Ask anyone around the Record Publishing Co. offices what was on my mind constantly prior to April 26 and they all would know the answer.
Train trip to Pittsburgh.
Back in 1985, I rode an Orrville Railroad Heritage Society train from Brewster (Stark County), headquarters of the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, to Zanesville and back.
The society offers three or four passenger excursions a year, and this year I decided to climb aboard for a trip from Orrville to Pittsburgh and back, which covered nearly 200 miles.
It was one of the most fun days I've experienced in a while. It also was my first visit to Station Square along the Monongahela River across from downtown Pittsburgh.
I awoke at 5:30 that Saturday morning to head to Orrville, a town of about 8,500 people in northeast Wayne County. I ate some biscuits and gravy at Mrs. J's restaurant on the main street (Route 57).
The town has several industries, including the famous J.M. Smucker Co. and Smith's Dairy, known as "the dairy in the country."
It also has a rich railroad heritage, with the Wheeling & Lake Erie and Norfolk Southern main lines still existing. The NS formerly was a Pennsylvania line.
There also is a restored 1868 depot just a stone's throw away from where we boarded the train at McGill and West Pine streets.
The ORHS runs its trips on the W&LE and Ohio Central Railroad lines. Northwest of Orrville, the W&LE runs to Toledo, with a spur to Huron on Lake Erie's shore.
The line from Toledo to Warrenton in Jefferson County on the Ohio River was built in the 1870s and early 1880s. It was a very active coal shipping line until the late 1970s.
More than 600 people rode on the 13 passenger cars to Pittsburgh, including a first-class Pullman car right behind the W&LE and ORHS diesel locomotives.
Starting out the trip
We pulled out of Orrville at about 8:15 a.m., with the first point of interest being W&LE's large yard, repair shops and headquarters building in Brewster, which I visited just last fall.
The yard still can accommodate 1,000 cars, but in its heyday it could handle 1,700. In the early 1900s, the company built its own steam locos there.
Just east of Brewster at Harmon, a wye off the main line heads to Canton. Also, the R.J. Corman Group short line crosses the main line and the OCR runs south to Zanesville.
The Corman line formerly was the Baltimore & Ohio, the same line which ran south through my hometown of New Philadelphia. The headquarters for Corman's 50-mile line is in Dover.
Rolling southeast, we passed many picturesque farms on the early part of the trip, then in northern Tuscarawas County the terrain got more hilly.
We passed through Bolivar, over Interstate 77 and through Somerdale in Tuscarawas County and Sherrodsville in Carroll County.
The latter is the site of the Eastern Ohio Basketball Camp operated by the Huggins family, of which West Virginia University coach Bob Huggins is a member.
In March, 17 cars and a locomotive derailed on the W&LE line near Sherrodsville. Some equipment used to put the cars back on the tracks was still there.
In Harrison County, we went through Bowerston, Scio and Jewett, including right past the now defunct Scio Pottery Co., beside which several tanker cars were parked on a siding.
At one time, a Pennsylvania line and the W&LE line ran parallel for 12 miles between Bowerston and Jewett. The old Pennsy line is now a hike-bike path and W&LE and OCR share the original W&LE route.
If we'd have continued on the original W&LE line, we'd have gone through Adena, Pine Valley and Dillonvale to Warrenton, but that stretch has been bandoned.
In Adena, there once was a fair-sized yard where coal trains were assembled before making their way to the Lake Erie ports.
That's also the line where I remember seeing three or four coal trains rolling by each Friday night while covering a couple of Buckeye West High School football games in the mid-70s.
The W&LE leased its lines to the Nickel Plate Road in 1949, then Norfolk & Western and later Norfolk Southern operated the line from 1964 to 1990 until W&LE re-emerged.
Rolling on to the Burgh
Just east of Jewett, we proceeded on the old Pittsburgh & West Virginia line across Jefferson County, the West Virginia panhandle and to Rook yard on the west side of Pittsburgh.
West of Mingo Junction we went by a vanadium plant which was closed down about 25 years ago. Vanadium is an element used in making alloys used at the Ohio Valley's many steel plants.
A mountain of white slurry waste towered behind the old plant. It was pumped up the mountain for disposal and has remained there for decades.
The terrain really got wild in Jefferson County, the W.Va. panhandle and western Pennsylvania, with small rivers, creeks and rock outcroppings visible in every direction.
From western Jefferson County to Pittsburgh, we passed through 13 tunnels, which ranged from about 500 to 2,000 feet long.
Some places along this scenic stretch, the tracks were elevated, while at others they went through hollows with jagged shale sticking out alongside.
Nearly five hours after we departed Orrville we arrived in Rook yard and were taken on about a dozen buses to Station Square, only a 20-minute trip.
We spent about 2 1/2 hours at Station Square. The only rain we experienced all day -- two heavy, 10-minute downpours -- occurred while we were there.
I ate a pizza in the Buckhead Saloon, and spent the remaining time walking along the CSX tracks and Monongahela River photographing trains, the Pittsburgh skyline and the nearby 150-foot incline.
Buses took us back to Rook yard, from where we departed at about 4:15 p.m.
Returning to Orrville
The return trip took a little longer, and the last part was after dark, as we arrived back in Orrville at 10:10 p.m.
As we approached Jewett, the train had to stop for 30 minutes to allow an eastbound OCR freight to pass since that is the stretch shared by the two railways.
A little girl behind me said she counted 104 cars as the OCR train passed on the old Pennsy line about 100 feet from us. The pause gave me a chance to walk through the other cars.
Our second delay was at the east end of Brewster yard, where a signal malfunctioned, indicating a Corman train was about to cross our path. But it was a false alarm.
Once night fell, the ride became a bit boring because we couldn't see anything outside except headlights on autos waiting at grade crossings.
After driving back to Kent from Orrville, I slept soundly that night after an exciting, but tiring day.
I'm looking forward to the ORHS's Medina loop trip Oct. 11. It will go from Orrville through Brewster, Canton, Hartville, Mogadore, Akron, Medina and Spencer.
A Pittsburgh overnighter will be offered Aug. 23-24. Anyone interested in the trips can visit ORHS's Web site at www.orrvillerailroad.com.
E-mail:
klahmers@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155