ARRC Member’s Night is Saturday

The annual Akron Railroad Club member’s night and pizza party will be held Saturday (March 25) at the New Horizons Christian Church. There will be no regular meeting this month.

There will be a $5 cover charge to attendees of the member’s night. The pizza will be served at 6:30 p.m. Doors will open at 5:45 p.m.

Attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite non-alcoholic beverages and snack items to share. The club will supply a limited supply of soft drinks and water.

Member’s night photo presentations should be limited to 10 to 12 minutes. Those showing slides should have them preloaded in slide trays. Digital images should be on a USB device.

Railfest 2023 Set for Next Weekend in Kirtland

Railfest 2023 has been set for next weekend at Lakeland Community College in Kirthland. The annual spring show, which began in 1984, is one of the largest of its kind in Ohio.

Billed as the largest continuous two-day train show in the state, it is sponsored by the Western Reserve District of the National Model Railroad Association.

Show hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday (March 18-19).

Admission is $8 per person. A family ticket (couples) is available for $13 while a family pass for two adults with children under age 16 is available for $15. A two-day pass is available for $13.

There is free parking onsite with shuttle bus service. Food vendors will also be on hand.

Operating model railroad layout will feature the N, O, S, Lionel O and LGB G gauges.

Additional information is available at http://www.railfest.org and on Facebook at RailfestTrainshow.

Todten to Present at March RRE Meeting

The March meeting of the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts will feature a program by Bob Todten. The program is titled China: People, Places and Steam

The meeting will begin at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Friday (March 17) at the Church of the Redeemer, 23500 Center Ridge Road in Westlake.

In April the RRE will bring back its annual banquet, which was last held in 2019.

The banquet will be held on April 29 at Tony K’s restaurant in Berea. Tickets are $35 if purchased in advance and $40 if purchased at the door. Tickets will be on sale at the March meeting.

Presenting the program will be Terry Kolenc. It will be titled Golden Spike 150 and focus on operations of Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 steam locomotive.

The banquet will feature buffet style eating with roast beef and chicken cordon blue. The cocktail hour will begin at 6 p.m. with dinner served at 7 p.m.

Mangold to Present at February ARRC Meeting

The Feb. 24 meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will feature a program by longtime member David Mangold.

The program is titled Everything Else and will present images made in Colorado and, well, everything else. With Dave you never quite know what you will see.

Much of the program content will be on photographs Dave made between 2019 and 2020 with some images from 2022 thrown in.

The images were made before Dave began working as a locomotive engineer for the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train.

The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.

After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.

If Dave is unable to present, the program will be given by Ron McElrath and show footage of his first Ohio experiences in the early 1980s with a Super 8 mm camera and then a Panasonic video camera in 1987.

Marion Rail Group to Meet Saturday

Oldies but goodies will be shown during the program of the Marion Railfan Society on Saturday. The meeting begins at approximately 7 p.m. at Marion Union Station.

The program will be presented by Jim Corbett of Cincinnati who will be showing photographs from the Ed Kuhr collection that were made in the 1960s and 1970s.

Following the program there will be an open projector for the showing by attendees  of short digital or slide shows.

48 Years of Berea Railfanning to be the Program at February Railroad Enthusiasts Meeting

The February meeting of the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts will feature a program by Mark Demaline.

Titled Six Decades of Change at Berea, Ohio,1974-2022, the program will feature trains of Penn Central, Conrail, Amtrak, Norfolk Southern and CSX.

There will be images of trailers on flat car trains with cabooses, double-stacked container trains, Detroit Edison coal trains and trains with distributed motive power.

Also featured will be right-of-way views, vintage freight cars and more.

The meeting will begin at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Friday (Feb. 17) at the Church of the Redeemer, 23500 Center Ridge Road in Westlake.

Surdyk to Present at AOS Event on Feb. 9

Marty Surdyk will be among the headliners at the Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum winter speaker’s series.

Surdyk, a former Akron Railroad Club president and newsletter editor, will be showing images of excursion trains on the Ohio Central System,

The program opens with excursion trains rains that ran on the line through Sugarcreek when it was still operated by Norfolk Southern and continues into excursions out of Dennison in the Genesee & Wyoming era.

Featured will be the steam locomotives acquired and restored by the late Jerry Joe Jacobson and the excursion trains that they pulled over various segments of the Ohio Central system.

Not to be forgotten are the vintage F units Ohio Central operated including F9A Nos. 6307 and 6313 in their sharp livery that recalled the Pennsylvania Railroad pinstripes scheme.

Jacobson founded the Ohio Central and later created the Age of Steam Roundhouse to preserve his collection of steam locomotives, and vintage railroad rolling stock and diesel locomotives.

The program will begin at 6 p.m. on Feb. 9 at the Roundhouse.

Also slated to be presented at the Roundhouse is the documentary Engineering Tragedy: The Ashtabula Train Disaster.

It will be shown at 6 p.m. on March 9. Attendees will be able to meet the producers, directors and some of the actors of the documentary, which aired on PBS.

The Roundhouse was used in the making of the documentary with former McCloud River Railroad No. 9 used as the stand-in for both of the steam locomotives in different scenes.

The Ashtabula train disaster and bridge collapse was the worst train disaster of the 19th century, and left 97 dead.

It involved the Dec. 29, 1876, collapse of a bridge on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern over the Ashtabula River as The Pacific Express was rolling over it during a winter storm.

The two-hour long narrated documentary explores the events surrounding the disaster, including the engineering, construction, and collapse of the bridge, and the treacherous conditions that hampered the rescue attempts of trapped passengers.

In the wake of the incident, public pressure resulted in the adoption of standards for  bridge construction and inspection that continue to apply today.

Kachinko to Present at January ARRC Meeting

The Jan. 27 meeting of the Akron Railroad Club will take attendees to the west coast and Alaska.

ARRC Secretary David Kachinko will present a program that will begin by reliving a 1973 journey he made to the Pacific Coast. Then Dave will jump ahead about three decades and 3,000 mile north to show the Alaska Railroad’s Millennium Special Tour of July 2000.

The meeting will begin at 8 p.m. in the social hall of the New Horizons Christian Church, 290 Darrow Road in Akron.

After the business meeting the program will get underway at approximately 8:30 p.m.

At its annual meeting last November, ARRC members in attendance re-elected the current slate of officers to continue in their positions for 2023.

Aside from Kachinko, officers include Todd Dillon, president; Bill Kubas, vice president; Paul Havasi, treasurer; and Ron McElrath, newsletter editor.

Program to Feature Michigan Railroads

Marion Railfan Society will meet on Saturday (Jan 21, 2023) at Marion Union Station.

The meeting will begin at approximately 7 p.m. and feature a program presented by John Curtright, a Michigan resident.

He will be showing trains in Michigan and in the southern half of the lower peninsula from the past 10 years.

The show will feature trains of Great Lakes Central, Lake State Railway, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Amtrak. 

After the conclusion of the program, meeting host Bill Haines will show a movie of Pennsylvania Railroad trains around Bradford, Ohio, in the early 1960s and train wreck scenes from the Cincinnati area.

Club officials expect there will be enough time for audience members to show slides or digital images during an open projector segment.

Beach to Present at January RRE Meeting

The January meeting of the Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts will feature a program by Dave Beach.

Titled The South End of the CT&V, the program will consist of image of a former Baltimore & Ohio line that once ran from Cleveland to Mineral City, Ohio. Known as the Cleveland Terminal & Valley, the north end of that line is today used by the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

The meeting will begin at approximately 8:15 p.m. on Friday (Jan. 20) at the Church of the Redeemer, 23500 Center Ridge Road in Westlake.