The Wolfersheim Photo Collection

 Gregg Wolfersheim has allowed us to post these pictures from a trip which he took in 1971. We'll visit the Ohio Railway Museum at Worthington, the Indiana Railway Museum at Westport, and the Brookins collection at North Olmsted.

 These pictures are copyrighted by the photographer and may not be reproduced without permission.

Ohio Railway Museum

At that time the museum had an operating steam locomotive and several restored electric cars which were operated regularly.  

 

(L) Norfolk & Western 578 is a beautiful Pacific, and was pulling a good-sized heavyweight train.  (R) IT double-end PCC 450.

Views of the steam train.  At least one of these cars was occasionally used in RPO service, picking up and dropping mail bags.

(R) North Shore Brill 154.

(L) This cab-on-flat locomotive from Columbus is now at Arden.  (R) This interurban parlor car from the Columbus, Delaware and Marion had just been restored from chicken-coop status.   It has since deteriorated.

(L) Toledo Port Clinton and Lakeside #21 was a 1904 Niles combine, an excellent example of Midwest interurban design.  It was probably also the first interurban car to be selected for preservation, back in 1939.

(R) For many years there was an open-sided homemade shed, as seen here, but it deteriorated and was removed several years ago.

(L) This home-built steeplecab from Columbus is the last operating piece of electric equipment, we believe.  (R) The IT PCC passes the Detroit Peter Witt, 3876, which is now at Seashore.  IRM has an identical unit.

(L) The C&LE Red Devil was nicely restored and operated for several years.

We're not sure what happened to these streamlined cars.  They're certainly long gone.

Indiana Railway Museum at Westport

This museum later moved to French Lick, Indiana.

While at Westport, passenger service was provided by a saddle-tanker pulling this car, CA&E 318.

 (R) This appears to be the top level of the Westport interlocking tower.

(L) And this is the locomotive that pulled the 318.  It's now on display at French Lick.

 North Olmsted

In the early days of the Brookins collection at the trailer park in North Olmsted, there were several pieces of equipment lying around that were not part of the permanent collection.  Gerry later decided to clean the site up and these were either moved, mostly to Ronnie Jedlicka's farm at Buckeye Lake, or scrapped.

Lake Shore Electric snow sweeper "C", a 1910 McGuire-Cummings originally built for Michigan Railways which is now at Buckeye Lake.  It's the only "preserved" piece of non-revenue equipment from the LSE.

I believe this is the body of Lake Shore Electric #7, a 1900 Barney and Smith interurban, and the oldest preserved LSE body.  What's left of it is now at Buckeye Lake.

A couple of buses.  Behind the one on the left is Cleveland Southwestern & Columbus #121, an interurban body now at Buckeye Lake.

The body of NOT&L 1510 was acquired by NORM and is now at the Chippewa Lake site, if it hasn't already been scrapped.

 This is one of the Fox River cars; I'm going to guess that it's the 302, which was scrapped at North Olmsted about 1985.

The two Centerville, Albia and Southern box motors, 100 and 101.  These were part of the Trolleyville collection; the 100 was scrapped and the 101 went to Warehouse Point in 2009.

 

The one in the foreground is 101 and the 100 is in the background.  By the 1990s the 100, which was stored outside, had deteriorated considerably.

This Cleveland center-entrance trailer went to Seashore.

This car from the Fostoria and Fremont was also part of Ron Jedlicka's collection.  A more recent view can be seen here. 

And this is the brand-new station building at the west loop.  It may still be standing; does anybody know?  Since the trailer park is now a gated community, you can't just wander around as in the old days.