Summary:
Ghost Rails III Electrics of the Upper Ohio Valley and the Youngstown and Ohio River Railroad covers Eastern Ohio, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, and the Panhandle of West Virginia. The 312 page hardback on glossy paper details an accurate first time ‘electric” history almost mile by mile with hundreds of photos, maps, and original paper work. Many of the shots reveal the 2007 ghosts of what remains of Upper Ohio Valley streetcar system and the electric Y&O line that ran through the valley of the Little Beaver Creek to Salem, Ohio.
Steubenville, East Liverpool, and Beaver Valley Traction history stretches from Beaver, Pennsylvania to East Liverpool to Steubenville, and covers many small towns like Empire, Smiths Ferry, Toronto, Industry, Midland, Wellsville to name a few.
In order to tell the history accurately I had to cover the trolley amusement parks Rock Springs, Chester; Laurel Park, Newell West Virginia; and Stanton Park, Steubenville as well the Chester and Newell streetcar lines of the Panhandle of West Virginia and the three great bridges that spanned the Ohio to West Virginia.
A special section covers the Youngtown and Southern Railway and its Y&O and Smiths Ferry connection. Plus, the little known electric railway that ran to the Island Run coal mine is covered. Plus, at Steubenville the southern SEL&BVT connection to Weirton and Wellsburg, West Virginia and the ‘Seventh Wonder of the Ohio Valley” the Mingo and Ohio Valley streetcar line to Mingo Junction is detailed. At the northern SEL&BVT connection the author devotes space to the enchanting incline at Beaver Falls and Harmony connections.
Ghost Rails III in the end covers it all: the streetcar people, the industries long ago gone, the Cyclone at Rock Springs; the only known color photo of a Yellow Car; a history of three car barns that yet stand; the ghosts of 2007 that remain behind a hundred years later; action streetcar shots; the streetcar Mecca, Newell, West Virginia, Laurel Park and polar bear fights; the steep grades of 7th Street in Steubenville to Ross Park; and the last streetcar runs. It is a near perfect history!
About the Author:
I am a graduate of Geneva College, and a retired English teacher from Blackhawk High School. For twenty years I rode freight trains as a hobo across North America. In the summer of 1971, I rode a freight from Ellwood City, Pa. to Seattle, Washington, in 70 hours. Caught a 747 to Japan and rode trains. Then I boated to Siberia and spent 45 days riding trains in Russia. I ended up in Turkey. Five years later in Essex, Montana, riding the “Billy Goat,” I encountered railroad author Karl Zimmerman who was doing a story. Years, trains, jobs, adventures, dangers, fun, interchanges, it all passed. It was an education and a great blessing from God. Part of me still wants to roll nowhere one more time.
My first book Rails of Dreams, taking over three years, was my longest journey; it took me back to the ghost railroads of my youth that I knew so well the Pittsburgh Harmony Butler and New Castle Railway and the Pittsburgh Lisbon and Western. The Beaver Valley Railroad Company came next, and both books sold out. The Greersburg Academy and the Station House, a history of one of Americas oldest Academic buildings, 1802, that became a train station from 1883 to 1972, was my third. The fifty page paper back is available for $15, simply note and add to the cost of an order. By the time I arrived at my fourth book, I arrived at my title Ghost Rails; I was searching and writing about that which was gone---much like riding a freight train and looking out and searching and finding myself gone again. Allegheny Railroad Ghost Rails Volume II involved winter hikes, continual discoveries, and new friends. I did not want the research to end.
Ghost Rails III Electrics includes the electric lines: Youngtown and Ohio River, Beaver Valley East Liverpool and Steubenville, and Glasgow Railroad. One again I was very fortunate to meet so many great people in the Ohio Valley from Beaver to Steubenville and from East Liverpool to Salem. It is always with a touch of sadness when the research ends and I go onto another geographic area. It is such a blessing to encounter such fine people. Ghost Rails IV will cover industrial ghost railroads as Carbon Limestone, Winfield Railroad, the Butler Branch, Bessemer Limestone, Jackson Coal RR, the Wampum Industrial complex, and the Koppel Car Company. (Note: my research is fluid and subject to change.) Ghost Rails V hopefully constitutes the Harmony Line, Beaver Valley Traction, and New Castle traction.
I am very privileged to have my grandson Adair Gwilliam make these trip with me in all types of inclement weather; he is now sixteen and has been exploring since he could walk. Adair lives with my wife Eileen and me in a log home I constructed in South Beaver Township. All three of us attend the Chippewa Evangelical Free Church, a solid cornerstone in our lives.
Copyright 2008 Wayne A. Cole
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book including web elements and images may be reproduced by any means or appear in any media without permission from the author and publisher, Wayne A. Cole, except for reviews or excerpts.
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