NORM Begins 2023 Season

The Northern Ohio Railway Museum has launched its 2023 season.

The museum, located near Seville, will operate trolley cars on the second and fourth Saturday of the month through Sept. 23.

Among the cars in the collection that will operate this summer is a former Shaker Heights Rapid center-door car built by G.C. Kuhlman Car Company in 1914.

Car 12 is one of 201 such cars built for the Cleveland Railway Company, a predecessor of today’s Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority.

The car will run every hour on the hour between 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., weather permitting.

All day trolley tickets are $5 for adults and teens, $2 for children 6-12 and free for children 5 and under.

Tours of the NORM collection will be offered every hour on the half hour and take about thirty minutes. Admission is free but donations are accepted.

More information is available at northernohiorailwaymuseum.org or the museum’s Facebook page.

Conrail Museum to Open April 1

The Conrail Historical Society plans to open a museum in Pennsylvania on April 1, the anniversary date of the formation of the railroad.

The museum is housed in a former Conrail 86-foot hi-cube auto parts boxcars. The museum is located in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and is near the Cumberland Valley Railroad Museum.

The Conrail museum cost $150,000 to create and will contain various artifacts of the railroad that operated between April 1, 1976, and May 31, 1999, when it was divided by Norfolk Southern and CSX.

The Conrail museum sits on a section of panel track adjacent to the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail, which itself uses a former right of way. The abandoned Cumberland Valley Railroad was operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Central, and Conrail.

“We’re approaching 25 years since Conrail was divided and the legacy of Conrail — if not for an organization and museum such as this — would just disappear into history,” CHS President Brock Kerchner told Trains magazine.

Some former Conrail lines continue to exist in New Jersey, Philadelphia and Detroit as the Conrail Shared Assets Organization, which handles terminal switching for NS and CSX.

Artifacts at the Conrail museum include an ex-Erie Railroad semaphore signal and an interlocking tower model board from Virginia Avenue Tower in Washington.

The museum also contains various railroad work materials and documents.

Corman Donates Truck to Ky. Rail Museum

R.J. Corman has donated a Ford F350 hi-rail mechanic’s truck to The Bluegrass Railroad Museum in Versalilles, Kentucky.

The truck will be used by the museum to support its operations of providing what it termed “an interactive experience of historic railroading in Kentucky.”

The museum specializes in collecting historic railroad artifacts related to railroads that operated in Kentucky. It also operates tourist trains.

The Corman truck will replace the museum’s 50-year-old railroad speeders and be used to conduct track inspections and maintenance-of-way chores.

Corman said in a news release that the truck has the capacity to store numerous tools and parts for on-site repairs, something that the old speeders could not do.

C&O Phone Box Restored by Society

A former Chesapeake & Ohio railroad phone box has been restored by the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society.

The artifact is on display at the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge, Virginia.

The historical society said at one time the railroad had hundreds of these phone boxes, which continued to be used into the 1980s. But they were replaced other forms of communication.

The restored phone box came from the former C&O mainline in Charlottesville, Virginia.

It was donated to the C&OHS by society member and former director David Powell, who had acquired it during a construction project involving Interstate 64.

Powell kept the phone box for more than four decades before donating it to the C&OHS.

NORM to Reopen for Season on May 28

The Northern Ohio Railway Museum will reopen on May 28. Events planned for this year include public walking tours every Saturday until Sept. 24, 2022. Trolley rides will be offered every second and fourth Saturday through Sept. 24.

Upcoming presentations by NORM members have been set in March and May. On March 12 Blaine Hays will present a program on the history of the museum. Hays will present a program on May 7 on the history of Cleveland Union Terminal.

Both presentations begin at 9:30 a.m. in the Hinckley Township Administration Building.

In advance of the opening of the 2022 season, an orientation session will be held on May 14 for walking tour guides, trolley operating personnel and store personnel. It will be held at the Museum in car 1225 at 10 a.m.

EL Dining Cars to be Moved from Scranton

Two former Erie Lackawanna dining cars are being moved from their current home in Pennsylvania to a new museum in New York.

The cars, which are owned by the Dining Car Society, formerly known as the Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society, have been based in Scranton for the past 15 years.

They will move to the Port Jervis Transportation History Center in Port Jervis, New York, sometime before the museum celebrates its grand opening over Memorial Day Weekend. 

The collection of dining cars includes, former Lackawanna No. 469 and EL No. 741.

The announcement of the move indicated that Lackawanna No. 470, will remain in Scranton and be transferred to the Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad because of its historic ties to that part of Pennsylvania.

The Dining Car Society also has sold 1970s era commuter cars, one to the New York, Susquehanna & Western Technical & Historical Society and the other to the Port Jervis museum.

Three-Way Meet in North East

It’s a three-way meet with history at the Lake Shore Railway Museum in North East, Pennsylvania, on Sept., 29, 2012. The CSX westbound is on Track 1 of the Erie West Subdivision. Looking on are Norfolk Southern B32-8 No. 3562 and South Shore 2-D+D-2 No. 802. The 3562 is the first Dash 8 to be preserved at the museum, which specializes in locomotives built by GE at its Erie locomotive assembly plant in Lawrence Park. The South Shore “Little Joe” is one of just two such locomotives of that carrier that have been preserved with the other located at the Illinois Railway Museum.

Photograph by Craig Sanders

Museum Won’t Repaint BL2s Into Monon Colors

The Monon Railroad was among a handful of operators of EMD’s BL2 locomotive.

Although an Indiana railroad museum has acquired a pair of the units it has no plans to repaint them into Monon colors.

Instead the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum plans to keep them in their Bangor & Aroostook livery because the locomotives were originally delivered to that road.

The units, Nos. 52 and 56, arrived in North Judson, Indiana, in June. They had most recently operated on the Saratoga & North Creek, a New York State tourist railroad.

No. 52 was fired up on July 14 and reportedly ran pretty well despite having sat dead for three years. The unit has a few water leads that need to be fixed.

No. 56 has electrical problems that need to be resolved but that work is not expected to begin until No. 52 is operating and gains a Federal Railroad Administration blue card.

Museum officials have received many requests that No. 52 and 56 be repainted in Monon black and gold, but they say they want to maintain the historical accuracy of the locomotives.

One Monon BL2 has survived and is in the collection of the Kentucky Railway Museum in New Haven, Kentucky. The Monon once had nine BL2 in service.

The Hoosier Valley Museum does have three pieces of former Monon equipment.

They include an SW1 switcher, steel transfer caboose 81551 and a 40-foot steel boxcar built in 1941.

Kentucky Museum Gets Pandemic Grant

A Kentucky group restoring a steam locomotive has received a $20,000 grant from COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

The grant was given to the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation through Kentucky Humanities, a local non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Kentucky Steam is developing a museum in Ravenna, Kentucky, on the site of a former CSX yard.

The organization qualified for the grant because of the educational programs it’s developing at its museum, which will be show visitors about the operation of historical railroad equipment including steam locomotives.

Kentucky Steam is also restoring to operating condition Chesapeake and Ohio 2-8-4 No. 2716,

NKP 765 to Appear at Mad River Museum

Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 will be in residence at the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum in late September.

It will be reunited with another former NKP Berkshire steamer, No. 757, which is part of the museum’s collection.

No. 765 will be at the museum from Sept. 24 to Oct. 3 and will participate in a number of events, including caboose rides, hostler experiences and night photo sessions.

The event is being billed as “Berkshires in Bellevue.” The 765 will be appearing in Bellevue following a two-week stay on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

The 765 and 757 are among six surviving Berkshire type locomotives of a one-time fleet of 80.

Museum president Chris Beamer said it will be the first time since 2013 that the 765 has operated at the museum.