Steam Saturday: Jaite Memories

Seeing Todd Dillon’s article and photos of Nickel Plate Road 765 at Vaughn Road on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad at Jaite prompted me to look through my files for same location favorites.

Morning photos were preferred on the east side of the tracks and afternoon from the west side. All these photos as Todd’s were are from the east side.

This location is probably now the favored spot since the Ohio Route bridge in Brecksville is so grown in with trees and brush.

Looking through old photos the only photos I have of Grand Trunk Western 4070 are from the west side of the tracks.

From top to bottom, the images were made on Sept. 29,2012; Sept. 14, 2013; Sept. 7 2014, and Sept. 26, 2016.

Article and Photographs by Edward Ribinskas

One Afternoon in Sugarcreek

The Ohio Central began running its steam-powered Sugarcreek-Baltic tourist train behind former Canadian National 4-6-0 No. 1551 in 1989.

Although I moved to Northeast Ohio in August 1993, it would more than four years before I ventured to Sugarcreek to see that tourist train in action.

However, my first encounter with the 1551 had occurred two years earlier when I rode behind it on an Orrville Railroad Heritage Society excursion that originated in Beech City and ran to Coschocton. A diesel pulled the return trip.

What would turn out to be the last time that I saw the 1551 in steam would be on a sun-splashed Saturday afternoon on Sept. 27, 1997.

I’m not sure how I learned about it, but the Ohio Central had two working steam locomotives in town that day.

The 1551 would be pulling the regularly-scheduled tourist train to Baltic and back. But also in town was the newest edition to the Ohio Central roundhouse, former Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 No. 1293.

OC owner Jerry Jacobson had acquired No. 1293 in 1996 from Steamtown and restored it to operating condition. It debuted in fall 1997 and would eventually take over the duties of pulling the Sugarcreek-Baltic tourist train.

My memory is a little hazy as to why the 1293 was in Sugarcreek on this day, but it probably had something to do with pulling an excursion train.

In the photograph above, the 1293 is idling on the siding as the 1551 prepares to depart for Baltic.

What is crystal clear in my memory was how I was thinking that on this day this was one of the few places in America that featured two operating steam locomotives. This remains one of my favorite Ohio Central steam memories.

Given that the Ohio Central steam program is a thing of the past, that makes those memories all the more special.

Ohio Central Steam Memory on the CVSR

Most photographs that Northeast Ohio railfans made of Ohio Central 4-6-2 No. 1293 were made on its former home rails, which are now operated by Genesee & Wyoming.

By the Pacific-type owned by Jerry Jacobson made three visits to the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, that last of which occurred in September 2012.

The first excursion of that visit occurred on Sept. 8 and ran from Rockside Road Station to Indigo Lake.

It carried those passengers attending the CVSR’s 40th anniversary gala held at Hale Farm and Village.

Shown in the cab are Mark Perri (left) and engineer Tim Sposato.

When the ARRC Used to Ride the Ohio Central

The boilers are cold now. Smoke no longer billows from the stacks and steam doesn’t escape and create enormous clouds during a blow down.

The steam locomotives of Jerry Jacobson are now clustered in a roundhouse in Sugarcreek after he got out of the railroad business by selling the Ohio Central System to Genesee & Wyoming.

G&W is a massive corporation and has no need for the kind of down-home ways that Jerry’s railroad used to do business by.

Between 1991 and 2006 Jerry would allow the ARRC to use his railroad once a year in the fall, allowing the club to travel behind one of his steamers.

The last of those trips occurred on Oct. 7, 2006, and it was one of the best. It was an all-day affair featuring the 1293, a 4-6-2 that was built for Canadian Pacific.

The day began at dawn in Dennison and by the time we returned on a sun-splashed late afternoon we had enjoyed seven photo runbys at five locations.

But my favorite image of the day wasn’t made during any of those runbys.

It was made just after sunrise as the 1293 patiently waited to go to work that morning. On the other end of the train was RS18 No. 1800, which would lead the ARRC excursion train east out of town on the former Panhandle mainline of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Those ARRC excursions on the Ohio Central are just memories now, but oh what memories they are.

Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders

Sometimes a Photograph is as Much About the Photographer as it is the Scene Being Potrayed

Sometimes you see in a photograph something you didn’t see and/or understand at the time that you made the image. That something may tell you something about yourself.

That happened to me recently as I reviewed slides that I had made during an Akron Railroad Club steam excursion on the Ohio Central on Oct. 4, 2003. The trip featured former Canadian Pacific No. 1293 pulling the train from Sugarcreek to Morgan Run.

The train had halted at Pearl and many of the passengers disembarked to watch and/or photograph the photo runby.

Unloading had occurred at the crossing of a driveway that led to a cheese company store. A photo line then formed on that road.

There is an open grass field between the tracks and the cheese store and some folks stood in various places in that field behind the photo line.

I walked to the far end of the field and stood in some brush just beyond the edge of that field where the property owner had stopped mowing the grass.

I don’t clearly remember why I did that. I had been at photo runbys involving steam locomotives before and was aware of the common practice of establishing a photo line.

I had stood in photo lines myself. I had also stood apart from photo lines because I wanted to get my “own” angle on the image.

But on this day I seemed oblivious to the existence of the photo line.

I have a vague recollection of having walked far from the photo line in an effort to create some open space.

But, as you can see in the image above, that plan was foiled when three folks stepped up close to the edge of the ballast of the tracks with the apparent same idea that I had.

I wasn’t pleased, but not necessarily upset. The behavior of people at photo runbys can be an interesting study in itself.

The guy wearing the hat must have seen me for he kneeled down in order to become less of an obstruction.

It wasn’t until I was reviewing this image that I realized that my standing far away from the photo line says something about me that transcended my desire for a good image.

At the time of this trip, I had been a member of the ARRC for less than two months.

I knew just one person in the club, the late David McKay, and recognized a few other faces I had seen at other railroad related events. But I didn’t know those people at the time.

I still felt like an outsider and my walking to the far end of the photo runby site probably reflected a subconscious lack of level of comfort with this group.

It was for that same reason that I skipped the dinner after the trip at the Swiss Hat restaurant in Sugarcreek.

I’ve also never been one to enjoy being in a crowd so that might have played a role in where I chose to stand.

Throughout the trip I mostly kept to myself and this photograph is a reminder of that.

The image also reminds me of why I’m glad that I now have a digital camera.

You may have noticed that the train is quite some distance from my location. “Best practices” composition techniques say that I should have waited a second or two longer before tripping the shutter.

But if you look at images that I made during this era, I was notorious for making photographs too soon. It is a common error made by novice photographers.

The train looks larger and closer in the viewfinder than it actually is. I have a lot of photographs with tons of “empty space” between me and the front of an oncoming train.

My Canon Rebel G camera could only expose one frame of film per second. My digital Canon 60D can expose five frames per second.

In a way, though, the presence of those bystanders who initially annoyed me saved the photograph.

Another way of looking at the image is that it is about what people do when they watch trains. It is not so much about the train itself even if that was my primary subject matter. In this image the train turned out to be secondary.

I still think this would be a better image if I had waited a little longer for the train to come to me. But if I had, it would not have the dramatic smoke action of this image.

I did make a photo of the locomotive much closer to where I was standing and the amount of smoke coming from the stack had greatly diminished.

By the time the 1293 got to the end of the field, the train had started to slow in preparation for a stop and back-up move.

In 2004, the ARRC had another steam trip on the Ohio Central with the 1293. By then I had gotten to know some people in the club and in fact had been approached about running for president because Dave planned to retire after 12 years in that position.

During the 2004 trip, I stood on the photo line with everyone else. I also went to dinner after the trip at the Swiss Hat and enjoyed talking with those at my table.

My comfort zone had greatly expanded to include even those in the ARRC I didn’t yet know.