AOS to Offer Events Marking Anniversary of 1950 Troop Train Collision in West Lafayette, Ohio

The Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum will pay tribute to soldiers who were killed in a 1950 Ohio rail disaster with a virtual event that begins on Sept. 11.

The collision on Sept. 11, 1950, between a westbound troop train and the Spirit of St. Louis of the Pennsylvania Railroad near West Lafayette killed 33 members of the Pennsylvania National Guard en route to Camp Atterburry in Indiana.

AOS said in a news release that visitors to its website will be able to view a series of posts and videos exploring aspects of wartime railroading, historic materials related to that history, and information and images depicting the 1950 collision.

The posts will begin on Sept. 11 and be completed the next day.

The event is being undertaken in partnership with the West Lafayette Historical Society, which has an extensive collection of historic materials relating to 1950 crash.

These include original newspaper accounts, historic newspaper press photographs, personal photos, and artifacts from the wreck site.

These items will be displayed in the Roundhouse’s Depot exhibit building on public tour days of Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays during September and October.

A Fleeting Wisp of Ohio Central Glory

I’ve been going through my slide collection in recent weeks and scanning images to post online.

It’s been a diversion from the COVID-19 pandemic and brought back pleasant memories of what seemed to have been happier and less threatening times.

The photograph above of an Ohio Central passenger excursion train, though, is not one of those recent scans.

I scanned this image several months ago but have thus far refrained from posting it because of its lackluster quality.

Yet it’s the type of image in which I find myself taking solace these days and the fact that it’s less than ideal doesn’t matter.

I made this image on July 31, 2004, on a wood bridge at the west edge of West Lafayette, Ohio. The excursion originated in Columbus and was bound for Train Festival 2004 in Dennison.

It was one of several excursion trains I photographed that day during an event like few others I experienced in Ohio.

It was not an ideal day for train photography due to overcast skies and rain and drizzle. The slide is dark suggesting an under exposed image.

This photo has been sitting in a folder on my computer awaiting a decision to post it or delete it.

Sometimes a photograph has to wait for the right moment to be displayed, a moment when the content outweighs whatever technical flaws it has.

I was always a fan of the Pennsylvania Railroad inspired livery that Ohio Central FP9A units 6313 and 6307 had.

I once sat at a table with the late Jerry Jacobson at an Akron Railroad Club event and heard him say how much it cost to get those locomotives custom painted. I don’t recall the figure, but it wasn’t cheap.

Jerry talked about that expense in the same causal way that most people speak of how much they spent for dinner at a Bob Evans restaurant. In the scheme of things it isn’t that much.

I don’t have too many photographs of the Ohio Central FP9As in this livery and I didn’t see them operate very often.

Sure, I wish I had more photographs, but having regrets is as much a part of being a railfan photographer as bragging about what you did capture.

Everyone has missed out on something and everyone has something they wish that had more of than they do.

Everyone also can speak about days when they wished the weather and lighting had been better.

Having something is better than having nothing so although this isn’t one of my best images it reminds me of a day when I was there for something special.

There never was another train festival in Dennison or anywhere else on the Ohio Central like the 2004 event that was attended by 27,000 people.

Although the two steam locomotives that operated that day are at the Age of Steam Roundhouse, Jerry sold the FP9A locomotives and they can’t be seen in their PRR lookalike livery.

During the pandemic it is easy to think about what we can’t do.

It remains to be seen what end game the pandemic will bring, but for now we can look forward to some day resuming doing things we used to do without giving them a second thought.

Yet some things are not coming back. The steam excursions and other special movements that Jerry made possible may have lasted several years but in looking back on them now their time seems to have been rather fleeting.

Fortunately, our memories and photographs of those moments are not.