the bottom of the car body just above the wheels as seen here in this image made in Barberton on July 24, 1982, at Snyder Avenue on the eastbound mainline.
The white in the background is lime at a nearby PPG plant.
Bob Farkas likes to get out when he can to railfan the CSX New Castle Subdivision and photograph its trains.
In the top image, train Q277 passes through Barberton with what appears to be a fairly standard consist.
In the bottom image, a westbound saunters past the former Warwick Tower, which once controlled the crossing of lines of the Baltimore & Ohio and the Pennsylvania railroads.
All of the ex-Pennsy tracks in Warwick are now gone as are the diamonds that once existed here.
Both images were made on July 1, 2019.
