The Mystery of Brady Lake Tower

It has been 50 years since the Brady Lake Tower operator routinely watched over the tracks from these windows.

Curiosity as much as anything motivated me to venture to the 40^th anniversary celebration of Towner’s Wood Park in Portage County.

For years I’ve made the park a place to hang out and watch Norfolk Southern trains pass by on the adjacent Cleveland Line.

Looming over the park is the former Brady Lake Tower – once known as Brady’s Lake Tower – that was operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

The tower controlled the junction of the east end of the Lake Erie & Pittsburgh with the Pennsy.

There has always been an air of mystery about Brady Lake Tower. I had never been inside of it and long wondered what there was to see. The answer turned out to be “not much.”

For the 40^th anniversary event, the park district converted the bottom floor of the concrete tower into a makeshift exhibit area.

There was poster about railroads, but much of the information was about nature.

The second story of Brady Lake Tower looks like a wreck. The Park District uses it for storage of all manner of things.

There are holes in the ceiling and no trace of anything that was associated with the railroad other than the structure itself.

I wasn’t expecting to find the interlocking machine, the operator’s desk, or clipboards containing railroad bulletins and orders hanging on the wall that had been left behind.

Those have long since been removed.

There were a few reminders of the railroad on the first floor, but those were obvious only if you knew what you were looking at.

You had to use your imagination to “see” the railroad presence on the top floor.

Photographs of the interior of Brady Lake Tower are rare or nonexistent. There are some images of the exterior, including a photo made by Paul Geiger that is published on Page 100 of Volume 12 of the Pennsylvania Railroad Facilities series by Morning Sun books.

We know that the original Cleveland & Pittsburgh ran through what is now the parking lot at Tower’s Woods.

The C&P was a single-track railroad that crossed the predecessor of the Erie Railroad at grade at Brady Lake.

When the PRR rebuilt its line in the early 1900s, the tracks were shifted to their current alignment and at least a portion of the former right of way between Brady Lake and Ravenna was sold to the Erie.

The rebuilding gave the Pennsy a better grade for its ore trains and slightly shortened the distance between Hudson and Ravenna.

The Pennsy facilities book reports that Brady Lake was removed from service on May 14, 1966, but kept intact to “be placed in service by train order or general order.” By 1970, its interlocking capability had been removed.

We don’t know for certain when Brady Lake Tower was built. A PRR track diagram from 1965 has the notation “built (or rebuilt) 1928.”

The LE&P opened in 1911. Could the tower have been built then? Or was it built earlier?

I’ve heard various speculations from railroad historians on that point but my visit Saturday yielded no new hard information about the origin of Brady Lake Tower.

I enjoyed my visit to the tower. One of the speakers said the bottom floor might be converted to a light food service facility that is open part time to sell snacks and beverages.

Towner’s Woods is the most popular park in the Portage Park District network and strategically located on the Portage Hike and Bike Trail.

So Brady Lake Tower seems assured to have a long continued life.

But as for when that life began as a railroad facility, some mysteries, it seems, might never be solved.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

A view from a window of the operator’s bay of the Norfolk Southern tracks. The trees weren’t there back when this was an active tower.

To say the least, the second floor of Brady Lake Tower is cluttered.
The view is looking toward where the operator’s desk probably sat.

Roger Durfee records the railroad exhibit on the first floor of Brady Lake Tower with his cell phone.

Bruce Dzeda gives a presentation of the railroads that passed through Brady Lake.

Brady Lake Tower to be Open Oct. 8

The Portage Parks Council will hold an open house on Oct. 8 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s former Brady Lake Tower, which now sits in Towner’s Woods Park

Bruce Dzeda, author of Railroad Town: Kent the Erie Railroad, will speak during the event on the railroads that served the Brady Lake region.

The tower is not normally open to the public.

Built in 1928 and known until 1957 as Brady’s Lake Tower, the structure was a block and interlocking facility at the eastern terminus of the Lake Erie & Pittsburgh, which was used by the New York Central.

The LE&P diverged from the PRR at Brady Lake and ran westward to Marcy in Cleveland. NYC trains used trackage rights on the PRR and Baltimore & Ohio to access Youngstown.

Declining traffic on the LE&P led to Brady Lake Tower being closed in 1966, but it was kept as an emergency block station through 1970.

Remembering the LE&P

Most of the former right of way of the Lake Erie & Pittsburgh is now a hiking and biking trail. The trail is shown crossing over Barlow Road.

The right of way of the Lake Erie & Pittsburgh railroad is today mainly a hiking and biking trail, but it used to be an important link in the area’s transportation system.

The LE&P was a paper railroad. It existed legally but had no equipment.  Everything was supplied by the New York Central, which owned it.

Built around 1910, the LE&P ran from Marcy in Cleveland to a connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad at Brady Lake. From there trains ran on trackage rights either to Alliance and Minerva, or to Ravenna where they got on the Baltimore & Ohio to go to Niles Junction.

From there trains went back to the PRR until reaching the Lake Erie & Eastern (another paper railroad) at Girard. The Lake Erie & Eastern took the trains across Youngstown into the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie yards at Struthers, Ohio.

This was quite a confusing arrangement but it made for a direct Cleveland-Youngstown route for both the NYC and PRR.

The B&O between Ravenna and Niles Junction had trains of the NYC and Pennsylvania railroads as well as its own. That must have been a sight. Also, the LE&P had PRR trains using it as well.

The story doesn’t end there, however. The LE&P originally planned to build from Cleveland to Lorain on a routing that would take it through Berea just south of the current Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.

This was never completed but it was graded and bridge piers were constructed over the east and west branches of the Rocky River. These piers still stand.

The LE&P was busy until the Penn Central merger. It was quickly abandoned and torn up with only a two-mile siding from Brady Lake to serve Hugo Sand near Twin Lakes and the Akron water treatment plant. The grade of the route was level, but it hugged the east side of the Cuyahoga Valley. Many tall steel bridges were required to cross Marcy, Tinkers Creek and Brandywine Creek

These bridges required heavy maintenance that Penn Central could not afford.

The ex-PRR mainline paralleled the LE&P just a few miles east and had signaled double track as opposed to the single-track dark territory of the LE&P.

Throw in the automotive plants located on the Pennsy and it was a no brainer for Penn Central’s management team to favor that route over the LE&P.

I was able to photograph a Conrail local on the ex-LE&P in 1989 switching the remaining track at Brady Lake. NS served this branch for while, but I have not seen any trains on it in about four years now.

Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon

There were plenty of trees along the last segment of the ex-LE&P that was used by Conrail and later Norfolk Southern.

A pair of Conrail GP38-2s was typical power for a local freight.

Bringing up the rear is bay window caboose 21313, N21 class. Interstingly, the N21 class 21202-21313 built by Conrail in 1978 was the last of that order. These were the only cabooses that were built for Conrail.

The LE&P diverged from the ex-PRR at Brady Lake tower. The westbound track rose in elevation until crossing over the Pennsy on this bridge located just west of Lake Rockwell Road. The eastbound track is visible at the far left.

The former eastbound main of the LE&P is still extant, joining the NS main nearly beneath the Lake Rockwell Road overpass. A westbound NS manifest freight passes the junction.

A map of the former New York Central Cleveland Division shows the former LE&P and the trackage rights arrangement that the NYC had to reach Youngstown from Cleveland.

Brady Lake tower still stands inside the Tower’s Woods Park in Portage County.

The former LE&P right of way, now a trail, in a view looking west from Ohio Route 91.