I don’t know if Richard Antibus plans to show images similar to those above during his slide show to the Akron Railroad Club on Friday night. But he might.
Shown are three things that are not longer part of the Akron Railroad scene. All of them existed 20 years ago, but have fallen within the past decade or so.
In the top image is Erie Railroad herald that once adorned the freight house on Exchange Street in downtown Akron. The Erie became the Erie Lackawanna in 1960 and passed out of existence in 1976.
But the freight house, which was built in 1916, continued to stand and proudly show its heritage. One of the last uses of the freight house was to receive shipments of news print for the Akron Beacon Journal.
But things have changed and the freight house was razed in May 2013 to make way for a $20 million rental housing used by University of Akron students and known as The Depot.
In the middle is the former yard office for the Baltimore & Ohio. Located along Arlington Avenue, it served yards of both B&O lines in Akron.
The yard for the former Valley Railway is gone, but CSX still maintains a rather small portion of the former Hill Yard. But there is no yardmaster assigned there anymore and crews no longer report for duty here.
In this views, made on April 30, 2006, the rear of an eastbound CSX train is passing on the nearby New Castle Subdivision. This photograph was made the same day as the image of the Erie herald on the freight station. It’s a good thing I made these images when I did.
The former B&O yard office was destroyed by a suspicious fire Oct. 1, 2013. Akron firefighters said a door of the building, which by then had been vacant and board up for several years, had been forced open, leading them to specualte it might have been arson.
In the bottom photograph is the boarding platform for the Akron Amtrak station. Constructed in 1990, the platform is located where boarding platforms once existed for Akron Union Depot to serve passenger trains of the B&O and Pennsylvania railroads.
This image was made early on the morning of Sept. 9, 1995. Later that day Amtrak’s Chicago-New York Broadway Limited would begin its final trips. Amtrak Nos. 40 and 41 has begun serving Akron Nov. 11, 1990, after being rerouted away from the former PRR mainline between Chicago and Pittsburgh via Canton.
Amtrak service to Akron resumed Aug. 10, 1998, when the Chicago-New York Three Rivers began stopping here.
The Three Rivers was discontinued west of Pittsburgh on March 7, 2005. The boarding platforms were removed in early 2012 during a CSX project to revamp the New Castle Sub so that it could accomodate double-stacked container trains.
That work also led to the removal of the last umbrella shed and platform still standing at former Akron Union Depot site.
Article and Photograhs by Craig Sanders
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