I figured this topic might be of interest!

 

Here's a 1934 Cleveland-area map to get us started......

 

http://www.railsandtrails.com/Maps/Cleveland/CleveMap-100a.jpg

This one, from 1940, shows individual tracks (sorry these are so large but that's the only way the detail can be seen)........

 

http://www.railsandtrails.com/Maps/Cleveland/ClevelandRRMap-100.jpg

Very very cool.

 

When was the G dropped in Collin(g)wood?

Look at all the "villages".

Maybe a little digression, but I don't really think it is: The July 2010 issue of Trains Magazine Map of the Month, a regular two-page spread in each issue, features a comparison of Cleveland's rail lines in 1947 and 2010. I found it fascinating to see all the industrial branches and yards that once served the city's heavy industries.

I've got a similar map of Downtown Columbus in the 1920's: incredible amount of track that supported Columbus Union Station and local freight customers.... even a rail spur to the old State Penitentiary.  (See the attachment below)

 

Sadly, it also shows you how much rail infrastructure we've lost since then.  Most of the right of way that served Union Station and the yards to the West are now occupied by I-670.

I moved the last two posts here from the 3C thread. It is relevant there, but it's more relevant here.

Check out what the railroads looked like around Columbus, ohio in the 1920's.....

 

http://www.columbusrailroads.com/images/Map%20of%20Downtown%20Columbus%201920s.pdf

 

 

Sadly, it also shows how much we have lost.  Much of the corridor near and to the West of Columbus Union Station is now occupied by I-670.  The rail corridors still exist...but are much narrowed because of modern development.

Where did you find that? That's priceless!

 

I also like that it shows the electric railways.

Where did you find that? That's priceless!

 

I also like that it shows the electric railways.

 

I actually have it in my possession and e-mailed a scan of it to the ColumbusRailroads.com website.

What cities did Cleveland use to be connected to that they are not connected to today?

This one of Cincinnati is an excellent view from 1912/1914.  It's interesting to see how many more rail yards and sidings and such there were along the Ohio River, while there's comparatively little in the Mill Creek Valley.  The map also shows streetcars too, which is awesome.  Note that the original image is enormous, a 7880x6240 16 MB JPEG.

 

1914 Topographic Map of Cincinnati by mgsmith, on Flickr

What cities did Cleveland use to be connected to that they are not connected to today?

 

The 1940 map shows where the rail lines went. Of those, only two rail corridors have been abandoned and their tracks removed:

 

1. The Lake Erie & Pittsburgh (a New York Central subsidiary) to Brady Lake, where it connected with the parallel Pennsylvania Railroad (the next closest rail line to the east and is visible on the 1940 map). LE&P was built in 1911 and abandoned in 1970 when New York Central and Pennsylvania RRs merged to become Penn Central. PC didn't need two parallel rail lines, and since the PRR had more online shippers whereas the LE&P had several huge bridges along it (including over the valleys for Mill Creek, Tinkers Creek and Brandywine Creek), PC kept the PRR line and abandoned the LE&P. The LE&P was envisioned as a 90-mile link between the Port of Lorain and the steel industry of the Mahoning Valley (Youngstown etc). Even though the 30-mile section between Marcy and Brady Lake was the only part built for the LE&P, it still served its intended end points thanks to trackage rights over other rail lines. The LE&P section that was built was engineered extremely well: it is very level, has gentle curves, almost every road crossing was grade-separated and the high bridges over Mill, Tinkers and Brandywine creek were massive and substantial structure. It is my preferred routing for high-speed rail between Cleveland and Pittsburgh! :-P

 

2. The Erie Railroad to Youngstown. This was one of Northeast Ohio's oldest mainline railroads, built in 1855 and may have been its first all-double-tracked railroad. Actually the section east from Vonwilier Yard (called East 55th Yard in 1940 but later changed to avoid confusion with the Nickel Plate, later N&W, RR's yard of the same name) east to the Stouffer's plant in Solon is still active, and track is mostly in place east to Mantua Township but has been inactive since 1993. But this was a double-tracked railroad that saw 10 daily passenger trains in 1940 and perhaps two to three times as many freight trains. Most freight traffic was ore trains that were filled from ships via Hulett unloaders at Riverbed Yard on the south side of the Old River Channel. But there were also general merchandise trains from Hoboken NJ (until the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959, plus the New York State Thruway and Interstate 80). The Erie (later Erie-Lackawanna after its 1960 merger with Lackawanna RR) was singled-tracked in 1965. Passenger trains, including overnight trains to Hoboken on its own line, or frequent day trains to/from Pittsburgh via the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie (to Station Square) dwindled in number until there was only one left -- the weekdays-only Youngstown-Cleveland commuter train. That ended in 1977. A year earlier, Conrail was formed by the federal government from six bankrupt Northeastern railroads, including the Erie-Lackawanna. Pre-Conrail planning considered the E-L line between Cleveland and Youngstown as redundant to parallel lines that would also become part of Conrail. The collapse of Youngstown's steel industry made consolidation an even easier decision to eliminate the E-L as a through route. The last through train to use the E-L was in 1980, and the tracks were torn up east of Mantua Township to near Youngstown in 1982.

 

There were also numerous short railroad segments and industrial tracks within the city of Cleveland that were abandoned since 1940. But thankfully, most rail corridors in and out of Cleveland were left largely intact and active as much rail traffic was rerouted to and consolidated through Cleveland in the post-deregulation era (after 1980).

This one of Cincinnati is an excellent view from 1912/1914.  It's interesting to see how many more rail yards and sidings and such there were along the Ohio River, while there's comparatively little in the Mill Creek Valley.  The map also shows streetcars too, which is awesome.  Note that the original image is enormous, a 7880x6240 16 MB JPEG.

 

1914 Topographic Map of Cincinnati by mgsmith, on Flickr

 

Notice the pre-WW1 street names! e.g. Republic = Bremen. Also, the West End/Kenyon-Barr street grid is interesting.

 

What a great map, with the streets, railroads, and streetcars all included. Oh, and the inclines, of course!

In Jake Mecklenborg's UrbanCincy article today, he mentioned the Cheviot Railyard which was sold off and developed into strip malls and big box stores.  I've been looking at historic aerials of various former railyards, and it's interesting that while some have been broken up and redeveloped, others sit mostly abandoned.  Meanwhile other railyards in the area have grown.

 

I'm curious as to why some were abandoned while others grew. In total, is there more or less capacity now than there was 30, 40, or 50 years ago?

 

Here are some fun comparisons from historicaerials.com:

 

Cheviot Yard: http://tae.st/utgb6E

West side along US-50 (now abandoned grassy area): http://tae.st/u9vhST

South of Waldvogel Viaduct (proposed site of Queensgate Terminals): http://tae.st/uoYMG2

South of Hopple St Viaduct (rail yard has grown significantly between 1970 and 2004 aerials): http://tae.st/rqFOfE

Rail line through Northside and Spring Grove Cemetery: http://tae.st/uKEABW

Ivorydale (appears to have shrunk significantly): http://tae.st/vFhFRj

In total, is there more or less capacity now than there was 30, 40, or 50 years ago?

 

That's a very difficult question to answer because, while capacity in terms of the number of railcars may have dropped, the total capacity in terms of tonnage may have gone up. The reason is freight cars are two to three times larger today in gross tonnage capacity than they were just 50 years ago.

Each railroad into the city had its main classification yard somewhere outside downtown where land was cheap (at least it was at the time it was built) and plentiful.  I won't go into every one, but some notable examples were the Little Miami's Undercliff Yard near Lunken Airport, which is mostly gone now and redeveloped for industrial parks.  The L&N's Decoursey yard sits mostly empty next to the Licking River south of I-275 with a newer intermodal yard just south of there.  The CL&N's yard was (and under I&O still is) at McCullough off of Highland Avenue in Norwood.  The N&W to Portsmouth's yard was at Clare below Mariemont, now a small intermodal facility.  The Big Four had Sharon Yard, which is much reduced from its former size.  There were also a handful of yards west along the Ohio River and up the Mill Creek Valley as well as the C&O of Indiana's Cheviot/Summit yard. 

 

The massive Queensgate and Gest Street Yards were built to consolidate all the classification activities into one location.  Although it's something of a tangle of continuous tracks, and most people just call it Queensgate, the two yards are in fact separate (Gest Street for Norfolk Southern behind Union Terminal and Queensgate for CSX north of the Western Hills Viaduct).  The B&O and Cincinnati Southern had some yards there already, but they weren't nearly to the scale they are now.  Anyway, when that yard work was done in the mid 1970s, it was at the low point of railroading in the US.  The Penn Central merger happened and they still went bankrupt, and then Conrail came out shortly thereafter.  Traffic was low, and consolidating all the yards probably seemed like a good idea to improve efficiency.  It certainly did that, but higher efficiency also reduces resiliency.  We're seeing this now as Queensgate is very overtaxed, especially the approach tracks from the north.  With parallel lines closed and no other yards left, there's not really anywhere to go.  Sharon Yard is the only place to the north that seems like a logical place to take some of the extra load, but it would require rebuilding a lot of track and such.  I'm not really familiar enough with all the operations to know where would be the best place to do such things based on traffic flow and all that. 

 

It's a good question whether there's more or less capacity than there used to be.  I'd have to say the peak of "historical" freight operations here was during WWII to about 1950, with the low point around 1970-80, and then growing again after that until the present, save for the current recession.  That said, you can't just look at the number of tracks to analyze capacity.  Back in the day, they needed more storage tracks to hold cars while trains were being assembled.  Nowadays with a modern computer-controlled hump yard like Queensgate, they can run the cars through pretty fast and don't have to "warehouse" them as much.  Plus, even some of those very large old yards like Undercliff were horribly mismanaged and, surprise surprise, inefficient.  There's also the issue that some yards are now cut off from through traffic, like Undercliff again, and not really close to any other through routes, so they're pretty much useless.  Still, with all the different yards that there were, as many railroads had not only their more remote classification yards, there were also large passenger terminal and coach yards as well as extensive freight yards near downtown and other transfer points.  So I'd figure we have a lot less physical capacity than there was in the mid 20th century, but what we do have is much better utilized through computerized signaling and routing of cars, and also higher capacity cars like double-stacked freight containers and auto racks.

 

I made the maps in my first two posts links only as it was very difficult to read other peoples' posts by scrolling way over to the right. I hope this helps.