Canton Ohio Street Running
Not many people will know that the B&O had a 1/4 mile of street running in Canton Ohio. But it existed for almost 100 years. It was along the south side of Navarre Rd. I recently made a program covering the B&O CT&V (Cleveland Terminal & Valley) subdivision for the B&O Historical Society, It gave me a good excuse to revisit pictures of the line with my Dad and talk about the research he had done over the years. Quite a few of his pictures were included but I won't post them on my feed. Someday I'll make one of his own.
In my time of being around Canton there was one customer on the street that received loaded box cars of lumber. The warehouse was on the corner of Navarre Rd and Cleveland Ave and only big enough to hold one car at a time. The switch into the lumber yard was a street car style switch but one where a peg driven between the rails held the switch points tight against the rail. I was able to talk to one of the crewmen that worked the job at the meeting. He said they had a ball peen hammer to pound the peg out and back in after muscling the switch point over., Needless to say talking to the crew made the work preparing a presentation all the more worth it.
The Valley Road (Predecessor to the CT&V and B&O) arrived in Canton in 1880 following the west branch of Nimishillen Creek. Not long after arriving in town and getting permission to build across the Pittsburgh Ft Wayne, and Chicago (predecessor of NS, Conrail, Penn Central and Pennsylvania), they realized they wanted a presence in the commercial area about a mile to the east of McKinley tower where they crossed the Ft. Wayne line. There were numerous businesses in the area and that is where the Pennsy predecessor had built a freight house 30 years earlier. It's also where the narrow gauge Connotten Valley had a freight house. The CV was the Valley Road's competitor in the lucrative Cleveland to Canton market. The problem was that there was no available land for about the first 1/4 mile. The railroad's solution was to put their crew to work on a Sunday installing a track down the side of Navarre Rd thinking there would be no way to get an injunction to stop them. It worked and on Monday they resumed construction on available land to finish the spur. In the 1800's railroads were one of the most important businesses going and anything that happened on a railroad was reported in the newspaper. The Canton Repository has a regular weekly feature of "Through the Century" where they study the paper from 100 years before and write a paragraph summary. Railroad info was a frequent topic in the 1980's since both the Valley Rd and Conotten Valley arrived in Canton within one month of each other in March 1880. Dad would see the short paragraph and then go to the library and read the original articles.
Here we see the Canton turn curving off of the west end of the street running at McKinley Ave with one box car in Feb 1975.
Canton Ohio Street Running
Not many people will know that the B&O had a 1/4 mile of street running in Canton Ohio. But it existed for almost 100 years. It was along the south side of Navarre Rd. I recently made a program covering the B&O CT&V (Cleveland Terminal & Valley) subdivision for the B&O Historical Society, It gave me a good excuse to revisit pictures of the line with my Dad and talk about the research he had done over the years. Quite a few of his pictures were included but I won't post them on my feed. Someday I'll make one of his own.
In my time of being around Canton there was one customer on the street that received loaded box cars of lumber. The warehouse was on the corner of Navarre Rd and Cleveland Ave and only big enough to hold one car at a time. The switch into the lumber yard was a street car style switch but one where a peg driven between the rails held the switch points tight against the rail. I was able to talk to one of the crewmen that worked the job at the meeting. He said they had a ball peen hammer to pound the peg out and back in after muscling the switch point over., Needless to say talking to the crew made the work preparing a presentation all the more worth it.
The Valley Road (Predecessor to the CT&V and B&O) arrived in Canton in 1880 following the west branch of Nimishillen Creek. Not long after arriving in town and getting permission to build across the Pittsburgh Ft Wayne, and Chicago (predecessor of NS, Conrail, Penn Central and Pennsylvania), they realized they wanted a presence in the commercial area about a mile to the east of McKinley tower where they crossed the Ft. Wayne line. There were numerous businesses in the area and that is where the Pennsy predecessor had built a freight house 30 years earlier. It's also where the narrow gauge Connotten Valley had a freight house. The CV was the Valley Road's competitor in the lucrative Cleveland to Canton market. The problem was that there was no available land for about the first 1/4 mile. The railroad's solution was to put their crew to work on a Sunday installing a track down the side of Navarre Rd thinking there would be no way to get an injunction to stop them. It worked and on Monday they resumed construction on available land to finish the spur. In the 1800's railroads were one of the most important businesses going and anything that happened on a railroad was reported in the newspaper. The Canton Repository has a regular weekly feature of "Through the Century" where they study the paper from 100 years before and write a paragraph summary. Railroad info was a frequent topic in the 1980's since both the Valley Rd and Conotten Valley arrived in Canton within one month of each other in March 1880. Dad would see the short paragraph and then go to the library and read the original articles.
Here we see the Canton turn curving off of the west end of the street running at McKinley Ave with one box car in Feb 1975.