Author: Jim Pearson
Living in the Cincinnati metro area, in my opinion, it’s less stressful to take public transportation to and from work and not do battle with I75 traffic. Recently, because of street car construction, specifically track laying, the bus I use, started taking a different route.
Some of you may know that Cincinnati was a large railroad town. Prior to the 1960’s there was probably at least 5 major railroads that pulled into Cincinnati and many used C.U.T. (Cincinnatti Union Terminal). I digress. One morning when we first started taking the new route, I noticed a building that had the wording on the side of it “ Baltimore and Ohio Railroad freight station & storage warehouse.” That evening, when I got home from work, I did some research about the building (most of this is information is gleaned from the internet).
The building was built in 1904, it is 5 stories tall and 1,277 feet long. The length of the building was the first thing I noticed about it. And because of it’s close proximity to C.U.T., I suspected it was probably used by some railroad. There are 80,000 feet of pillings used to support the concrete foundation. There are 4.2 million bricks used in the walls. There are 2.5 million board feet of lumber used for floors, joists, roof beams, etc. 
The lower floor was designed for inbound freight and the 4 (four) upper floors were used for storage. The facility trackage could accommodate 125 cars. Other facilities included a boiler house, a 6 stall roundhouse, a coal tipple and a US Customs Bonded Warehouse, for the care of imported goods. The building is listed in the National Register of historic buildings. However, to my knowledge, you cannot go into the building as it current used by private businesses.
For more information about the building, google: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad storage Cincinnati.
This video takes us to Minneapolis-St. Paul in the spring of 1970 and to Chicago for scenes from 1966-1970. We see many of the long gone railroads that we remember from our younger days and some that we never heard of.
In the MSP area are: Soo Line; Minneapolis, Northfield & Southern; Burlington Northern; Chicago & Northwestern; Rock Island, and Milwaukee Road.
In the Chicago area we will see: B&O; Belt Railway of Chicago; Burlington Northern, Canadian National; C&O; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Chicago & Eastern Illinois; Chicago & Northwestern; Chicago Great Western; Chicago River & Indiana; Chicago, South Shore & South Bend; Elgin, Joliet & Eastern; Erie Lackawana; Pennsylvania; Grand Trunk Western; Great Northern; Gulf, Mobile & Ohio; Illinois Central; Indiana Harbor Belt; L&N; Northern Pacific; Seaboard Coast Line; Soo Line; Wabash; and the earliest days of Amtrak.
Not much needs to be said about this video. Reading the list of railroads that will appear in the video should stir something inside the hearts of rail fans. This DVD gives us a good look at old locomotive types that were commonly used in the late sixties and early seventies, including some Fairbanks Morse, Baldwin, GP series, SD series, and U series. Seeing the old locomotives proudly wearing the paint schemes of those long gone railroads is a trip back in time.
The image quality is representative of the technology of the time but is still good enough to make it a joy to watch this video.
I think you will like this one.
– Bill Grady
Well, glad to be back in the loop again. I would like to thank Steve Miller for stepping up in my absence and conducting the meeting last month. The only problem I have is picking up from where I stopped in May. I did receive a report from Blair that our organization had agreed to have the Christmas party on Monday, December 7, 2015 at Brothers Barbeque in Madisonville. I have stopped by the restaurant to make the reservation and Monday the 7th was already taken. So, I had to pick another date. The new reservation is for Tuesday the 8th. If the membership decides to hold the party on a different date, other then the 8th, we can change. We will have to move our meeting time to 6:00 because Brothers closes at 8:00 in the evening.
I don’t know how far we got on the club membership cards in the last meeting but it is something we need to work on. If you have your NRHS membership number please bring it with you on the 17th. I think Ricky has been trying to get the membership numbers from national without some success on their part. Some how we will get this project finished by the time we start a new year. It is hard to believe that we are talking about a new year approaching rapidly and we still have two major issues to address by November. One is liability insurance and the other is the review of the NRHS Bylaws. We can handle the insurance in the next meeting and set up a committee for the bylaws.
We still have lots of room on the wall of the waiting room of the depot for train artwork. If you have a picture that could be placed on display is the station please brings it to the meeting on Monday. All the artwork is on loan by you, to our chapter and you can take your pictures home anytime.
Remember for the next meeting we need “Show & Tell” items along with raffle material. We need to thank Bill Thomas for the refreshments and Jim Pearson for the excellent program in the last meeting. This month’s refreshments and program will be sponsored by Tom Johnson.
Bill Farrell, President
Western Kentucky Chapter/NRHS