
Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCC cars are inside the Van Aken loop in Shaker Heights in May 1973. Today most of these tracks are gone and Greater Cleveland RTA Blue Line cars do not turn around at the Van Aken station.
Photograph by Robert Farkas
This week’s two for Tuesday is a look back at Shaker Heights Rapid Transit car No.303 during its time at Trolleyville USA in Olmsted Township on Cleveland’s suburban west side.
No. 303 was originally an Aurora Elgin & Fox River car. It is shown taking passengers around Trolleyville in the 1960s/early 1970s.
Sept. 11, 2001, changed this country and the world forever. The World Trade Center in New York was destroyed. When the towers collapsed, the PATH train station in the basement was destroyed. Miraculously, two cars of a PATH train survived. They were hauled out and put in storage with the other debris. The two cars were eventually released. One of them ended up in the Trolley Museum of New York in Kingston, New York. Let’s all remember the victims of 9/11.
About a month ago I saw new subway cars for Chicago being transported by truck down I-271. I didn’t get any photos as it was going the other direction but I do have photos of a similar move on I-71 near Seville from several years ago.
This past Monday, I caught a truck transporting new Gevo radiator hood sections also on I-271 heading for Erie, Pa. Soon these will all be heading to a new plant in Texas. It just goes to show be ready for a train any time anywhere.
Photographs by Todd Dillon
A Cleveland RTA Waterfront car trundles out of South Harbor toward Tower City in October 2011. The route has been weekend only since 2010. (Photograph by Craig Sanders)
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority is expected to restore daily rapid transit service to its Waterfront Line this spring. In a related development, the RTA board last week approved spending $375,200 to repair two stations on the line that have received little use since 2010.
The stations are located at Settler’s Landing and Main Avenue. The work involves replacing brick and concrete pavers, repairing glass shelter panels, and removing ticket booths that are no longer needed because passengers can purchase tickets aboard the trains.
The 2.2 mile Waterfront Line opened on July 10, 1996, amid a surge of optimism and drew more than a million riders in its first year of operation. But patronage began to dwindle as several businesses in the Flats closed their doors and planned economic developments never materialized.
In November 2008, RTA reduced service to weekday rush hour and weekend service. In April 2010, service fell to weekend only.
But things are looking for the Waterfront Line with the expected June opening of the first phase of the Flats East Bank project, which will feature an office building, 150-room hotel and several restaurants. More than a thousand employees are expected to work in the complex and RTA hopes that will boost ridership.
The project is being developed by Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties.