Central Ohio 4-6-2 No. 1293 (formerly Ohio Central 1293) is southbound on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad in Jaite on Sept. 29, 2012. The former Canadian Pacific steam was hau ling Steam In The Valley 2012 excursions. In the image above, it has almost passed the ex-Baltimore & Ohio train order station.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
Nickel Plate Road 765 steams through the Sand Run Metro Park in September 2018.
Public tickets for the September return of Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 to the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad went on sale today (July 2, 2019).
The Berkshire-type locomotive that was built in Lima, Ohio, will be pulling excursions on the CVSR on Sept. 21, 22, 27, 28 and 29.
The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, which owns the locomotive, said these will be the only public excursions to be pulled by No. 765 this year.
New this year to the annual Steam in the Valley lineup will be the first nighttime trips behind steam and the first trip in years to operate the length of the CVSR between Rockside Road station in Independence and Akron.
Passengers aboard the latter trip, which departs Rockside Road at 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 27, will also have a static night photo shoot opportunity in Akron.
The photo shoot trip will be 3.5 hours in length. All other trips will run for 2.5 hours and include a photo runby opportunity at Indigo Lake.
Other nighttime trips will depart Rockside Road at 6 p.m. on Sept. 21 and 28.
Ticket prices range from $25 to $75 depending on the type of accommodation chosen. As in past years open window cars will be assigned to the train.
Passengers willing to pay extra for “enhanced service” option will receive complimentary alcoholic beverages and food, depending on the level of service chosen. The enhanced service options range from $150 to $55.
At the high end price of $150 you get a four-course meal served in the dome section of the Silver Solarium or Silver Lariat plus complimentary beverages. That option is available only on the Sept. 27.
At the low end price of $55 you get complimentary beverages but no food with seating in a lounge area.
Passengers must be 21 years of age or older to obtain an enhanced service options that involves alcoholic beverages.
One enhanced service option, though, has been labeled as family friendly. Staff will provide crafts and activities suitable for children. That option will cost $40 per person and is available on all 10 a.m. departures.
The trains will feature a 1940s theme with music from that period provided by an onboard quartet.
Historical reenactors in 1940s garb will be at the station and aboard the train. Passengers are encouraged to dress for the occasion in their best 1940’s or 50’s look.
All passengers ages 3 and older must have a ticket. Children under the age of 3 may ride for free but must sit on a parent’s or guardian’s lap.
Departure times and dates from Rockside Station are Sept. 21 and 28 at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 6 p.m., and Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Departures times and dates from Akron Northside Station are Sept. 22 and 29 at 10 a.m., and 2 p.m.
Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.cvsr.com/steam/ or over the phone at 1-800-468-4070 x1.
For those who wish to view or photograph the train, the CVSR will set up a viewing area at Howe Meadow.
Parking will be available there and visitors will be directed to the viewing area.
The traditional photo runby site at Boston Mill station is currently closed due to construction of the adjacent new Cuyahoga Valley National Park visitor’s center.
The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad hosted an early evening excursion on Friday of Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765.
Fellow Akron Railroad Club members Edward Ribinskas and Jeff Troutman joined me in chasing the steamer before the ARRC meeting.
We first encountered the Berkshire and its train at the Canal Exploration Center station as it made a ferry move to Rockside Station.
Then it was off to West Pleasant Valley Road where we waited along with several other railfans on the bridge over the CVSR tracks.
The 765 put on a fine show as it charged southward with a train that included all three of the CVSR’s dome cars.
We hoped to catch up with the 765 one more time after leaving Pleasant Valley, but those efforts were hamstrung by heavy traffic.
By the time we were able to safety cross Pleasant Valley on foot and hoof it back to my car, which I had parked at the gate where Riverview Road is closed, the 765 was too far ahead of us.
I broke off the chase by Szalay’s Market. By that time, the excursion train had reached Indigo Lake where it executed its photo runbys.
Backing past Hillside Road during the ferry move from Fitzwater Yard to Rockside Road.
A trio of dome cars followed by FPA-4 No. 6777.
Nickel Plate Road 765 backs up at Rockside Road station. I got better images of the Berkshire-type engine here than I did at the photo runby site at Boston Mills.
Second of two parts
A handful of Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad personnel were on the ground as the excursion train pulled by RS18 1822 came into Boston Mills station and stopped.
At last I would get to experience life inside the cattle pen as Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 executed its photo runbys.
Having that experience wasn’t my primary reason for buying a ticket to ride behind the 765. But I did wonder what it would be like.
On the CVSR website, would-be passengers are told that they will get to watch the 765 do a runby at a secure location.
If you are standing outside the photo runby site fence, you’ve learned the meaning of the word “secure.”
If you dare cross Riverview Road to stand on the fringe of the orange plastic fence, either a CVSR official or a police officer will shoo you back to the other side of the road.
As I stood in the cattle pen, I saw a couple guys cross the road toward the far north end of the ski resort.
A Peninsula police officer saw it, too, and raced to the scene in his cruiser with the emergency lights on.
Although my train was not sold out, it did have a large crowd and it takes time to unload a few hundred people.
I was among the first people off the train, in part because my car had a small number of passengers.
A CVSR volunteer instructed us to stand behind a line of small orange cones.
That was the extent of the instructions that we received. For that matter, there was no announcement over the PA or by the car host about the photo runby. It was as though CVSR personnel figured that everyone knew what was going on.
The line of orange cones stretched back toward the Boston Mills station and was set up on an angle.
I avoided the far north end of the line, which was where many people congregated.
I heard the CVSR volunteer tell those there that the 765 would make two runbys. She asked those toward the front to get down and after the first runby to trade places with those in the back.
People were nearly shoulder to shoulder where I was standing, but I didn’t feel overly crowded.
I didn’t expect to get great photographs during the runby. One reason I had wanted to ride the afternoon trip was because the lighting would be better. The sun would be on the west side of the tracks.
Although the runbys for my excursion were performed at about 11:15 a.m., the lighting still favored the east side of the tracks.
But the west side of the train was not in deep enough shadows to mar the images by making it difficult to see the detail of the locomotive.
Many who got off the train were not photographing, just watching. Among those who did photograph, many of the images – and maybe most of them – were made with smart phones.
It used to be that “ordinary” people made photographs with point and shoot digital cameras. Now they use smart phones.
Not as many people clustered around the cab of the 765 as I expected. Instead, most people found a place in the photo line and stayed there.
There was a construction project underway across the road and shortly before the 765 began backing up for the first runby I heard that safety squawk that construction vehicles make in reverse.
I wasn’t doing video so it didn’t bother me. But I know guys who would have gone ballistic upon hearing that sound.
The beep, beep, beep was short lived and not repeated during either runby.
The runbys were nice, but not overly spectacular. I thought the 765 put on a better show when pulling into Rockside Road station earlier that morning.
I’ve also seen better smoke displays from the locomotive at other places along the CVSR.
But most of those in the photo line weren’t looking for a spectacular display of steam and smoke.
They wanted to see the big engine run by, which is what it did, twice. Many have probably never seen such a sight.
About the only advantage to being inside the Boston Mills cattle pen from a photography standpoint is being able to see the 765 coming straight at you.
There is a curve north of Boston Mills and inside the viewing area is the best place to see that without any obstruction.
Boston Mills also offers an open field, but that’s nothing that you can’t find in other places along the CVSR if you know the territory.
I didn’t have any trouble with heads or arms getting in the way of my views and everyone was well behaved.
The runbys complete, it was time to get in line and back on the train.
The rest of the trip was routine. We stopped at Fitzwater Yard to pick up the afternoon on-board crew members.
I lingered on the platform after disembarking at Rockside Road station.
The 765 and its train would go north of the station to make room for the Scenic inbound from Akron.
By now it was almost 12:30 p.m. Clouds were forming, but it was still sunny as I got my last photographs of the 765 as it backed northward.
As it turned out, the afternoon trip was 25 minutes late leaving Rockside due to late passengers and other issues I wasn’t on hand to observe.
That trip only went as far south as Peninsula and by the time the photo runbys at Boston Mills were executed, the skies had turned mostly cloudy.
It had been an enjoyable experience riding behind the 765 even if I never saw it while it was pulling the train. But I knew it was there.
The CVSR is one of the few places where the 765 can operate. Every year there is talk about the 765 going to various unspecified places, but those trips seldom seem to materialize.
This year the 765 has run on Metra in Chicago and on the CVSR. No fall excursions have been announced of which I am aware.
Many Northeast Ohio railfans have probably become indifferent toward the 765 running on the CVSR. Been there, done that.
The Berkshire-type locomotive has been a regular fixture on the CVSR since 2010 except for a couple of years.
Yet I always treat each appearance of the 2-8-4 as its last because some day that might be the case.
Disembarking at Boston Mills for the photo runbys. I’ve made many photographs over the years of people getting off from the outside perspective, but never from the on the train perspective.
Getting a photograph of the NKP 765 backing up for the first of two photo runbys at Boston Mills.
Here comes the first photo runby.
Not everyone disembarked at Boston Mills for the photo runbys. They enjoyed waving and taking in the scene.
The second photo runby is getting underway as the 765 charges southward toward the waiting crowd.
Blowing the whistle at Boston Mills. The 765 crew paid tribute to the late Jerry Jacobson by placing his name on both sides of the cab.
Time to get back on board the train following the runbys. We’ll need that step box.
He’s wearing a NKP hat, sitting in a former NKP coach and riding behind a NKP steam locomotive.
Reviewing the video that they made on their smart phones of the 765.
A pair of youthful photographers watch for the steam engine at Hillside Road.
Lending a helping hand to a detraining passenger at Rockside Road.
A wave from my car host as the train leaves the station at Rockside Road.
Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 made kicked off a two week stay on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad late Friday afternoon with an excursion for CVSR members and volunteers.
The steamer left Rockside Road Station at 5:30 p.m. for a three-hour trip that included a cash bar, snacks and a chance to see the big Berkshire up close before sun set.
The photographs above were made of the south trip south of Brecksville.
The 765 will be back in action with two public excursions from Rockside Road station on Saturday and two trips from Akron on Sunday.
Nickel Plate Road No. 765 will be back on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad this weekend, offering weekend excursions and a few extras.
New this year will be a Friday excursion for CVSR members and volunteers that will leave Rockside Road station at 5:30 p.m. It is scheduled to return at 8 p.m.
During the two-hour round trip, passengers will be treated to hors d’oeuvres, cash bar service, and live entertainment from the 1940s.
There will be a brief de-boarding for a sunset view and run-by of the locomotive.
Also new this year is a program that enables the public to buy throttle time or fireman time during a short run from Fitzwater Yard to Brecksville station. Those “tickets” are reportedly sold out.
Two-hour public excursions will be run on Sept. 16, 22 and 23 from Rockside Road station and on Sept. 17 and 24 from Akron.
Boarding times for trains departing from Rockside Road on Saturdays are at 9:30 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. On Sept. 22, the excursion will depart Rockside Road at 6 p.m.
Boarding times from Akron are 11:15 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. All excursions will feature a photo runby at Boston Mill station.
Ticket are $25 for coach seating, $30 for an open widow coach, $38 for deluxe (table car), $40 for the dome car lower level; and $50 for the upper dome car.
The CVSR website said that the railroad will not disclose the location of the steam train to any non-ticket holders.
Park rangers will be on patrol and the park has suggested that non ticket holders consider watching the train at Station Road Bridge or Botzum.
Those locations have probably been suggested because they offer expansive parking lots.
A review of the schedule for the CVSR’s National Park Scenic suggests that unlike in past years the steam train will not meet the Scenic in Peninsula.
This presumes that the excursions will be two hours in duration as advertised and that the steam train can operate behind or ahead of the Scenic.
Nickel Plate Road No. 765, operating as No. 767, approaches Pleasant Valley Road on Saturday, Sept. 24.
Reflecting on past steam trips in the Valley at Indigo Lake.
I waited for quite a while to get the NKP 767 crossing the Cuyahoga River north of Peninsula.
Now that winter is here and the warm days of summer and early autumn in 2016 are just another memory, how about some warm memories to take the chill out of the air?
Here are three images of Nickel Plate Road 767 — which is actually NKP 765 — when it was running on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad last September.
All were among my favorite images of the NKP 767 in action, but for various reasons they didn’t make the cut when it came time to post those photographs.
But I kept them with the idea of posting them during the winter. Perhaps NKP 765 willl return to the CVSR in 2017, but that remains to be seen. If it does come back as NKP 767?
Even if it doesn’t, we’ll always have our memories and photographs of when it was the 767.
Combine a telephoto lens, good positioning and skillful anticipation and you can come away with good human interest images such this one of a young girl being helped off the train. Her small stature in contrast to the wheels gives a sense of size and proportion.
Second of two parts
I like photographic challenges. In my previous post, I wrote about how the strict security measures imposed by the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad at Boston Mill station during the photo runbys of Nickel Plate Road No. 767 last September limited where photographers could go in ways that had not been the case in previous years.
Unless you had a ticket, you had to contend with orange plastic fences, large crowds and highway guard rails.
The security was designed to keep people away from nearby locations along the tracks that were some distance from the station. That had not been done in past years, but was taken to a higher level in 2016.
I spent time during the September 2016 visit of Nickel Plate Road 767 in the “ticketless zone” in Boston Park and in the ski resort parking lot on the west side of Riverview Road.
I wanted to see what I could do within the limitations that the railroad and park officials had thrust upon me.
The first thing I decided to do was to live with guard rails and a little bit of orange fencing.
It wasn’t ideal, but being in the ski resort parking lot provided a wider perspective than is available to the passengers at the station.
They had to deal with large, dense crowds. I looked for places away from the crowds and found them.
That was how I came up with an interesting angle on the east side of the tracks along Boston Road. I got the nose of the NKP 767 with the crowd of passengers and the ski resort in the background.
That image wasn’t as ideal as I would have liked due to a grade crossing signal control box getting in the way and the tight angle forced by a line of trees to my right.
However, it was a view that few other photographers thought to try and it was better than most anything I could have gotten in Boston Park.
Some of the most promising images to be had at Boston Mill are human interest photographs.
With a telephoto lens, you can zoom in on the engine crew, get shots of the passengers disembarking, and capture those still on the train during the runbys.
My favorite human-interest image of the two weeks that I chased NKP 767 was obtained at Boston Mill in this manner.
I’ve already posted that photo, but it showed a young boy sipping a bottle of soda while seated next to his grandmother in one of the open-window coaches as a look of wonder crossed his face.
Ultimately, what to do with the restrictions at Boston Mill for those outside the ticketed passenger zone comes down to what type of photography you do and how creative you are.
If you are only interested in the train coming at you, then you’d be better off to buy a ticket so you can get a straight-on shot of that.
If you are unwilling to shell out for a ticket, you could go to any number of places in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park to photograph the steam engine as rolls past.
If, though, you are interested in documenting the broader story and the environment that surrounds the annual two-week visit of a steam locomotive to the CVSR, then there are opportunities waiting at Boston Mill. You just have to study the scene and try some things.
Some of your efforts won’t work out quite the way you had hoped, but you might be surprised at how a little creative thinking and working the angles can yield a better image than you might have imagined was possible.
By the time that the NKP 767 ended its time on the CVSR, I was starting to get the hang of photographing across Riverview Road. There are decent to good images to be made there.
You look past or over the guard rail, this is a decent photo of NKP 767 charging past. The guard rail isn’t blocking anything, just adding a touch of clutter.
I had not planned to photograph this particular runby, but couldn’t resist getting a portrait of my friend Adam Barr doing video of the runby with his smart phone.
My intent was not to capture the train so much as it was to show how people on the west side of Riverview seek to photograph it. The larger environment is part of the story, too.
Not everyone disembarks from the steam train during the photo runbys. Watch the windows and you might get a good human interest image of those still aboard.
Sometimes you can get a clear angle of the train. Sure, the locomotive is not coming toward me, but it is still putting on a smoke show even though it is backing up. The image was made at the east side of the Boston Road grade crossing.
By standing back and then zooming in on the locomotive cab with a telephoto lens, you can get the crew at work.
The angle was tighter than I would have liked, but I was pleased, overall, with this image that I made on the east side of the tracks where far fewer people were standing.
While I didn’t do much with the Nickel Plate Road No.767, a.k.a. as 765, this year, mostly due to being out west, I did manage two photos I liked. The top one shows the locomotive and its train coming into Peninsula and the other image is at MP 43 in Akron in a nice “rods down” action grab.
We’ve received information that Nickel Plate Road No. 767, a.k.a., NKP 765, has begun deadhead move to Cleveland from New Haven, Indiana.
The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, which owns and operates the 2-8-4 Berkshire-type locomotive does not release details about ferry moves.
However, a steam locomotive is unlikely to travel very far without being seen, so social media will is abuzz with reports on the whereabouts of the 767.
Reportedly, the 767 will make most of the ferry move in one day. The route of travel will be over the Norfolk Southern mainline from Fort Wayne to Vermilion via Bellevue, and thence over the Chicago Line from Vermilion to Rockport Yard in Cleveland.
From Rockport Yard the 767 and its support cars will travel on NS tracks to Campbell Road. It will be on CSX tracks via Clark Avenue in order to reach the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.
Unlike in past years, the NKP 767 will not use the Wheeling & Lake Erie between Bellevue and Akron.
The 767 will be pulling trips on the CVSR on Sept. 17 and 24 from Rockside Road station and on Sept. 18 and 25 from Akron Northside station.
The Rockside Road trips will depart at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., while the Akron trips will leave at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Plans are for the steam train to meet the CVSR Scenic train in Peninsula and to do photo runbys for passengers at Boston Mills station.
All trips are expected to last three hours. Tickets can be purchased at the CVSR website at http://www.cvsr.com
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