Ohio RR Museum

We're currently on a cross country road trip from New Hampshire to Oregon and posting about sites along the way. This post is about a stop in Conneaut, OH.

Sometimes you'll find the interesting places when least expected. That’s what happened as we drove from Erie, PA to our next stop (Toledo, OH). Grenville, a long time RR fan spotted a sign for the Conneaut Railroad Museum. 

Usually small local museums are only open weekends or specified days/hours. We were there on a mid-week afternoon and didn't expect to find it open. To our surprise, a sign said it would open at noon, shortly after our arrival. The museum is maintained by the Conneaut Historical Railroad Museum, Admission is free and donations are accepted, which was a small cost for such an unexpected and informative stop.

Photo courtesy of Conneaut Historical Railroad Museum

The museum is housed in a passenger station originally built for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern in 1900 and the building is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It's full of railroad history and information. There's a model railroad setup in a back room which youngsters and adults were enjoying when we visited. (Aside from the outside trains, this is the only part of the museum that young children would enjoy.)

Exhibits emphasize the locomotives and equipment that helped to make Conneaut a significant part of railroad transportation in the state of OH. 

There’s a lot of railroad memorabilia including assorted displays of lanterns, timetables, passes and old photos. There’s also several scale models of various locomotives.

An interesting display was an 1857 free railroad travel permit issued to the chief attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad, Abraham Lincoln before he became a U.S. president.

There are relics from the 1876 Astabula Bridge Disaster, a derailment caused by the failure of a bridge over the Ashtabula River some 1,000 feet from the railroad station at Ashtabula, in far northeastern OH. On the evening of Dec 29,1876, the bridge collapsed and plunged two locomotives hauling 11 railcars of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway and and 159 passengers into the river in deep snow. Heated by stoves, the wooden cars were set on fire. The accident killed 92 people and was the worst U.S. rail disaster until the Great Train Wreck of 1918.

Located on the museum grounds is its premier display, a Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 755. The engine is on display with a hopper car and caboose from the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad. Visitors can climb aboard the steam engine and see the controls from an enclosed display complete with a (very quiet) engineer.

There's a stairway that visitors can use to access the caboose interior. 

Nickel Plate Road no. 755 is a 2-8-4 Berkshire type steam locomotive built in 1944 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. Classified as a "S-2" class Berkshire, the locomotive operated fast, heavy freight and passenger trains until its retirement in 1958. The Berkshire locomotive was named after its testing location on the Berkshire Hills of the Boston & Albany Railroad. 

The New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (abbreviated NYC&St.L) operated in the mid-central U. S and was commonly referred to as the Nickel Plate Road. Its widely accepted that the term "Nickel Plate" was first used in a March 1981 article in the Chronicle of Norwalk, OH. The paper reported the arrival of a party of engineers to make a survey for the "great New York and St. Louis double track, nickel plated railroad."

Photo courtesy of Conneaut Historical Railroad Museum

If you happen to be travel through Ohio and are looking for a local RR museum (or not) this is a great one to see. It’s located between Broad and Mill St on, where else, Depot St. in Conneaut, OH, and open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Be sure to bring your curiosity and a donation.

Since you're in town, stop at the White Turkey Drive on E. Main Street In for a turkey sandwich and cold root beer.