When the weather hits 80 degrees in early October, people want to come out and play. There are few places in Northeast Ohio as nice to play in as the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. And one of the best ways to get there is by train.

 

So on the second weekend in October, the masses came out to ride. And ride they did. The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad runs six trains a day five days a week, from Wednesday through Sunday, from June 1 to Oct. 31. According to CVSR crews, their 11-car train carried more than 5,000 passengers and handled 1,000 bicycles in their Bike Aboard car -- just on the two days this weekend!

 

I figured they would be busy this weekend, owing to the nice weather. But I wasn't prepared to see the crowds. I started to realize I was in for a surprise as soon as I drove into the station's parking lot off of Old  Rockside Road.

 

The recently completed $1 million station renovation wasn't enough. They need a bigger parking area......

 

 

 

 

The station is a pretty setting to wait for a train....

 

 

 

Looking north toward some parked CVSR rail cars and toward Cleveland. Maybe someday....

 

 

 

Yonder comes the train. For some reason, there were a large number of 40-somethings dressed in black, like they were heading to a 1980s punk rock concert or something....

 

 

 

In the background is Thornburg Station, a spin-off retail development to capitalize on the nexus of the train station and Towpath Trail....

 

 

 

Families tote tired children after a long, busy day in the park or in Akron....

 

 

 

 

 

Windows in "heritage" railroad cars such as these aren't tinted. So if the lighting outside is right, you can see the passengers inside. This car, like many others, is sponsored by a Northeast Ohio company or philanthropist. There is also a cafe car on the train serving hot and cold food and beverages....

 

 

 

This car is fully handicapped accessible thanks to donations from Invacare to modernize its interior with new seats and fixtures, bathrooms big enough to maneuver a wheelchair, and retrofit it with wheelchair lifts on both sides of the train....

 

 

 

Other wheels are accommodated. This is the line for bicycle passengers to get their bikes loaded into the Bike Aboard car, an old baggage car retrofitted with a racking system much like that of a dry cleaning business....

 

 

 

Now that the passengers arriving Rockside on the train have collected their bikes, the departing passengers get to load theirs....

 

 

 

Big crowd. Big train! Despite that the station platform was lengthened, the train is so long it has to make two stops so that all train car doors can unload/load passengers directly to/from the platform....

 

 

 

One more wheelchair passenger to unload, then the rest of the passengers can be loaded. Unfortunately, when crowds are so large, the train tends to run later as the day goes on. On Saturday Oct. 8, the train was running an hour late by the end of the day. On Sunday Oct. 9, this 4:05 p.m. departure left Rockside about 40 minutes late....

 

 

 

A couple of toots of the locomotive's horn and its off to Akron Northside, at the northern edge of downtown, via numerous stations throughout the Cuyahoga Valley National Park....

 

 

 

The train departs for Akron, but has one more return trip to Rockside on its schedule. It will return after dark, and it is time for me to go home....

 

 

 

Even though there's less than a month of five-days-a-week operation left this year, the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad runs year-round. It also has VERY popular Polar Express trains that often sell out months in advance. And it has regular weekend trains, with four trains (two southbound and two northbound) each on Saturday and Sunday.

 

All Aboard!! See www.cvsr.com for more information or to buy tickets for their regular excursion trains or their special event trains. Tickets can also be bought at CVSR's busier stations including Rockside Road, Peninsula and Akron Northside.

Why don't they build the platforms level with the cars? Do the cars have different levels or something?  :?

Wow. Nice. I remember a dusty gravel parking lot where we boarded an assortment of mangy-looking rolling stock. Back then they still advertised steam and then had excuses every day why the steam locomotive was being repaired and would be back soon, when everyone in the know was fully aware that that steam locomotive would not run again soon, if ever, at least on that line. They've gone from a rag-tag operation whose survival was a daily miracle to a fully-professional railroad that outperforms most other tourist trains and some public and private intercity lines.

If they were a regular passenger rail or commuter rail service that was building new platforms, then they would have to be level with the floors of the cars. That's a relatively new federal requirement.

 

If I'm not mistaken, if the National Park Service (which owns all of the train stations in the park) built a new station with federal funds, the station platform might have to feature level boarding. That can be VERY expensive, even with a wood platform. But since the user is the CVSR, a private 501c3 nonprofit education organization, that might be their legal out.

 

But some of the stations' platforms are just finely crushed stone. This is one of the few that is made of wood and elevated above the surroundings because of the all the river flooding in the area. If I remember correctly, this station platform cost more than $200,000 to build including all of the excavations, concrete footers, drainage, etc.

 

And CVSR serves nine stations.