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

(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

1901/58 Bellevue @ 62,500

Mar 22, 1969 @ 24,000; AR1VCCI00010050