Cecil, OH: Wabash Depot and Junction Tower: Wabash vs. Big Four

Mitch Mitchell posted
Cecil Oh. Wabash RR Depot & Tower. The Depot was removed during the early 1950's

The east/west line was the Wabash line and it is now a new shortline. The north/south route was Big Four.

Satellite

The Big Four did not cross the Maumee River until quite a ways further northwest. Look at how many logs one pier can jam up.

From a sharing of the posting:

Jim Etchie Cecil Ohio back in the early nineteen-hundreds was a bustling community with the north - east, south-west Wabash, crossing the north-south Cincinnati Northern! Today not too much there🙁

Update: Jim Etchie posted two photos with the comment: "Vintage photos of the Cincinnati Northern Railroad & the Wabash diamonds and Depots at Cecil Ohio in Paulding County....."

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Update:

Mike Snow posted
Napoleon Defianace & Western just south of Cecil OH, on the former Cincinnati Northern Railroad. In the background is the Lafarge Paulding OH, facility and a customer of the ND&W with inbound fuel and outbound loads of cement. The former CN has been used lately more as a holding track. ND&W 3054 & Gettysburg 105 pulling a cut of cars off the former CN line and just south of the US24 overpass.

Garrett, IN: B&O Depot and Roundhouse

More about the B&O in Garrett, IN, is here.

3rd of 6 posted by Marty Bernard
 Garrrett, IN Depot, 1989, Karl Miller photo.
1st of 6 posted by Marty Bernard
CSX Garrett, IN depot in May 1989, Karl Miller photo.
David L White: Looks like there's some grips setting on the benches, crews waiting for their train to show up.
Darren Reynolds posted
B&Os "G" Office Garrett, Indiana ("G" Office was located Inside the  train station)
Dennis DeBruler

Marty Bernard documents this as a 1989 Karl Miller photo, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2982762042015713&set=pcb.2982762175349033

 

Thomas Bowers posted
Garrett, Ind 1981
Raymond Shields: At this time I was the road foreman at Willard and got to run this engine.

Scott Griffith posted
Awesome pic of our brother terminal in Garrett Indiana were I hired out

I cannot reconcile this photo with a 1951 aerial photo because in the photo there is a street, not a track on the backside of the roundhouse.

Scott Griffith posted
One for the Garrett guys

Scott Griffith posted
 know not B&OCT but Garret roadhouse , some of us worked out there.
Rick Kessler My Dad always said that the reason he never went on the road was because he had my Mom here near East Chicago and then he would need a girlfriend out east. Two women would be just to hard to juggle.....

Michael Gentis posted two photos with the comment: "Payday at the roundhouse and workers at the cinder pit B&O shops Garrett, IN. Ca. 1920."

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Richard Shulby commented on Michael's post
Apparently the "old" or 1st roundhouse. Here's a postcard of the "new" roundhouse presumably from 1915- design details would support that date range. The old one was apparently just west of the new one, per an index map (no detail) on an 1895 Sanborn map. Thanks for posting!

1957 Garrett Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

Michael Gentis posted two photos with the comment: "The original roundhouse at the B&O shops Garrett, IN. The second depicts the aftermath of a fire at the second roundhouse and turntable 1961."

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Rick Shilling posted
Undated Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Roundhouse, Turntable, Shops and Yard at Garrett, Indiana.
Dennis A. Livesey: The date would be a few years after steam. That would have been about 1957. So maybe 1963? Brent Bierce: This area looks very dirty even for a railroad. My grandpa worked for the B&O and retired CSX in 1987. He always talked about how the B&O equipment was never taken care of. He said they loved getting stuff in the Chessie era from WM equipment because they took care of their equipment way better than the B&O. [There are several comments about the polluted ground.]

Ghost Rails and Forgotten Highways posted

The B&O Put a Town Where an 1875 Locomotive Ran Out of Water

There was nothing there. The railroad picked the spot, bought fifty acres, platted a town in 1875 and named it after John W. Garrett, who was president of the Baltimore & Ohio at the time.

The National Register file is specific about why that spot: the site was selected on the basis of how far a locomotive of 1875 could travel east from Chicago before it needed to refill its boiler. Not a crew district, not a coal supply. Water.

Then they built the thing the town existed for. Car repair shops, headquarters of the B&O's Chicago Division, and it kept growing until the complex covered close to ninety acres with thirty-eight company buildings and sixteen miles of yard track inside it. John King, the B&O's first vice-president, personally put up a commercial block downtown in 1875, in a town that was months old. By 1913 five thousand people lived in Garrett and two thousand men worked in the shops. The nomination puts it plainly: virtually every household in Garrett has some association with the railroad, sometimes through several generations.

Here is the part that does not go the way you expect. The big car shops closed in 1921 - thirty years before the diesels everybody blames. The division headquarters went in the early sixties. The last roundhouse came down in 1968. The final Amtrak train called on September 9, 1995 and the station was demolished that same year.

And Garrett is still there. CSX still runs the main line through it. The 2020 census counted 6,542 people, which is about fifteen hundred more than lived there when the shops were at their peak. It stopped being a railroad town and became a town near Fort Wayne, and it never emptied out.

Did your people work the Garrett shops?

The tidy version of this story is that dieselization killed Garrett, and the federal record does not support it. The shops that employed most of the town were substantially shut in 1921. What followed was a slow withdrawal over about fifty years, in a town that outlived it.

Paul Stumpff: They would have probably stopped once or twice to refill the tender with water. Hundred miles dealt with engine change because of needing servicing and crew change.

Justin Newhall: This isn’t quite right. First, they’d be refilling the tender, not the boiler. And an 1875 steam engine couldn’t even travel that far on a tank of water. It was closer to 50 miles on flat track. So there’d be more stops for water before Chicago.

Greg Alexander commented on the above post

Garrett HS still honors their origin by using the nickname Railroaders.

Mark Hensinger 0321: Greg Alexander John Hutton painted that beautiful mural. Also, my football coach and athletic director.

A talented and good man of the community. Always consider him my friend.

Aliance, OH: PRR's Depot and Tower: PRR vs PRR

(Satellite)  Some of the older pictures show the tower with the long side along the PFW&C.

Rick Fleisher posted
PRR at Alliance, Oh. Center is the PFW&C and crossing from the right is the C&P.

Raymond Storey posted, 2x
[Another study in different artists colorizing the same photo.]

We are looking timetable east on the PFW&C. C&P was the Cleveland and Pittsburgh. You can catch a glimpse of the roundhouse and coaling tower behind the depot on the PFW&C side. By 1928, both routes were owned by the Pennsy. A 1950s aerial photo shows the roundhouse is gone, but the turntable still exists. The depot existed in a 1952 aerial photo, but was gone in a 1971 photo.

Update:

Rick Fleisher posted

AltoonaWorks posted
6/2017 - A doublestack train makes the turn from the Ft Wayne Line to the Cleveland Line at Alliance, Ohio.
David Andrew Wieting Flagpole on the right marks the location of a small stone marker that commemorates the brief visit by Abraham Lincoln through Alliance in 1861 on his way to DC for his Inauguation. He came east on the Panhandle through Columbus, then to Pittsburgh, then west on the Fort Wayne, then did what this freight is doing and headed north to Cleveland on the C&P. Then he took the Water Level Route to NYC. Pennsylvania rails were reached once again at Philly. At that time the NJ RR and Canal Co was not yet PRR controlled. Also, the present NEC mainline through Princeton Jct hadn’t been built. Instead, Lincoln’s train would have followed the D&R Canal between Kingston and Trenton, NJ. While Lincoln was President the current alignment was built, 1863-4.

David Andrew Wieting I say all that because recently the anniversary of that history trip was celebrated in 2011, and the more somber return trip in 2015. On the return trip his train did not pass through Pittsburgh and Alliance.

Elaine Luck posted
Shared from the Ohio Vintage Postcard Group
Andy Brandley http://www.alliancehistory.org/history.html

Dennis DeBruler By 1928, all the track you see was owned by the Pennsy. It is now owned by the Norfolk Southern. You can tell it is an old photo because it still has the junction tower and roofs over the platforms. http://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/.../aliance-oh-prrs...

Chicago, IL: 1907 State Street (3 streetcar tracks)

A more general study of streetcars in Chicago

Glen Miller posted, if you follow the link, you can access full screen resolution
Chicago, 1907. "State Street south from Lake Street." At left, the Masonic Temple and Marshall Field department store. Photo by Hans Behm.

And Shorpy has even higher resolution. A Facebook comment observed "Amazing. Autos, street cars, horses all compete for the same space and no stop lights." But I could not find any autos. Nor a crossing gaurd. How did they determine right-of-way at the intersections?

Peoria, IN: Wendel Farm's Combine Shaped Playground Equipment

Four pictures posted by Wendel Farms with the comment:

We are very excited to introduce our newest attraction to Wendel Farms Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch! Come out for some fun on our combine slide!
Thank you to Smith Welding for doing a wonderful job.
* SAFETY FIRST. Please remember working farm machinery is never a toy or for play. We want every child to be safe!

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Smith Welding & Repairs is, rightly so, very proud of their work because they posted seven pictures with the comment:

Here is the newest addition to the Wendel Farms! Make sure you get out and see the combine and all of the other great attractions! https://www.facebook.com/WendelFarms/

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Rochelle, IL: C&NW Freight House

Rochelle Flagg Township Museum posted
Looking across the Chicago & North Western tracks in Rochelle. Date unknown.

This would be CN&W's freight house; you can see the depot in the background.

In the following photo, I put red rectangle around the freight house, a green rectangle around the depot and a yellow rectangle around the old gas station that sets at a 45-degree angle to the roads.

1939 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Decatur, IL: ADM Intermodal Yard

Archer Daniels Midland took advantage of its plant being served by NS, CN, and CSX to create an intermodal yard west of its main plant. CN has been aggressive in better leveraging its US assets of GTW, IC, WC, and EJ&E to increase traffic to the midwest.

Decatur – Intermodal container shipments are increasing in Decatur thanks to a recent logistics and marketing deal between Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and the Canadian National Railroad (CN).
CN is transporting an increased number of import containers from the Port of Prince Rupert, B.C. and the Port of Montreal to ADM’s intermodal ramp in Decatur.  Three trains a week are coming into the Decatur facility.
ADM reloads the empty 40-foot containers in Decatur with export loads of grain and processed products for global markets using CN’s rail network.
“CN brings to the table an unparalleled three-coast network reach, extensive contacts in Asian markets, sophisticated freight forwarding knowledge and expert U.S. customs and marketing support,” according to JJ Ruest, CN executive vice-president and chief marketing officer.
“We are pleased to see rising volumes of imported containers arriving at our intermodal ramp via CN for area distribution in Illinois.  The resulting empty container capacity is essential in our efforts to grow exports of our products to global markets, especially in Asia,” stated Dennis Whalen, ADM vice-president – transportation, intermodal freight.
Economic Development Corporation president Ryan McCrady says CN and ADM are helping to grow the area economy. [wandtv]

As a resident of the Chicagoland area, I do hope shippers shift from the Chicago area intermodal yards to Midwest Inland Port.

Midwest Inland Port
It is easy being green.
#NoTrafficBackupsHere

I can't get a link for reference, but I found this comment in a Midwest Inland Port post of a JOC link: "With an average turn time of 25 minutes, the Midwest Inland Port is turning trucks 26% faster than Chicago's fastest terminal."

JOC

In the Facebook posting of this link, David Jordan lists some of the "processed products": "frozen soy burger patties, packaged oils, gluten feed." Caterpillar is another nearby exporter, at least when the global economy is strong.

Other examples of CN forwarder locations I have described are Indianapolis and Cleveland (link to Facebook comments).