RAILROAD HISTORY

Bellevue, OH Style

Railroad fans have a real treat in store when they visit the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum in Bellevue, OH.

And, what a hoot when an Earth-pounding, modern freight train rolls past on the Norfolk and Southern line immediately adjacent to the museum as you are pondering the replica of the first locomotive ever to operate in Ohio (top, small photo).

In the lead photo top, lady friend Joetta Goodman visits Pennsylvania Railroad US Mail railway car #6570. This car was built around 1910 in the Altoona, PA (my hometown) RR shops and was used until 1972. It is 75 feet long and weighs 65,000 pounds.

There is a high probability I rode that very mail car on its last run. When I was with the local newspaper I caught a train in Canton late one evening and rode back to Mansfield doing a feature story on the final run of the railroad’s mail service.

Wandering through the passenger and Pullman cars at the museum rattled my nostalgic bones. I clearly recall many train rides as a youth from Mansfield to Altoona for our annual visits and a periodic, family funeral.

In the next small photo visitors wander through the exterior component of the museum where nearly 40 RR cars, depots, switchman and telephone shanties, semaphores and a gandy dancer “chariot” or two are on display.

I was particularly moved when pondering a Troop Sleeper Car and seeing row after row of three-high bunks used to transport our soldiers off to wars in times long past.

In the third lower photo a visitor eases out of the Wheeling and Lake Erie RR, Curtice, OH depot which once stood on their main line south of Toledo. It was built in 1822 and was typical of small, wooden stations of the time.

Next below is a view of a dining car as Ms. Goodman ponders an imaginary menu in Amtrak’s #8002 Seaboard Airline Diner. This 48 seat car was built in 1939 and was used on their New York to Florida “Streamliners”.

Finally, a pair of vintage, wooden cabooses is on display along with an antique, Mack, Railway Express truck. The caboose, long gone from modern trains, was used for crew accommodations.

Many of the buildings and rolling stock displays were chock full of railroad memorabilia; more than ample to leave the visitor and the scholar as well with a clear sense of RR history.

I leaned against the wall in the Pullman sleeper and could clearly remember the rhythmic clickity-clack of the train’s wheels rolling across the track joints while the car swayed to the alignment of the ballast.

I could smell the diesel aroma and cherished the fancy of a young boy’s sense of adventure from those rides long-ago.

Editor’s Note: If you hover your mouse over the small photos you should be able to left click and see an enlarged image. Also, see: http://madrivermuseum.org/.