Bellevue, OH: Extant Wheeling Tower: NKP/W&LE vs. Pennsy

(Satellite)

Viral Media posted

PRR in Bellevue, Ohio

PRR 6428 is passing Wheeling Tower in Bellevue, Ohio with a loaded coal train on the Nickel Plate Chicago mainline on May 9, 1955. The tower, sometimes known as Bellevue tower, controlled the crossing of the Nickel Plate mainline by the Wheeling & Lake Erie line up to Toledo and the NYC Norwalk Branch swinging back up to Toledo. The PRR ran about a mile on the Nickel Plate to the west end of Bellevue yard where the PRR regained the Sandusky Branch. Wheeling tower was manned by PRR and Wheeling operators giving the roads with fewer trains a chance over the very active NKP mainline. (photo N&W Historical Society)

The Sandusky & Columbus Short Line Railroad was built between Sandusky and Bellevue in 1891. In 1902 it became a part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. When N&W bought NKP in 1964, an ICC condition to the merger was that the PRR lease of the Wabash be transferred to N&W, along with the former PRR line from Columbus to Bellevue (which connected the systems). The line from Columbus to Sandusky is now the NS Sandusky District. 

[The first sentence is wrong. The Pennsy tracks did not join the NKP tracks until about a block north of the tower.]

The only tracks left are the NS/Pennsy tracks.

Street View, Jul 2024

 

Tyler Dixon posted

NS 8102 PRR leading NS 776 by the former PRR Wheeling tower in Bellevue, OH

This would have been where the NYC & NKP lines from Toledo would have crossed Pennsylvania’s Sandusky Branch now the NS Sandusky District. The NYC known as the Norwalk Branch would be torn up right after the formation of Conrail in 1976 and the NKP would have its diamond torn up and rebuilt into two connections instead under the W&LE

5/25/2025 my photo

Don Lee: Close but not exactly. The former NYC in Bellevue was not taken by Conrail but was purchased by NW. The diamond remained for several months to serve Bellevue Mfg. via the connection at York St. Once the connection at Kilborne St. was built, the diamonds were removed. The NKP/WLE connection toward Toledo dated from the origins of both roads. The connection toward Brewster was built after the 1964 NKP/NW merger.

1901/58 Bellevue @ 62,500

Mar 22, 1969 @ 24,000; AR1VCCI00010050

Darren Reynolds posted five images with the comment:

Conrails ( Ex-PRR/W&LE)

"Wheeling" tower 

Bellevue, Ohio

Jeff White: This was never a Conrail tower. Although built by the PRR to control where the nkp, the PRR, the wheeling and the NYC all crossed, it was never manned or controlled by PRR staff. It was manned by wheeling and lake Erie employees until that railroad was purchased by the nickel plate in 1949.

In 1964 the nickel plate was merged into the Norfolk and Western. The NW then bought the PRR line through Bellevue that went north to Sandusky, and South to Columbus, so it could tie it's former nkp and Wabash lines into the rest of the NW system.

Although the NYC line through town existed through the PC era, the "Norwalk Branch" was abandoned on April 1st 1976 (Conrail day), with only a portion of the line in Fremont Ohio being left active, and that section was sold to the NW.

Never operated or owned by Conrail.

Keith Baker: It was called "W&LE Tower" in a 1948 NKP timetable. By 1967, N&W called it "Bellevue Tower", which stuck through the NS era. I've heard some good stories about that place from a former fellow employee I trained with in Ft Wayne. "Stag films" were mentioned lol.