Train Time in Peninsula on the CVSR

Here are five images made of Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad operations in Peninsula on Aug. 19, 2022.

In the top image FPA-4 No. 6771 leads the southbound National Park Scenic into town.

Alco C420 No. 365 is on the north end of the train. The former Seaboard Air Line unit was given a new engine a few years ago.

From the baggage car, crew members are unloading water craft that will ply the nearby Cuyahoga River.

Note that the 365 is dedicated to a former chairman of the trustees of the CVSR.

The bottom image shows the southbound Scenic as it leaves Peninsula.

Photographs by Robert Farkas

Going Back to 2009 on the CVSR

Like many of the locomotives that have dotted the motive power roster of the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad Alco C420 No. 365 has a long and colorful history.

It was built in June 1965 for the Seaboard Air Line where it had roster number 124.

It was given number 1226 when it was transferred to the Seaboard Coast Line roster.

The unit subsequently spent time at the Louisville & Nashville, where it was No. 1365.

It became No. 365 when it operated for the Arkansas-Oklahoma Railroad. It subsequently was the property of Indiana Hi-Rail and the Wabash Erie, both Indiana-based short line railroads.

No. 365 was the property of Indiana Boxcar when it arrived on CVSR in November 1998 as a leased unit acquired to finish the season. CVSR bought the 365 in December 2001.

It is shown above at Akron Northside station in on April 11, 2009, doing what Alcos do.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Where Have You Been CVSR 365?

CVSR Alco C420 No. 365 leads the National Park Scenic at Brecksville station on Oct. 21.

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad locomotive No. 365 was the railroad’s first locomotive that I ever photographed.

The date was June 19, 2004, and the location was at the Lincoln Highway station in Canton. It would be the southern-facing unit on a trip I made to Akron, which was the second time that I rode the CVSR.

I would encounter No. 365 a few times in subsequent years, but I wasn’t making many images of the CVSR then.

No. 365 was on the north end of an Akron Railroad Club CVSR excursion of Sept. 22, 2007, behind Ohio Central steam locomotive No. 1293. The 365 pulled us back to Rockside Road station from Botzum.

The C420 would perform the same duties a year later on Sept. 27 on another ARRC outing on the CVSR behind OC 1293, this time returning us to Rockside from Indigo Lake.

The 365 began life in June 1965 when it was built by American Locomotive Company for the Seaboard Air Line.

It would later work for Seaboard Coast Line, the Louisville & Nashville and a handful of short-line railroads before being acquired by the CVSR in 2001.

No. 365 was a CVSR mainstay until 2010 when it was sidelined with a bad generator.

The 2012 CVSR annual report said the 365 was awaiting being sent out to be rebuilt with “green technology.”

But it didn’t move until June 2013 when CVSR interchanged it to the Wheeling & Lake Erie in Akron en route to Ohio Locomotive Works in Lorain.

The W&LE handed the 365 off to Norfolk Southern in Bellevue, which took it to Lorain.

For the rest of 2013, the 365 underwent a thorough rebuilding. That work continued through September 2014 when the unit began getting a new paint job in the current CVSR livery.

Photographs made by Fred Stuckmann and posted at rrpicturearchives.net documented the rebuilding of the 365. It was displayed at an open house held in late September 2014 at OLW.

Among those on hand to view the 365 on that day was Siegfried Buerling, one of the men who incorporated the Cuyahoga Valley Preservation and Scenic Railway Association in February 1972.

And then it is was though the 365 vanished into thin air. No more photographs of it were posted online and the unit apparently still needed more work.

In the intervening years, the CVSR leased motive power from LTEX and Horizon Rail but no word emerged on the 365.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a report that the 365 was back in the Valley. I don’t know how long it has been there.

I didn’t see it when a CVSR train I rode in mid September went past the Fitzwater yard and shops. Maybe it was inside getting prepared for revenue service.

I finally caught up with the 365 in Brecksville on Saturday, Oct. 21. Fellow ARRC member Todd Dillon had caught the 365 the previous day.

On the north end of the Scenic was B&O No. 800. Gotta say that it’s good to see you again 365.