Night Operations Inside and Outside

It’s May 3, 2007, in Olmsted Falls. The Cuyahoga Valley and West Shore Model Railroad Club is holding an operating session inside the former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern (later New York Central) passenger station that it owns.

As trains run on the club’s various layouts inside the depot, trains are running outside, too. The station is located next to the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.

I was there that night with a tripod to try my hand at making some night photographs. That streak in front of the station is a westbound NS train.

Article and Photograph by Craig Sanders

Signal Indication is a Shadow

It’s late afternoon in Olmsted Falls. The sun is swinging around toward the southwest and illuminating the west end of the former New York Central station, which is now owned by the Cuyahoga Valley & West Shore Model Railroad Club.

One of the latest additions to the club’s modest 1:1 scale of railroad collectables at the depot is a two-headed Type G signal.

You don’t see the signal above, but it is casting a shadow on the side of the station.

They Also Ran in O.F. One Saturday Morning

An eastbound container train rolls through Olmsted Falls on a late spring day.

I was doing some housekeeping on my computer when I ran across photographs I had made in Olmsted Falls in late April that I had meant to post but had forgotten. It didn’t help that they were filed in the wrong folder on my backup hard drive.

As for the backstory of these images, I had gone out to the Falls to catch the Erie heritage unit of Norfolk Southern leading an intermodal train.

I got it and decided to stick around a little longer. In the process I made images of a westbound NS train with a former Union Pacific SD90 still in its UP paint on the lead.

I seldom have seen such locomotives leading so, sure, I photographed it. I also was enthralled by an eastbound with BNSF motive power and no NS units.

And to top it all off, I photographed a Spirit Airlines “yellow bird” landing at nearby Cleveland Hopkins Airport.

All of those images were posted weeks ago. I also captured a few ordinary NS trains and planned to post them, too.Then they got misfiled and I forgot about them.

Most of the trains that we see on NS or CSX in Northeast Ohio are just your usual workaday fare. Maybe you try to do something a little different to give them a new look, but they still wind up looking like the same old, same old.

Yet there may come a day when the models of locomotives, these liveries and maybe even the railroad itself will be gone.

Although thousands if not millions of images have been made of Norfolk Southern trains over the years, there still may come a day when these trains are no longer the same old, same old.

After all, people once said that about steam locomotives and how many of them can you see out on the line today?

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Can you guess where this photograph was made?

The trees were still budding even though it was late April.

The last stacks pass the Olmsted Falls depot.

Two members of the Cuyahoga Valley and West Shore model railroad club look to make a sale during the club’s open house at the former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern depot.

Model RR Club Sets 2015 Open House Schedule

The Cuyahoga Valley & West Shore Model Railroad Club has announced its 2015 schedule of open house events at its depot in Olmsted Falls.

The spring open house events will be held from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 2 and 3 at the former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern station at 25802 Garfield Ave.

The 139-year-old depot served New York Central passenger trains through the 1950s and is located next to the busy Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.

Visitors are asked to make a $3 donation. The event will feature raffle prizes and operating HO, O and N scale layouts.

Two open house events will also be held on Dec. 5 and 6. The hours will be the same as for the spring open houses.

For more information about the club, visit the website www.cvwsmrc.org

Getting Hosed

A member of the Cuyahoga Valley and West Shore model railroad club hoses down the former Pennsylvania Railroad caboose that is on display at the club’s home in Olmsted Falls on a recent June afternoon. The club owns the onetime New York Central passenger station here.

The washing was begin done in preparation for painting the roof. The tracks in the foreground are the Norfolk Southern’s Chicago Line.

Photograph by Craig Sanders

10 a.m., Straight Up, at Olmsted Falls

The Norfolk Southern office car special passed through Northeast Ohio Tuesday morning (June 12) , reportedly en route to Chicago. The train came through Olmsted Falls at exactly 10 a.m., according to the clock in my camera.

The top photo shows the train approaching Brookside Drive after crossing Columbia Road. F unit No. 4270 is in the lead. In the middle photograph, the four units have passed Brookside Drive and are passing the restored passenger station in Olmsted Falls used by the Cuyahoga Valley & West Shore Model Railroad Club.

The bottom photo shows that the rear seats of the theater car were a popular place to be. The man in the front row to the left appears to be NS Chairman, President and CEO Wick Moorman.

Photographs by Craig Sanders

In Memory of Al Chesnik (1946-2010)

Long-time Akron Railroad Club member Albin (Al) T. Chesnik died at 1:53 a.m. on Sunday (July 11, 2010) at University Hospitals in Cleveland after a long battle with cancer. Chesnik, 63, who resided in Walton Hills, Ohio, joined the ARRC in 2000. He was also a member of the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts and the Cuyahoga Valley & West Shore Model Railroad Club.

Chesnik worked as supervisor of the records department of the Common Pleas–Appellate division of the Office of the Clerk of the Cuyahoga County Court system. He attended Kent State University.

ARRC secretary Tim Krogg recalled that Chesnik had a fondness for the Erie Railroad (later the Erie Lackawanna) that stemmed from his childhood days when he would observe operations near his home of an Erie iron ore transfer terminal. He also had an interest in the Pennsylvania Railroad and was an avid model railroader.

Chesnik was born on October 14, 1946. He is survived by his mother, Dorothy V. (Blank) Chesnik; two sisters, Lauren T. Diorie and Beth Svec.; and four nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his father, Albin T. Chesnik.

Services will be at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday at Fortuna Funeral Home, 7076 Brecksville Road. The funeral liturgy will be at 10 a.m. at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. Visitation will be 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday.

Memorials may be made to the University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center or the Cuyahoga Valley & West Shore Model Railroad Club.

Record Breaking Picnic Day in Olmsted Falls

Chef Marte, a.k.a. as Marty Surdyk, has the grill hot and the burgers and dogs sizzling during the Akron Railroad Club picnic on July 26, 2009, in Olmsted Falls. Surdyk (right) is shown serving Rick Houck (left) and Rich Antibus. (Photograph by Hilary Surdyk)

About 7 p.m., Marty Surdyk was getting worried. He had guaranteed that this year’s Akron Railroad Club picnic would break the record for most trains seen. But it had been a good two hours since a train had passed by the picnic site at the former New York Central station in Olmsted Falls, Ohio. The radio had been quiet.

Since 8:30 a.m. that morning 21 trains had passed by, which tied the record set a few years ago at Warwick Park in Clinton next to the CSX Chicago-Pittsburgh line. But Marty had boasted that this year’s event would break the record.

The 22nd train finally passed by about a half-hour later. For good measure, the 23rd and 24th trains also made an appearance before the picnic closed shop for the day around 9 p.m.

Twenty-nine ARRC members and their guests attended this year’s picnic for a total of 44 attendees. They feasted on 73 hamburgers and 64 hot dogs and untold numbers of chips, cookies and other picnic fare. By the time Marty, a.k.a. Chef Marte, dropped the fires from the grill, he had burned through a bag and a half of charcoal.

NS traffic was somewhat atypical during the picnic, held on Sunday, July 26., 2009. There were no coal trains and no coke trains. The eastbound RoadRailer sauntered past, but not its westbound counterpart.

As for locomotive power, it was almost exclusively of NS vintage. The only foreign unit seen was a BNSF locomotive that was a trailing unit on an ethanol train, the Z9Q, at 12:14 p.m. That same train had an NS unit in the lead and a CSX locomotive trailing.

Another CSX unit made an appearance on another ethanol train, which was the first train of the day spotted by an ARRC member. That was recorded by Rick Houck who OSed the 69Q at 8:42 a.m.

There were a number of former Conrail units still dressed in blue that came by, but none of them were lead units on this day.

A third ethanol train, the 68Q, slipped past at 1:22 p.m. Otherwise, the traffic was a steady diet of intermodal and manifest freights.  Traffic was split dead even with 12 eastbounds and 12 westbounds. Interestingly, the eastbounds dominated in the morning and the westbounds late in the day.

The Olmsted Falls depot is owned by the Cuyahoga Valley and West Shore Model Railroad club. Todd Vander Sluis did double duty, opening the station as a CV&WS member but also attending as an ARRC member.

ARRC members had the opportunity to watch the CW&WS’s model railroad in action during the day. A Wheeling & Lake Erie model SD40 with sound spent the afternoon idling at the club’s engine terminal.