Way, Way Back in Time in Berea

Many, if not most, railfans who spend time in Berea watching trains are unaware or only vaguely aware that there used to be another railroad line there.

The sandstone quarries in town were served by a railroad that interchanged with the Big Four (New York Central) near where railfans gather today to watch Norfolk Southern and CSX trains.

Stephen Titchenal, who lives in the Cleveland area, said he was reviewing some Interstate Commerce Commission valuation information that he collected at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

He noticed that Berea had an Engine house between 1875 and 1918 that was located at the start of the quarry spur so it probably served engines assigned to that.

The property for the quarry branch was purchased in 1868 and its tracks retired in sections between 1938 and 1950.

Titchenal said the building information came from the ICC Form 561 Final Engineering Report that includes information on bridges, passenger and freight stations and other buildings, signals and interlocking.

The accompanying map above shows the location of the quarry branch as well as the engine house.

The branch crossed Rock River Drive just south of where it today intersects with Depot Street.

The branch crossed the latter just east of the intersection.

Aside from bridge abutments next to the East Branch of the Rocky River there are few remnants of the quarry branch left in Berea and you have to know what you are looking for to find them.

Some Erie Railroad Archeology

I like to dabble in railroad archeology by looking for the remains of railroad infrastructure.

A good place to do that is along the Portage Hike and Bike Trail, which between Kent and Brady Lake is built on a portion of the former Erie right of way.

There remains one track still in place that is used by the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway, but otherwise much of the infrastructure is gone.

That includes the yard and its lead tracks. But if you look around, there are many relics of the Erie still sitting there.

The block signals were removed many years ago, but the bases on which they sat can still be found.

These signal base remains are located in Brady Lake next to the lone track still in place. At one time they supported a semaphore signal.

The concrete in this base is slowly succumbing to the forces of nature wearing it down and perhaps it is only a matter of time before it become just another pile of gravel.

But that won’t be for a while.

Railroad Archeology in Monroeville

The most visible reminder of the railroads past in Monroeville, Ohio, is this passenger station, which served the New York Central and its predecessor railroads. It has since been restored, but the tracks are long gone.

In the past few years I’ve found myself in Monroeville, Ohio, while chasing trains on the Wheeling & Lake Erie.

At one time, Monroeville was served by three railroads plus an interurban railway.

The railroads of Monroville included the Toledo-Brewster line of the original Wheeling & Lake Erie. This line still exists with the modern W&LE owning it between Brewster and Bellevue.

Monroeville was also served by a Willard-Sandusky branch of the Baltimore & Ohio, the Norwalk Branch of the New York Central and the Cleveland-Toledo Lake Shore Electric.

The Norwalk Branch began life as the Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland Railroad, which built between its namesake cities in the 1860s. It was later absorbed by the Lake Shore & Michigan  Southern, which in turn became part of the NYC.

The Norwalk branch was the main route of the LS&MS until it built a cutoff via Sandusky along Lake Erie, which today is the Chicago Line of NS. The Norwalk branch diverged at Elyria and rejoined at Milbury.

Penn Central continued to offer freight service on the Norwalk branch through 1976. The line was not conveyed to Conrail and was subsequently abandoned. Passenger service on the line ended in 1949.

I don’t know when the B&O branch was abandoned, but it likely continued in operation through the 1970s and possibly into the 1980s.  A portion of it still exists in Monroeville for the W&LE to serve a grain elevator.

The Lake Shore Electric last operated on May 15, 1938. Not long before then, the Eastern Ohio Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society — a forerunner of the Akron Railroad Club — ran a trip over the line.

During the 1960s, the ARRC chartered a B&O Rail Diesel Car and ran excursions between Akron and Sandusky to visit the Cedar Point amusement park.

I’ve long been fascinated by what railroads leave behind after they leave town. If you know where to look and what to look for,  you can find reminders of what used to be.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

The North Coast Inland Tail uses the former NYC Norwalk Branch. The view is from the bridge over the West Branch Huron River looking westward toward the NYC passenger station, which was built in 1863.

A train order board at the Monroeville station.

I don’t know if this train bulletin at the former NYC station is accurate.

The former freight NYC freight station still stands a short distance west of the passenger depot.

Looking westward on the Lake Shore Electric right of way with the passenger station on the left.

Looking northward toward the Lake Shore Electric (foreground) and NYC stations. The B&O tracks would have been to the right of both stations.

Looking southward on the former B&O right of way.

A relic from the days when these tracks operated as the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.

A restored property boundary marker.

A bridge pier that once held the Lake Shore Electric bridge over the West Branch Huron River.

The concrete base of what was once the northbound home signal for the B&O crossing of the NYC.

This signal cover is along the W&LE and may be still used.

These railroad ties are on the former Lake Shore Electric right of way. The LSE was abandoned in the 1930s, they probably were used as a connecting track between the B&O and the NYC.

The B&O and W&LE used to cross here. At one time there was a passenger station here that was used by both railroads. Next to the depot was a hotel and freight station. On the other side of that pile of ballast is the only remnant of track once used by the B&O.

A short stretch of the former B&O remains in place for the W&LE to serve a grain elevator. But this segment of the B&O is used only as a tail track that ends at a pile of ballast north of where the B&O and W&LE used to cross on a diamond.

 

Silent Monuments to the Valley’s Industrial Heritage

This bridge over the Cuyahoga River once led to the Jaite Paper Mill, but has not been used since the middle 1980s.

I’ve long known that there was a paper mill in Jaite that was served by a spur off the Baltimore & Ohio’s Valley Line between Cleveland and Akron.

Maps at such online sites as Google, Mapquest and Bing still show the rail spur diverging from the Valley Line, which is now owned by the National Park Service and used by the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

But I always thought that those maps were in error and that the rail spur had been removed years ago. It turns out that I was mistaken and not the maps.

While doing research for my CVSR book, I was able to determine where the paper mill had been located. I thought it had been west of the Cuyahoga River, but it was east of the river and southeast of Jaite.

I also discovered that the spur to the paper mill, which had been established in 1909 and closed in 1984, crossed the Cuyahoga on a through truss bridge.

That this bridge existed at all was news to me. I’d never seen a photograph of it and no railfan I know who is a native of Northeast Ohio has ever talked about it.

In reviewing satellite images, I discovered the bridge and most of the railroad spur still exist. I wanted to find them and the best time to do that is during the winter when there is less vegetation to deal with.

Saturday, Jan. 21 turned out to be an ideal day for railroad archeology in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

There was no snow on the ground, no precipitation was likely to fall and the temperatures rose into the lower 60s.

After having lunch with fellow Akron Railroad Club member Peter Bowler at the Winking Lizard in Peninsula, we drove to Jaite, parked in the lot of the CVNP headquarters and began walking southward along the CVSR tracks.

The switch for the paper mill spur has been removed, but its location was easy to find because there are still long cross ties that once held the diverging rails.

The spur has been cut a short distance from the Valley Line and it was apparent that it is used as a trail by fisherman and bird watchers.

As we made our way through the brush along the spur, we talked about how this location would make a good place for a nighttime ghost walk.

The spur is a virtual continuous curve and I could hear in my mind the shrieking and squealing of flanges combined with the low rumble of a Geep’s prime mover as it moved boxcars in and out of the paper mill.

Given the layout of the spur switch, the paper mill must have been worked by a northbound B&O local that backed cars in and pulled them out.

In short order we reached the bridge that carried  the single-track spur over the Cuyahoga.

I’ve always had a fondness for the visual aesthetics of through truss bridges.

Online background information about the bridge indicates that it was built between 1907 and 1909 and known as B&O Bridge No. 451/1.

The spur has not been used since the paper mill closed and the switch connecting it to the Valley line was removed in 2002, probably during a track rehabilitation project.

I’m not a bridge expert or structural engineer, but I could see that although the bridge appears to be in good condition, much work would need to be done to enable rail operations over it again.

Of course there is little to no likelihood that that is going to come about.

The paper mill spur and the bridge are silent monuments to the industrial past of the Cuyahoga Valley.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Still spanning the Cuyahoga River decades after the last train rolled over it.

No way would I walk across this bridge to the other side although I’m sure some people have done so.

Come spring the vegetation covering the rails on the bridge will turn green again.

Nature-made tunnel

Some rail has started to disintegrate.

Rails amid the weeds and trees.

The vegetation covering the spur is quite high in some places.

Today, the Jaite Paper Mill spur is used as a trail by some.

Where they cut the rails of the Jaite Paper Mill spur.

Long ties mark the spot where the switch for the Jaite Paper Mill spur was located on the B&O Valley Line.

Searching for the CA&C in Apple Creek

The view of the unused Cleveland, Akron & Columbus in the early 1970s in Apple Creek.

Not only are the tracks gone today, but the mill now has two additions and a slightly different look. The Pennsylvania Railroad passenger station may have been somewhere in this vicinity at one time.

The pastor giving the eulogy at the funeral for Richard Jacobs invoked the metaphor of a steam locomotive in describing Jake’s life.

As I listened, I turned to gaze at the stain glass windows of the United Methodist Church of Apple Creek and wondered when was the last time that the noise of a train vibrated those windows or that a locomotive horn was heard inside this sanctuary.

Apple Creek was served by a Pennsylvania Railroad branch between Orrville and Columbus that was often known as the CA&C (Cleveland, Akron & Columbus).

The line had a number of names before being taken over by the Pennsy, but the CA&C moniker stuck even decades after that company ceased to exist.

I knew that part of the ex-CA&C had been washed out during a drenching storm of July 4, 1969, and that service was never re-instituted between Orrville and Holmesville.

Apple Creek is located between those points and even as I listened to Jake’s eulogy I knew the answer to my question.

The ex-CA&C was never a busy rail line, but it was once an important one because it was the most direct route the Pennsylvania had between Cleveland and Columbus even if the route was meandering and featured a stiff grade over Baddow Pass.

Passenger service lasted until December 1950 in the form of an overnight diesel-powered Cleveland-Cincinnati train that did not stop in Apple Creek. As late as 1948, the PRR ran a pair of local passenger trains between Akron and Columbus that did call on Apple Creek.

In its final days of PRR stewardship, there was a pair of Cleveland-Columbus manifest freights, FC-1 and FC-2, which primarily conveyed boxcars of auto parts from Bedford and Twinsburg to assembly plants of Ford and Chrysler in the South and West.

With the coming of Penn Central, those trains were shifted to the former Big Four route between Cleveland and Columbus and the CA&C through Apple Creek saw only a pair of daily locals between Columbus and Orrville.

Then the washout came and the locals began operating Columbus-Millersburg, running north to Holmesville only as needed. No longer could train horns be heard inside the Methodist Church in Apple Creek.

Of course, at one time I imagine that folks sitting in this sanctuary must have heard the sound of Pennsy steam locomotives blowing for the crossing a few blocks down Main Street, which today doubles as U.S. Route 250.

As the pastor eulogizing Jake noted, a steam locomotive whistle has a distinctive sound that no one ever forgets and which has the ability to travel some distance. It can fill up a room, including a nearby church sanctuary.

At one time, steam locomotive whistles were an everyday occurrence in Apple Creek. But that was long ago.

After the service ended, I made a right turn out of the church parking lot and went to find the CA&C.

I wasn’t expecting to see railroad tracks. Those had been pulled up after abandonment was authorized in 1972. But often there are reminders of a railroad and I wanted to see if one peculiar to Apple Creek still existed.

While doing my book Canton Area Railroads, my friend Jeff Darbee had provide two images that he made in Apple Creek in the early 1970s.

One showed the rusty rails of the ex-C&AC and other showed a stone flower garden pot inscribed with the initials “CA&C.”

The flower garden pot, it turned out, was easy to find. It still sits right off Main Street and is in much better condition today than it was when Jeff photographed it more than 40 years ago.

But where were the tracks? A Rand McNally atlas of the Akron and Canton region covers Apple Creek and the maps show the railroad tracks as though it is still the 1950s.

The tracks were situated between Maple and High streets. Jeff’s photos showed an open area with a couple of structures in the background, one of which was a mill.

Those buildings still stand, although the mill has been modified and gained a couple of additions over the years.

There is an alley next to those buildings that I thought might have been the railway right of way, but the map showed two railroads tracks, one of which presumably was a siding for the mill.

In Jeff’s photo, corn is being loaded into a truck next to the mill and there is no railroad track there, suggesting that rail service must have ended quite some time before his visit.

The only track left when Jeff visited was located several hundred feet out from the mill and a three story building that looks much today as it did in the early 1970s.

The open area shown in Jeff’s photo is not so open anymore. A modern building that contains a post office and a Dollar General store sits there now.

I walked around to see if I could locate the former railroad right of way.

But the landscape has been reworked so much over the years that the tell-tale signs of a railroad right of way have vanished as earth was moved and reshaped.

Behind a long shed, I found a concrete footing that might have been the easternmost support structure for a railroad bridge over Apple Creek.

Yet the bottom land fields west of the creek are noticeably lower than the bluff on which I was standing. That suggested the railroad must have had what might have been an impressive bridge over the creek.

I drove out Bank Street and turned right onto Apple Creek Road in search of the remnant of a railroad right of way, a grade crossing.

It was not hard to find. There was a narrow, but level, open strip of land between two fields that led into town. On the other side, I detected a slightly raised linear strip of land that must have been the right of way.

Part of this has been paved and at first I thought it might be a hiking trail. But it turned out to be a driveway to someone’s home.

I drove back into town and went out on High Street because the map showed the railroad running parallel with that street.

I didn’t see any evidence of a railroad right of way, but the map said a railroad track used to run here and I could only conclude that the terrain has been reshaped since the rails were pulled up.

A short distance later, High Street made a rightward jog and I saw signs that there used to be a grade crossing here. On one side of the road were trees while on the other side was a farmer’s field.

There was a short stretch of elevated land that was even with the road on each side, which is often evidence that a railroad used to cross here.

But the elevation quickly drops slightly in that field. The railroad or a salvage company would have scooped up as much ballast as they could and the farmer would have plowed the land and in the process made the former right of way level with the rest of the field.

The next day I found two aerial maps of Apple Creek and they confirmed my theories of where the ex-C&AC tracks once ran.

Even though the rails had been pulled up and the roadbed flattened or reshaped, a former railroad right of way still tends to be stand out in an aerial photo.

The apparent path of the ex-CA&C that I had found the day before could be seen in the aerial photos, which matched the map showing the rail line.

As I drove through the countryside looking for the ex-CA&C, it occurred to me that this was the type of activity that Jake might have enjoyed doing.

Instead, it was because I traveled to Apple Creek on a Sunday afternoon to say farewell to Jake that I had the opportunity to look around for a long-abandoned railroad.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

A 19th century monument that was, perhaps, funded in part by the CA&C was looking rather down on its heels in the early 1970s.

Today, the monument that was neglected in the early 1970s has been spruced up and looks rather grand.

“C.A.&C.” inscription on a monument dedicated on July 4, 1897. The monument has easily outlived the railroad, no matter what name it was operated under.

The area between Maple Street at far right and those buildings at far left were once railroad space. Now that space is filled with a building housing the post office, a Dollar General store and (in the foreground), a small park. The statue has a railroad connection. It depicts Pvt. William Knight, an Apple Creek Civil War solider awarded the Medal of Honor for his role as the locomotive engineer for Andrews’ Raiders, which captured the Confederate locomotive “General,” touching off The Great Locomotive Chase of 1862 in Georgia.

This appears to be the east abutment for the bridge carrying the CA&C over Apple Creek.

Looking toward Apple Creek, the tracks would have crossed the creek just beyond the trees in the distance. The former CA&C right of way today splits two fields.

Looking west-southwest from Apple Creek Road. Maps show the tracks curving in the same direction as the concrete driveway here today. The slightly elevated ground also suggests a former railroad right of way.

Northeast of town the CA&C crossed High Street here. Note how the road from the right curves upward to a crown that suggests the tracks crossed on that crown. The view is looking northeastward. Somewhere in this area, a spur came off the CA&C and branched off to the left.

 

Appreciating the Beauty of a Silent Bridge

For untold decades this bridge has spanned the Mahoning River just west of Leavittsburg carrying trains of the Erie, Erie Lackawanna, Conrail and Ohio Central railroads.

But it’s been several years since a train rumbled between its trusses and chance are it will  never again feel the vibration of steel wheels on steel rails.

The ex-Erie Chicago line is still in place between Leavittsburg and Ravenna, but overgrown with weeds and trees.

Roger Durfee found and photographed this bridge in early November, and he and I made a visit to the structure recently during a railroad archeology outing to see how much of the former Erie remains between Ravenna and Warren, Ohio.

Snow covered the rails and right of way. Footprints and ATV tracks indicated that we had not been the first visitors here since the snow fell.

We approached the bridge from the west so all of the views shown here are looking eastward. All images were made with a zoom lens and we did not venture out onto the bridge proper.

There are still many iron truss bridges like this one that carry rails over rivers large and small. They speak of size, they speak of strength and they are monuments to a different generation of bridge engineering.

They have a beauty of their own if you take the time to appreciate it. I’m glad that we did.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

My Memory Proved to be Mistaken

Looking eastward on the former Erie Railroad mainline, part of which is now a hike and bike trail.

Looking westward into Ravenna from the Ohio Route 14 overpass of the former Erie Railroad. The North Freedom Street grade crossing can be see in the distance.

I have this hazy memory of driving to Alliance one day and crossing over the former Erie Railroad mainline on the northeast side of Ravenna on Ohio Route 14. I  looked down and saw that construction crews had been at work doing some grading and clearing work on the ex-Erie right of way.

I concluded that the former Erie tracks were being pulled up. Further reinforcing that belief was another memory of reading something — I don’t know where it was — that Norfolk Southern had removed the former Erie tracks east of Ravenna.

That combined with what I glimpsed, if only briefly, made sense. I knew that the former Erie between Kent and Ravenna was still used by the Akron Barberton Cluster Railway, but as far as I knew the line east of Ravenna was out of service and had been for a long time.

Someone had said the Ohio Central bought it, but no one I knew of had ever shown any photographs of trains on that line or spoke of having seen an OC train there.

I couldn’t see any tracks below as I passed over on Route 14, so the line must have been gone. Late last week, though, I discovered that the conclusions I had drawn from my memory had been mistaken.

During a railroad archeology outing to check out how much of the former Erie track is still in east of Ravenna, Roger Durfee and I paused at the top of the Route 14 bridge for a look and to get some photographs.

There is one set of ex-Erie tracks still in place. They are weed covered and hard to see unless you’re looking for them. I can see how I missed them during the brief glimpses that I had as I drove over this bridge.

The construction I had seen was probably for the trail, which runs next to the ex-Erie tracks in Ravenna and for a ways eastward.

The ABC still uses the ex-Erie to a point just west of North Freedom Street. There was a string of boxcars sitting on the main on the day that we visited. A nearby paper company is still a railroad customer.

Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders

Traces of Railroads Past Still Abound

A short Wheeling & Lake Erie locomotive and a single car roll over former Pennsylvania Railroad track in Ravenna in 2010. The former Erie Railroad line is visible behind the train.

In driving around last weekend, I took the railfan’s drive through Akron. Along the way I got some pictures of the old Erie Railroad bridge over Forge Avenue.

The track above has been out of service for more than 30 years and the Erie itself has been gone for more than 50 years, yet this bridge still proudly advertises this long gone line. Barely readable is even older lettering proclaiming the cities the Erie once served: New York, Cleveland, Jamestown, Chicago and others that are illegible.

Continuing my drive, I went down Eastwood Avenue to see the location of the Baltimore & Ohio roundhouse , which is now a fenced-in storage area. To the left, the old concrete coal dock still stands awaiting steam engines that will never come.

I then headed to Kent, loosely following the old Erie right of way. I thought I’d spend a few hours watching the CSX tracks there but being a weekend there weren’t any parking spots available.

I decided to go to Hudson, following the former Pennsylvania Railroad (now Norfolk Southern) from Brady Lake.

The current NS mainline only dates from around 1910 or so. It was built when the Pennsy double tracked and bypassed Ravenna.

The remaining Erie track between Brady Lake and Ravenna was originally PRR, which sold it to the Erie at this time. The trackage through downtown Ravenna became jointly operated by both railroads. Erie would switch for six months then PRR would switch for the other six.

West of Brady Lake, the PRR single track line was simply torn up. The right of way ran from 1/4 to 1/2 mile north of the current NS route. I’ve tried tracing it many times but that’s easier said than done.

With the winter snows I finally found it. It’s not much to look at, just a linear forest that nature has reclaimed.

I finished my day getting quite a few trains at Hudson although none were quite as satisfying.

Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon

The former Erie Railroad bridge over North Forge Street in Akron.

Waiting to refuel steam locomotives that have been retired or scrapped for more than five decades.

This was once a busy Pennsy mainline. Now the trees have taken it over.

A stretch of rail still lies in the street in Ravenna. Interurban cars have not traversed these rails since 1938.

An NS RoadRailer motors along at Hudson.

It was fun to see the trains on this busy NS artery, but not quite as satisfying as other things that I discovered.

Erie Lackawanna at Leavittsburg: Then and Now

The view looking east from the Ohio Route 5 overpass of SN Tower in Leavittsburg in the middle 1970s. The Erie Lackawanna was two years from being folded into Conrail, a move that eventually led to nearly all of the tracks in this scene being abandoned and removed.

It was a beautiful sunny and mild (for February) Sunday in Northeast Ohio, but I didn’t shoot a moving train . . . or any train for that matter. Instead, I did something I’ve wanted to do for a while now.

Back in the early 1970s I was a young man who had always liked the railroad and had developed a particular liking for the Erie Lackawanna. All my forays to see EL trains had been in my home town of Akron and a couple of other close-by locations.

Youngstown and Marion were faraway places, or so they seemed at the time. One weekend day the girlfriend and I were looking for something to do besides go to the mall or go out to eat. I suggested a road trip to, of all places, Leavittsburg, a small town near Youngstown.

She knew all too well of my “interest” in the railroad and was always up for a little road trip. So off we went. I had done a little homework and knew this area was an important junction for the EL. Getting this information back then required more than the click of a mouse.

I don’t remember the details of that afternoon other than thinking I should take a few photos of the railroad scene. Little did I realize how that little brain storm would shape my future, but I digress.

After some ground level photos I went up on the Ohio Route 5 bridge and snapped the overall scene shown in the top photograph.

I was using an Instamatic camera, a cheap plastic machine, including the lens. The small prints that the local Fotomat booth gave you from these negatives hid the overall horrid quality of photos that these cameras produced.

I’m sure that at the time I wasn’t too worried about the historical nature of the railroad in front of me or that I would be digging these photos out of a shoebox nearly 40 years later.

In the topt photo, an EL freight is eastbound on the double track First Sub Division heading for Niles, Girard and Brier Hill Yard. The First Sub extended between Cleveland and Pymatuning (near Sharpsville, Pa.). Also visible to the far left is the Second Subdivision, which extended between Brady Lake and Pymatuning. Shown at the far left is a section of it that was known as the Youngstown bypass.

Hot 100 and 99 symbol trains and other through trains with no Youngstown work used the bypass through Warren. The tower is SN, a somewhat basic brick building that controlled this junction. Note the utility pole in the driveway just to the left of SN Tower.

 Fast forward now to Feb. 5, 2012. I have wanted to revisit Leavittsburg for a long time and finally decided to just do it.

One of the first photos I wanted to get was, of course up, on the (rebuilt) Route 5 bridge. No plastic lens today, but no film either. And, of course no trains, let alone no EL.

Note that the utility pole is the only common thread between decades that seems to have stood its ground.

One track remains, now long unused, that was pieced together along a First to Second Sub alignment as you look east.

In the first ground level photo, we are looking west toward SN Tower and the Route 5 bridge. The view is from the main crossing in town (South Leavitt Road). From left to right are the Baltimore & Ohio line that ran between Newton Falls and DeForest Jct. via Warren. Also visible is the EL First Sub to Brier Hill. Behind the buildings and sand tower is the Second Sub.

The second ground level shot was taken from a vantage point just west of South Leavitt Road. The milepost in this photo – 50 miles from Cleveland – can barely be seen in the 1970s photograph next to a MOW building. The milepost is one of the few things left from the EL days in Leavittsburg that is still intact.

In the last photo, we are looking east down the Second Sub toward Warren from about the location of SN Tower. Note the local motive power that is tied up for the day.

So there you have it, a look at a crummy old photo that started a rail enthusiast down a path that hasn’t ended. The changes between 1974 and 2012 are more than any of us can list.

The Volkswagon 411 that got me there then, the Jeep Liberty that got me there last Sunday. The plastic lens camera and cheap color negative film developed by someone else has given way to a professional grade Canon digital camera that records images that I process on a computer.

That kid in college is now a railroader with Norfolk Southern, which operates portions of the former EL. I have no idea where the girl who was with me is these days. And I can share all of this instantly with thousands of like-minded people with a few clicks of a mouse instead of waiting months for a magazine to come out.

Life is good now, but I still miss the EL.

Article and Photographs by Roger Durfee

The utility pole in the center of the photo is the only thing left standing of SN tower. This view was recorded from the Ohio Route 5 bridge on Feb. 5, 2012.

A view looking west from South Leavitt Street. The former B&O train to the far left is still here, but the EL tracks crossing the street here are now gone.

A milpost is all that is left of the former EL First Subdivision in Leavittsburg.

The Youngstown bypass of the EL was part of the Second Sub Division that extended from Brady Lake (near Kent) to Pymatuning (near Sharpsville, Pa.). The view is looking eastward on the Youngstown bypass just east of SN Tower.