(rshsdepot) Licking County, OH

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From the Newark Advocate.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 
Once a thriving industry, railroads in Licking County  mostly have disappeared

By TIFFANY EDWARDS 
Advocate Reporter 

NEWARK -- In the first half of the 20th  century, an average of 90 freight 
and 25 passenger trains chugged through Newark  each day, according to a 
railroad history compiled by The Works. 
Author June Harman Butts (pen name Betts) moved to Newark in 1943, when her  
father was working on the construction of Kaiser Aluminum. Her memory of that  
childhood trip aboard a train from Jackson, Miss., still is vivid.  
"Train travel was exciting to me," she said. "The train was filled with  
servicemen. All the seats were taken, and there were people sitting on their  
suitcases. My brother was older and played cards with them in the aisles."  
Many servicemen used the Pennsylvania station in downtown Newark, including  
her future husband, who was an Army medic during World War II.  
Veteran Paul Welsh, 60, also came home through the station. In 1965, he was  
on an incoming train from New York.  
"I was coming home from Germany and going to go to Vietnam," he recalled. "It 
 was a surprise."  
When he returned to Licking County two years later to find few available  
jobs, the railroad provided employment as a night yard clerk. The position,  
however, involved lots of standing in the rain, and he stayed less than a year,  
he said.  
By the 1970s, railroad business was declining. The last train to leave the  
Pennsylvania station departed in 1970, according to a 2002 Advocate article. 
The  last train to originate from Newark left the B&O yard in 1985.  
Tracks have been pulled up and some of the depots have disappeared. Newark's  
elegant 1878 Baltimore & Ohio station, which housed a hotel on its second  
story, was burned in a fire exercise in 1989. Pataskala's station was dismantled 
 in the mid-'70s after having been ravaged by termites, said county 
commissioner  Doug Smith. The Heath, Toboso and Hebron depots are gone, and all that is 
left  of the Avondale station, said local railroad historian Carl T. 
Winegartner, is a  set of steps that once led from Buckeye Lake to the depot and 
hotel.  
Nonetheless, a few have survived. Granville's station now houses a business.  
In Outville, Utica and Newark, the local government and nonprofits stepped in 
to  save pieces of the past.  
DEPOT DAYS
The charter for the first railroad in Newark was written in 1845 and  
provided for a more than 60-mile line from Newark to Mansfield, according to  
Winegartner's "A Historical Account of B&O Rail Lines 1830-1989." In 1881,  N.N. Hill 
wrote that four railroads in town were owned by two companies, the  Baltimore 
& Ohio and the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati & St. Louis (The Pan  Handle). 
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was the county's largest employer from the  
turn of the century, said Winegartner, a 45-year employee. Two major stations  
were located south of downtown Newark -- the three-story B&O, just east of  
where The Works now stands, and the Italianate Pennsylvania Railroad Station, 25  
E. Walnut St. The Pennsylvania station on Walnut Street was the second one 
built  in Newark by that railroad. The first one, a wooden station, was at Sixth  
Street, Winegartner said.  
Built in the late Romanesque Revival style, the B&O station had tiled  
floors, a fruit growers' express office and Western Union office.  
"It had those old depot wooden chairs like pews in church," he said. "Western 
 Union had bicycles and they'd deliver the messages."  
Evans Foundation chairman Gib Reese said he used to travel through the nearby 
 Pennsylvania station as a youth on his way to Phillips Academy Andover. He  
remembered Emerson Miller, the late philanthropist with a reputation as a  
penny-pincher, sneaking on the train in the morning.  
"He'd pull out his razor and shave. He made it look like he had come in from  
the night before. They finally caught him and made him pay for a few 
tickets,"  he said.  
After the trains stopped running through the Pennsylvania, several  
entrepreneurs ran short-lived restaurants there. The T.J. Evans Foundation  bought the 
Pennsylvania depot in a sheriff's sale in 1997.  
"It was an attractive building. I didn't want it torn down," Reese said. "I  
didn't know what I was going to use it for, but I wanted to save it."  
Gib entrusted his wife, Lou, to lead the $1 million restoration. Lou  
described its former condition as "marginal." An operator's tower visible in old  
photos was not there when the Evans Foundation bought the building, Lou said,  
but other original details remained.  
"(Previous owners) did not mess up the woodwork. That was really lucky. It  
hadn't been abused with anyone trying to make it modern," she said.  
The pre-1880 building, which now houses several nonprofit foundations, had  
retained its vaulted ceilings, maple floors and chair railing. An addition  
providing office space was added to the rear of the building using bricks from  
Virginia Brick Co., which supplies bricks for the Smithsonian.  
OUTVILLE STATION SAVED
In Outville, the Harrison Township trustees took action to save the local  
station, built by B&O in 1899. It was closed to passenger service in 1940,  said 
Doug Smith, former Harrison Township trustee. 
For many years, the station was used for storage by "section gangs" who were  
in charge of track maintenance. In 1963, a local farmer, Dwight Moose, bought 
 the building and moved it north of town to his property, where he tore out a 
 wall and used it to store farm equipment, Smith said.  
After the farmer died, the station was owned briefly by Daley Builders  
development company. Smith said he approached Daley about donating the Outville  
station to the township. They agreed, and soon the trustees hired Dingy Movers  
of Zanesville, the same company that had moved the station decades earlier, to 
 move it again, this time onto a new foundation in the Harrison Township  
community complex on Outville Road.  
Smith said the station had been painted barn red, so the historic  
preservationists undertook paint analysis to determine the original colors --  beige 
with chocolate brown trim. The wood structure with its slate roof is a  rare 
treasure today.  
"This depot is the only one of its type remaining on its line from Columbus  
to Pittsburgh," Smith said.  
When restoring the building, the group also discovered B&O had no  blueprints 
of small stations such as Outville's. An architect drew up plans in  case 
other places would like to restore their rural depots.  
In 1995, the station received a historic designation, and the West Licking  
Historical Society is working on developing the station into a full museum.  
PRESERVATION CHALLENGES
The future of some historic stations, such as the B&O depot on the  National 
Road, is unclear. 
"It goes back to the stagecoach days along the National Road," Smith said.  
"Some have alleged it's the oldest frame building in Licking County."  
Once leased by Buckeye Scenic Railroad, the station was owned by the Evans  
Foundation. However, Gib Reese said he was uncertain whether the foundation  
still owns the building. The property is part of a corridor under a property  
dispute after the Evans Foundation began removing the railroad tracks to build a 
 bike trail.



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