Please feel free to integrate this thread to a better/existing location.

 

Emphasis in the following article is my own.  In my mind, this is long overdue as an incredible amount of potential synergies exist, including the creation of a biofuels corridor between the two cities, which is also in the preliminary planning stages.

 

Biotech groups to promote Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor

By CHUCK SODER

 

2:47 pm, April 17, 2007

 

Cleveland and Pittsburgh are joining forces to promote both cities as one biotechnology corridor.

 

BioEnterprise Corp. of Cleveland and the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse plan to seek investments together and establish connections between biotech companies and organizations in each region.

 

The leaders of both biotechnology organizations said promoting Cleveland and Pittsburgh together will help biotech companies gain investments, influence and resources.

 

The collaboration could be expanded to include other technology industries and other cities, said BioEnterprise president Baiju Shah, who announced the plan this afternoon at a forum called Northeast Ohio’s Booming Health Care Economy: New Strategies for Continued Growth.

 

More at cleveland.com http://www.cleveland.com

^'Light rail transit between the two cities'????  I hope this is just sloppy reporting and what they mean is an Ohio Hub corridor. 

 

Sounds like ORDC needs to call Ryan's office about the Ohio Hub?

 

 

I hope he meant "commutter rail" not "light rail".  sloppy reporting.

 

darn it...gildone beat me to it!

ORDC has been in touch with Cong. Ryan's office and he is definitely on-board about intercity passenger rail.  I think the reference to "light rail" is "lightweight reporting".

HMM. My friend works in Ryan's DC office. I'll send a note!

^yes, the Cleveland-Pittsburgh leg is a key segment of the Ohio Hub Amtrak plan... Let's hope factions can come together and unite behind ORD/Ohio hub, and not separate factions going off half cocked making it tough sledding for everyone... Yeah, the light rail thing jumped out at me too... but I guess only 'rail buffs' would pick up on that; just like the idea of the PD, and other papers, that only rail buffs will ride the choo-choo, ... er, regional Amtrak and commuter rail...

I think the more exciting news here is the collaboration between the two cities to market themselves jointly. That has been a long time coming, and it makes so much sense.

HMM. My friend works in Ryan's DC office. I'll send a note!

 

Please have him get in touch with me. From 1988 to 1995, I was director of the Cleveland - Pittsburgh Special Project to promote the creation of an intercity passenger rail service linking the two cities. From 1990-92, I also worked as a sub-contractor to a consultant to the old Ohio High Speed Rail Authority and the former ODOT-Rail Division (both since combined to create the Ohio Rail Development Commission). My work was to assist them in providing data on the Cleveland - Pittsburgh corridor to ODOT's Access Ohio long-range transportation plan. I also did consulting work for the cities of Youngstown, Lordstown, Ravenna, Alliance and the University of Pittsburgh to evaluate the potential of intercity passenger rail service linking Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

 

We had a good run for a while, getting a reroute of Amtrak's Broadway Limited to go via Youngstown and when Amtrak ended it in 1996, we lobbied to have the service restored. It was, the following year as the Three Rivers service. We also had been seeking since 1988 to get Amtrak to extend its New York City - Pittsburgh Pennsylvanian extended to Cleveland. Toledo-area officials said they wanted the train extended to their city. Amtrak in 1998 decided to extend it to Chicago. We got ORDC to bring Amtrak to the table to seek creative marketing for the service, but Amtrak screwed it up. Lots of things went wrong with the service, and the Pennsylvanian was cut back to Pittsburgh in 2003.

 

Amtrak then ended the Three Rivers service in 2005, despite complaints from some online communities -- the loudest came from Youngstown city officials. I helped them frame their message and establish a public hearing in February of that year. What followed was a discussion of a commuter rail service, in addition to an intercity rail service such as the Ohio Hub or an extension of Amtrak service (such as the Pennsylvanian) that had local or state financial support (such as from a tourism entity) for a marketing effort.

 

So that's a bit of the recent history, and the last things I'd heard about local efforts in support of passenger rail. Hopefully, there's a new desire for coming up with a non-federal funding share for capital and operating funding. There has been nearly $100 million in railroad investment in the corridor since 1990 that should count for at least a portion of the non-federal share, and I'd be happy to show Rep. Ryan's staff what the routing options are and what the infrastructural and operating constraints are along the various route options.

 

 

ORDC has been in touch with Cong. Ryan's office and he is definitely on-board about intercity passenger rail.  I think the reference to "light rail" is "lightweight reporting".

 

ORDC needs to give a Hub presentation at that Youngstown Summit. 

^'Light rail transit between the two cities'????  I hope this is just sloppy reporting and what they mean is an Ohio Hub corridor. 

 

Sounds like ORDC needs to call Ryan's office about the Ohio Hub?

I see a future when light rail trains full of rail buffs will chug across Ohio. :roll:

Congratulations on your masterful use of rail cliches'. :clap: :laugh: :clap: :laugh: :clap:

OK! I sent a note to my friend, KJP. She's pretty junior on the staff, as I understand it, but hopefully she'll be able to get someone in contact with you regarding this.

Sounds fantastic...and I agree, it is great to see 2 different cities working together to reach their goal(s).  Not only are they 2 different cities, but are also in 2 different states!!!  Fantastic.  Hopefully Cincinnati and Dayton can learn a thing or two from Cleveland and Pittsburgh's cooperation.

Just as we're advocating with Regionalism in Cleveland, the Great Lakes/Rustbelt region can benefit from being connected in many ways.  This makes sense.  It's not a revolutionary concept--and I hope it's not made out to be something of that sort because people will then want "studies" to prove the feasibility which will in turn lead to some watered-down, dumb version of the original plan :x.  It just makes sense and not undertaking a project of this sort casts a dark shadow of incompetence over the region.  What do we prove by choosing Interstate as our only mode of transportation? 

I recall about 8-10yrs ago or so a group of engineering students from Carnegie Mellon getting lots of federal money to study maglev technology and they were proposing to link up Pittsburgh and Cleveland I think via the airports. 

From browsing links it looks like CMU is still actively trying to pull something together but mainly around the burgh.

That's too bad. I wish they'd get away from their tech-envy and be practical. Consider that "conventional" steel-wheel on steel-rail high-speed rail gets you 80 percent of the travel time savings as Maglev, but at half the cost.

 

Here's something I posted on another forum recently....

 

I'm not saying this is what you believe, but some believe we should go ahead and build TGV-style, Shinkansen-style, etc. dedicated high-speed rail services, or even maglev. What they don't recognize with this "Big Bang Approach" is that these services are an overlay on top of existing fast, frequent passenger rail services that also benefit from high-density urban centers served by extensive transit that act as traffic feeders. We have none of that in Ohio. We are at a disadvantage of having to build up the rail traffic base from scratch, as well as having to develop the supportive dense land uses and transit services in our cities to make a high-density travel mode like dedicated high-speed rail viable here. Lacking these supportive assets, spending $20 million to $30 million per mile to build dedicated HSR rights of way is a huge risk for governmental and corporate investors.

 

What we're trying to get with the Ohio Hub (costing up to $3 million per mile) is to catch up to the equivalent of the 1960s-1980s Trans-Europe Express network that offered multiple daily trains per route at 100+ mph speeds. What proponents of the Big Bang Approach may not realize is that most of today's high speed train networks (TGV, ICE, AVE, Thalys, etc) have only a small percentage of their total route system using dedicated high-speed rights of way. For example, only one-third of the TGV network is on dedicated HSR rights of way. The rest uses older, conventional tracks, many of which were upgraded for the TEE and other segments since upgraded further to allow TGV speeds of 220 km/h (137 mph). Consider this map of the TGV (+Thalys & Eurostar) network which shows the dedicated HSR routes as colored lines with the conventional TGV routes as black lines -- http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/jpg/tgvgeomap.jpg

 

For ICE in Germany, even less of its network is on dedicated HSR lines. Some of their trunk ICE routes are dedicated HSR lines, with ICE trains fanning out from the trunk at various locations. A similar approach is being taken with the Paris-Brussels-Köln-Amsterdam-London (PBKAL) project, which is funneling high-speed trains over trunk routes, much like a spine. Some of it, notably the section between Brussels and Köln, involves upgrading the existing right of way with extra tracks, more gradual curves, grade separations, expanded stations, signal systems, enhanced electrical power supply, etc. But conventional trains parallel the PBKAL high-speed services, offering more station stops and more local connections/feeders. I'll be riding most of the PBKAL trunk next month and I hope to write about my experience in future newsletters.

 

After we get much of the Ohio Hub and Midwest network and their fast, frequent passenger trains, I can see them followed by the construction of dedicated high-speed lines acting as a trunk for several Ohio Hub and Midwest routes. Consider a high-speed trunk from Chicago to, say, Fort Wayne. Trains to southern Michigan might split off near Hobart or Valparaiso, as might trains to Indianapolis and Cincinnati. Trains to Columbus, Toledo, Detroit and Cleveland could go their separate ways at Fort Wayne. The dedicated right of way might even continue beyond Fort Wayne to Toledo. A similar dedicated right of way could be built on abandoned rail lines between Columbus and Cincinnati via Dayton, with trains funneling into it from Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Louisville and Lexington. These are just examples from my own personal thoughts. I'm sure others might have some good suggestions for trunk routes.

 

Sorry for the long-winded answer. But I hope this gives some indication as to why it's important to evolve the base of traffic demand for passenger rail with equally evolutionary and progressive steps of developing passenger train services. I know we want today what other nations have had for decades, but theirs didn't just suddenly appear either. It's been a decades-long evolution for them, too. We need to start the evolutionary steps, including establishing the funding mechanisms that allow ridership and revenue growth to feed on itself, much like the highway and aviation trust funds create a feedback loop. So lets come up with some best-practices examples for funding mechanisms, get them enacted, and start building!

I recall about 8-10yrs ago or so a group of engineering students from Carnegie Mellon getting lots of federal money to study maglev technology and they were proposing to link up Pittsburgh and Cleveland I think via the airports. 

From browsing links it looks like CMU is still actively trying to pull something together but mainly around the burgh.

 

There was an op-ed about this in the PD just 2 or 3 years ago.  For the cost of a maglev line like that, we could build the entire Ohio Hub and maybe then some.

There is so much to generate good traffic between Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh. I heard about the Casino-Hotel plan for the New Castle area. I talked to someone who lives close to New Castle. I ask how far is the rail line from the proposed Casino. He says not far. Does any body know how close the rail line would be to the action?

Cong. Tim Ryan is sponsoring an earmark request to begin preliminary environmental impact work on this very corridor as part of the Ohio Hub Plan.  There has also been considerable interest from the Eastgate Council of Governments (based in Youngstown) about both the Ohio Hub and commuter rail here as well.

 

Not sure how close the line would come to New Castle. Part of the environmental impact work is determining routes.  I would let both Cong. Ryan and Eastgate COG know of you support.

Shouldn't this be in the Ohio Hub thread?

 

New Castle is on the Cleveland - Youngstown - Pittsburgh rail corridor, regardless of which of the three rail lines from Youngstown to Pittsburgh are ultimately selected: NS, CSX or P&LE.

 

But the proposed casino won't be in New Castle nor anywhere near a potential station. The casino will be in a rural area between New Castle and Boardman called Mahoning Township, just over the Ohio state line. The actual site is a reclaimed mine next to US224 at the top of the hill overlooking the Mahoning River which the three railroad rights of way follow. P&LE used to have a spur that came up the hill from Lowellville to the former strip mine. But the spur (along with the P&LE main tracks) are gone.

Me like making maps....

 

scroll right----->

From the Tribune Chronicle - Warren:

 

Rail plan gaining speed

Officials tout Valley stops for proposed high-speed train

 

By RON SELAK JR. / Tribune Chronicle

POSTED: August 14, 2008

 

YOUNGSTOWN - Imagine hopping a train from Warren to see LeBron James play at the ''Q'' or a Clevelander traveling by rail to Youngstown for an afternoon at the Butler Institute of American Art. (MayDay says "yes please!")

 

Now imagine it happening at speeds approaching 100 mph. (Again, MayDay "oh H#LL YEAH!!!")

 

U.S. Rep. Timothy J. Ryan is and he's working to make sure high-speed passenger rail service from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, with stops in the Warren/Youngstown area, becomes a reality. The project is part of the Ohio Hub, which has been in the works since 2000.

 

More at the Warren Tribune Chronicle

http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/509317.html?nav=5021&showlayout=0

 

Ha ha. Already posted at ORDC-Ohio Hub.

 

Which raises the question -- should this thread exist??

This is your area of expertise, so whatever/wherever you want :-)

Oh the pressure.....

I really hope this happens, along with any other rail service upgrades/expansion that is being floated around for Ohio. It has been waaaay too damn long for stuff like this.

Ha ha. Already posted at ORDC-Ohio Hub.

 

Which raises the question -- should this thread exist??

I think so, I wouldn't know to look there to find info on Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh rail service. But you're the boss.

 

It is nice to see these folks "getting it" and working together. Make this happen! On a personal note this will save me $500-$600 a year on car rentals. My family is spread out across Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh metros so I must rent a car when I visit (3-4 times annually).

This would save me the "zombie drive" that is the stretch of Route 14 between Streetsboro and Salem. :-)

OK, I'll keep 'em separate. Besides, I have a very soft spot for this corridor since this was my first rail advocacy project. It was the summer of 1988 and I began writing letters to businesses and city officials between Cleveland and Pittsburgh to see if anyone was interested in pushing for an extension of Amtrak's NYC-PIT Pennsylvanian from Pittsburgh to Cleveland. Turns out a lot of people were, and things went from there. I began raising funds the following year when I was 21 years old and it became my first long-term job (I worked lots of restaurant jobs before that).

 

Ten years later, the Pennsylvanian was extended -- all the way to Chicago via Cleveland. Then Amtrak screwed it up with their wonderful in-house "marketing." The extended route lasted five years. Anyway, long story there.

 

But most of the memories were good and I'd love to return to advocating train service here. Maybe after I'm done with my contract to advocate for West Shore Corridor....

Note all of the positive comments (except one) following this story....

 

http://www.vindy.com/news/2008/aug/13/politicians-discuss-high-speed-rail-proposal/

Good idea KJP.  I had posted this in the Ohio Hub Thread, but from here on out, it likely deserves a thread of its own.

Thank you. Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh needs it's own thread.

it appears that New Castle casino plan is dead

 

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about this proposed rail corridor in the PGH media

 

Considering how close Pittsburgh and Cleveland are... and how densely populated the corridor between is... you'd think something like this would be a no-brainer

You may soon.  I'm told Cong. Ryan is reaching out to his counterparts in the Pittsburgh area and to at least one of Pennsylvania's Senators. 

I did a bunch of radio talk shows in Youngstown and Warren in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I was absolutely astonished at how supportive listeners were of the idea for restoring passenger rail service to the area. This was an area with a long and recent history with extensive passenger rail service. Between the P&LE (6 dailies), Erie-Lackawanna (10), B&O ( 8 ) and New York Central (4), Pennsylvania (4), there were still 32 passenger trains converging on Youngstown each day up until the mid-1960s. One of those round trips survived the Amtrak era (1971-) and even into the Conrail era (1976-1999)... Erie-Lackawanna's "commuter" service from Youngstown to Cleveland ran until January 1977.

 

But, despite the local enthusiasm for rail, we learned from Amtrak's Three Rivers and Pennsylvania services that if you don't operate them at times when people want them, at speeds that are competitive with driving and/or you don't tell anyone that the service exists, then ridership will be disappointing.

 

The sad part is, the extended Pennsylvanian service was developing a decent ridership by the end of its first year (1999) -- which is when the Conrail split happened. The resulting meltdown of freight operations caused the Pennsylvanian to regularly run several hours late and sometimes six hours late. The ridership vanished. Amtrak kept screwing around with the schedule trying to fix that which wasn't broken. It never settled into a new service pattern and the riders never returned....

 

North Carolina learned a similar lesson with its first Carolinian service from 1984-85. It returned in 1990 and, 18 years later, continues to be one of the nation's most successful state-supported trains.

To help provide some familiarity of the railroad rights of way in the Cleveland - Pittsburgh corridor, I developed this map this evening. I did it from memory and I haven't double-checked it yet for accuracy, so I may have to replace this with a newer one when I get the chance. But this should do for now......

 

 

B&O =      Baltimore & Ohio (absorbed into CSX in 1986)

CSX = CSX Transportation Inc.-owned right of way

CSX-ATK = CSX Transportation owned, with Amtrak trackage rights

CVSR = Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad (actually has only trackage rights over publicly owned ROWs)

E-L = Erie-Lackawanna (absorbed into Conrail in 1976, since split among CSX/NS)

NS =        Norfolk Southern Corp.-owned right of way

NS-ATK = Norfolk Southern owned, with Amtrak trackage rights

NYC = New York Central (merged with PRR into Penn Central, then to Conrail, then among CSX/NS)

P&LE = Went out of business circa 1990 (CSX acquired mainline from New Castle to Pittsburgh)

PRR = Pennsylvania Railroad (merged with NYC into Penn Central, then to Conrail, then among CSX/NS)

W&LE = Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad Co.

 

Here's a small sampling of photos I've shot (unless otherwise noted) along the Cleveland - Pittsburgh corridor over the past 25 years to visually demonstrate right of way qualities and conditions. All of these pictures were shot in the 2000s...

 

Amtrak's Three Rivers travels east from Youngstown on Sept. 4, 2004, past the site of Youngstown Sheet & Tube's Campbell Works which shut on Black Monday, almost exactly 27 years earlier. This Chicago-New York City Amtrak passenger train was accelerating to 79 mph on CSX tracks, heading for the New Castle Connection which Amtrak built in 1994 so this train could switch over to NS tracks for the rest of the trip into Pittsburgh and east...

 

Amtrak's Three Rivers pauses at the Youngstown B&O station on June, 16, 2001 (photo by Jack Slanina)....

 

CSX removed the eastbound platform at Youngstown in 2001 because it didn't want Amtrak passengers to cross the tracks at grade to reach the B&O Station. So instead all Amtrak trains used the track adjacent to the westbound platform. That added 10 minutes to all eastbound runs of the Three Rivers. Amtrak and the city chose not reactivate the station's abandoned pedestrian underpass (Jack Slanina photo)...

 

NS completely rebuilt its Youngstown Line in 2004, from Youngstown to Rochester, PA, with new bridges, rails and an electronic Traffic Control System (the line was unsignaled from the early 1980s until 2004). NS also removed the second track along much of this line, except for this section of double-track through Wampum, PA. The track in the foreground is NS's Koppel Secondary, which connects with the NS's Fort Wayne Line (was Pennsylvania Railroad's mainline from Pittsburgh to Chicago via Canton and Ft. Wayne) at Homewood, PA just north of Beaver Falls...

 

CSX uses the former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie mainline through Wampum, PA. This CSX train with BNSF power accelerates to 50 mph below the NS Youngstown Line. The bridge overhead is getting replaced. The former P&LE main was four tracks wide here, yet the remaining two tracks are in excellent condition...

 

Here is the former P&LE farther south, near Aliquippa, PA, along the Ohio River. CSX rebuilt most of the single-tracked sections of ex-P&LE with concrete ties in the 1990s. Combined with the signal system that's in place, 79 mph passenger train operations are certainly possible here. But Amtrak trains use the NS line (also good for 79 mph) along the other side of the Ohio River....

 

P&LE's abandoned Coraopolis station, as seen in 2004. This station is about two miles from Pittsburgh International Airport. The single-tracked, high-speed CSX line still runs by here where four main tracks once handled 30+ passenger trains per day and more than 150 daily freights...

 

Not all tracks are in such good shape in the Cleveland - Pittsburgh Corridor. In fact, many are gone. This one, the former double-tracked Erie-Lackawanna between Ravenna, Warren and Youngstown, is either gone or near to being reclaimed by nature (as seen here just northeast of Ravenna on August 14, 2008). It once had 65 daily freight trains as recently as the 1960s and six daily passenger trains...

 

Parallel to the above rail line is CSX's high-quality New Castle Subdivision, which Amtrak used up until 2005 for its Three Rivers. Amtrak trains cruised at 79 mph along much of this right of way, especially this tangent stretch through Lordstown. This line is double-tracked with automatic block signals, and sees nearly 30 trains per day. If it were modernized with an electronic Traffic Control System or cab signals with bi-directional crossover tracks every 10 miles or so, it could handle triple the number of trains per day it does now...

 

Another high-quality railroad right of way is Norfolk Southern's Cleveland Line, between Cleveland and Alliance. Owing to a cab signal system, passenger trains could travel at 90 mph speeds if activating circuits for grade crossing devices were adjusted to accommodate the higher train speeds. Yet 79 mph is the norm here for Amtrak which, up until 2003, included the eastbound and westbound Pennsylvanian and Capitol Limited services (four Amtraks per day). Now only the Capitol Limited operates over this line. But at just 79 mph, it travels the Cleveland - Pittsburgh corridor in about 2.5 hours -- in the middle of the night on the Capitol Limited's Washington D.C. - Chicago run. This is Amtrak's eastbound Pennsylvanian meeting a westbound NS intermodal freight at the Garfield Heights/Cleveland border, near Calvary Cemetery in February 2000....

 

 

Notice in the above map that the two highest-quality rail lines (CSX and NS) cross at Ravenna. This is what that location looks like from a satellite (the CSX mainline is the double-tracked railroad through the compass; the double-tracked NS mainline passes above the CSX line):

 

 

They intersect with a grade-separated crossing. There are no longer any connecting tracks between the CSX and NS mainlines, which means no passenger train can travel between Cleveland and Youngstown anymore [sCROLL RIGHT]....

 

 

I've added what trackage existed prior to 1970. That's when the first track connection was ripped out. The second track connection was removed in 1985. To restore one of the 4,500-foot-long track connections was projected in 1995 to cost $5 million. That's at least $6 million in today's dollars [sCROLL RIGHT]....

 

 

And yet another diagram of mine....

 

 

Here's some photos of what the area looks like on the ground (I took these photos in the 1980s). The old Pennsylvania Railroad station next to the then-Conrail tracks, now NS (station was demolished in 1988)...

 

 

Looking east from the Conrail bridge (NS today) in 1984 at the B&O tracks (CSX today), with the surviving track connection visible at left but in front of B&O's "RN" switch tower (since demolished)....

 

 

Looking west from the CSX tracks in 1986, toward the Conrail (now NS) overpass. The old PRR depot is visible at the right....

 

I grew up in Ravenna (and my parents still live within a mile of the area you're talking about) and I can tell you during a couple of discussions in the 80s and 90s when train service between Cleveland and Pittsburgh was suggested and studied the town was excited about it. There certainly wasn't much of a NIMBY attitude, of course thats largely because the town already has a couple of the busiest train lines in the area running through that it doesn't really get anything out of.

 

That being said the new condos on Emerald Lake Parkway would be right across from where you're suggesting the Eastbound connection be. Admittedly the builders of those condos put them right next to a busy freight line and less than 100 yards from a waste water treatment plant, so I can't imagine a rail connection would be much worse, but it seems to be the only problem I can see in your idea.

You mean this? :-D

 

These are the condos (as seen on Aug. 14, 2008), with the dirt road in the foreground being the former right of way of one of the two Ravenna Connection tracks. The other is on the north side of the elevated NS mainline....

 

 

This is what the condos looked like when they were under construction several years ago with the south-side connecting track's right of way visible at right....

 

 

Who built/financed/marketed the condos.....

 

 

By the way, the condo unit closest to Diamond Street is just 80 feet from the CSX mainline used by nearly 30 freight trains a day which must blow their horns for the Diamond Street crossing. Absent an FRA Quiet Zone, passenger trains on the Ravenna Connection would also have to blow their horns for Diamond Street. But that's several trains a day 160 feet from the condos -- twice the distance as the busier CSX mainline. And since the connection track would be a "new" track, some sort of sound barrier (like a board-on-board wall with more vegetation) would probably need to be built.

 

Having a train station at Diamond Street could also increase the property values of those condos, giving their residents access to jobs, airports, sporting venues and amenities in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and beyond.

Time to go to the "Way Back Machine" to show you what the Ravenna Connection tracks, then called the Y&R Connections, looked like........

 

In 1968, when the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad merged to form Penn Central, the combined corporation issued new track charts including these for the Ravenna area. The first is an overview of the Ravenna area and what was PRR's (then PC's) Valley Main Line and is today's Norfolk Southern Cleveland Line between Cleveland and Alliance...

 

 

Here's a pull-out chart showing a close-up of the Y&R (Youngstown & Ravenna) track connections where the maximum operating speed for trains on the connection was 45 mph (actually pretty good!). Both track connections were still being used in 1968 but nowhere near as much as when the Marcy Branch from Cleveland to Ravenna (Brady Lake) was owned/operated by New York Central and the parallel Valley Main was owned/operated by Pennsylvania RR. When PC owned both, the Marcy Branch became redundant. Also, the last passenger train to use the Y&R Connections was in 1964 when PRR discontinued the overnight Clevelander between Cleveland and New York City....

 

 

The interior of PRR's RAVE Tower in the 1980s, after many tracks and switches it controlled were removed. There was a reason why those switch levers were called "Strongarms"....

 

Happier and busier times in Feburary 1957, as a New York Central freight train came off the south side, or eastbound track connection from the Pennsylvania Railroad to the Baltimore & Ohio RR. The north-side or westbound track connection is visible at right. B&O's RN Tower is at left. The former PRR station is out of sight to the right in the distance but it had two "low" station platforms on the two Y&R connecting tracks as well as two "high" platforms up on the PRR's Valley Main....

 

 

Here is what the two "low" station platforms looked like on the Y&R Connections (the B&O mainline is at left). All of this was built in 1907 with the realignment of the Cleveland & Pittsburgh RR, shortly after its 999-year lease to the Pennsylvania RR.....

 

 

The two "high" platforms for the PRR station, built when this high-speed line was built by PRR in 1907. By the 1940s, this line was hosting 90 trains per day, a third of which were passenger trains...

 

 

PRR was still serving Ravenna in 1966 with a Cleveland-Alliance "commuter" train that connected to its Chicago-Ft. Wayne-Pittsburgh-New York City mainline trains at Alliance. PRR didn't advertise this connection as it wanted out of the passenger business and wanted Interstate Commerce Commission "train-off" permission. It could do so only if it scared off enough passengers.....

 

The photo of the eastbound New York Central freight was taken from near this view, also looking west. While this photo was taken from Chestnut Street, the 1957 photo from before was taken from the bridge of the pre-1907 Cleveland & Pittsburgh mainline (operated as an industrial spur from 1907-1980). That bridge is gone here, as is the adjacent bridge for the Northern Ohio Traction & Light electric interurban railway. RN Tower is still standing in this late-1990s photo....

 

B&O's RN Tower controlled the switches for the east end of the Y&R track connections, the crossovers between the B&O's two main tracks, as well as a passing siding on each side of RN Junction. Some of the track layout can be seen on the wall in this interior photo taken in the 1970s....

 

On the other side of Chestnut Street was the B&O station. This utilitarian depot replaced a 19th-century station that was demolished in a freight train derailment...

 

This is what the previous B&O Station at Chestnut Street looked like in 1909. The overpass for Prospect Street is visible immediately behind the station. Railroads always acted like the other railroads didn't exist, even when they had trackage rights with each other. PRR passenger trains operated on B&O tracks past this B&O station, but stopped at their own station at the junction of its own line a half-mile west. Why B&O kept its own station is one of many mysteries of railroadiana....

The railroads in this area did have some weird arrangements. New York Central might have had the weirdest, running from the Cleveland area on its own tracks to Brady Lake, where it ran on the PRR to Youngstown. PRR itself used the B&O between Ravenna, Brady Lake and Niles Jct. Thus NYC had trackage rights on another railroad that had trackage rights over third line, the B&O! NYC ran via PRR from Niles Jct to a point just north of Youngstown, where it ran over the rails of subsidiary Lake Erie and Eastern, itself owned by yet another NYC-owned carrier, the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie!

 

The PRR got the trackage rights over the B&O in the early 1900's when it controlled the B&O, which it was later forced to divest by the ICC. Another anomaly of this joint operation was that Newton Falls was always listed in the PRR timetable, but not the B&O's, even tho it really was on the B&O main line.

 

Weird stuff...all to access prime markets in the steel mills at Youngstown and Pittsburgh.

NYC ran via PRR from Niles Jct to a point just north of Youngstown, where it ran over the rails of subsidiary Lake Erie and Eastern, itself owned by yet another NYC-owned carrier, the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie!

 

At first, I was about to correct you, that PRR didn't use the LE&E through Youngstown since PRR had its own tracks through Y-town (NS owns and operates these PRR tracks today). But I realize that you referred to NYC using the LE&E tracks.

 

That's just a part of the crazy complications about all the Cleveland - Pittsburgh trackage -- it's convoluted alignments, track connections, ownerships, trackage rights, how all of this was operated over the years and why some was abandoned and other pieces of infrastructure were kept. There ought to be a book done about this corridor.  :-D

You mean this?  :-D

 

Yes, that was exactly what I was talking about. How did I know someone on here would know way more about a development a mile from where I grew up than I do.

Because I was the person who instigated all that talk about passenger trains in the 1980s and 1990s that you referred to earlier. I used to be the director of the Cleveland - Pittsburgh Special Project of the Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers back when Don Kainrad was mayor, Portage County Commissioner Chuck Keiper was assistant director of the Ravenna Development Corp. and David Norris was just a city councilman and not yet a convicted felon!  :wink:

 

Edited to include these two little gems which I dug up from my dusty ol' files...

 

This one is clearly before various mentors in OARP and ODOT's Rail Division instructed me on how to tone down my excitement in public, and kindly use the words "could" and "might" instead of "would" and "will". Ah the lessons we learn after the age of 22 when we already "knew it all"...

 

RecordCourier101388 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

CLE-PITnewsletter1 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

RC-KJP-Eckart-021591 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

BedfordSun020890 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

PA-Rep-Veon-Ltr-101089 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

YGN-donate-Vindicator062789 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

 

An old memo I wrote to the honchos at OARP....

OARP-ATK-Mtg-091290s by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

 

And, oh my God, they actually included my picture from 17 years and 50 pounds ago when I was a spry 24-year-old....

YoungstownVindicatorKenP032 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

 

I believe this was the last of the CLE-PIT newsletters I sent out. I had already moved twice, from Kent back home to Bainbridge and then to Berea, and the momentum from those heady KSU days were a memory. I had been hired as a reporter for Sun News in December 1993 so this was a last gasp newsletter to see if I could rekindle something. As it turns out, the Ohio Rail Development Commission sought $60 million in state funds two years later for Cleveland-Pittsburgh, 3C Corridor and Akron-Cleveland commuter rail. But Gov. Voinovich's chief of staff Paul Mifsud (who later went to prison for fraud) told the ORDC board they were "in outer space" for wanting $60 million for passenger rail, even though the public input to ODOT's Access Ohio was very pro passenger rail. But the public be damned....

CLE-PITnewsletter21 by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr

What a dashing young fellow in that pic...and the drawing was interesting as well!

Very good stuff, KJP.  Hopefully, with Ohio Hub, things can come full circle and revive this very worthwhile project.

"chocolate fanatics" lol

#4, Aug. 14, 2008. Can any one do a satellite map of the line that would go through Warren? I see the Little single tracked, curvy line that passes not far from the fire station daily. What would have to be done to it to make it ready for passanger rail?

FYI (from the Amtrak thread).....

 

Note also that Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan managed to get language in HR-2095 that calls for a feasibility analyasis of extending Pennsylvania's "Keystone Corridor" to Cleveland.  (Sec. 224 / Passenger Rail Service Studies).