Auroraadvocate.com - Kaleidoscope: Trip on Byesville train relaxing

by Ken Lahmers

Editor

Scenic railroads are dotted throughout Ohio. Scanning the Internet, I found information about eight of them, five of which are in the northern part of the state.

Earlier this year, I wrote about my ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad between Akron's northside station and Peninsula. The line extends from Independence to Canton.

Others nearby are the Ashtabula, Carson & Jefferson based in Jefferson and the Lorain & West Virginia in Wellington.

Among others in Ohio are the Hocking Valley in Nelsonville, Toledo/Lake Erie & Western at Waterville and Lebanon Mason & Monroe northeast of Cincinnati.

And then there's the Byesville Scenic Railway, which I had the pleasure to ride during an Aug. 9 road trip to beautiful Guernsey County.

Although it is one of the shortest routes operated by a scenic railroad, the 1 1/2-hour, 9-mile round trip between Byesville (pop. 2,500) and Pleasant City (pop. 440) is impressive.

The BSRW has operated since 2006, having succeeded the Buckeye Central Scenic Railroad, which started up in 2003.

Its route is over the former Cleveland & Marietta Railway (later Penn RR), which ran through towns such as Minerva, Mineral City, Dover, New Philadelphia, Newcomerstown, Cambridge and Caldwell.

It operates every other weekend from mid-May to mid-December, and the docents on the train focus on the rich heritage of coal mining along the line.

In the early 1900s, there were a dozen deep mines located close to the train route. At the Central mine just south of Byesville, 10 miners were killed during a roof collapse.

All about the journey

A diesel locomotive pulls either two or three passenger cars -- depending on the number of riders -- and a caboose. In early October during the Coal Miners Festival, a steam engine is used.

Pulling out of Byesville, the train passes the large Guernsey Scrap Recycling yard, where machines crush and prepare all kinds of scrap metal for recycling.

I spotted everything from flattened autos to metal appliances to steel beams from buildings which had been demolished.

The train crosses Wills Creek twice along the way -- once over a steel truss bridge and once over a steel deck plate bridge.

Visible along the east side of the tracks almost the entire route is the path of the former New Midland Power & Traction Co., a streetcar line which ran from Cambridge to Pleasant City. It was abandoned in the late 1920s.

The rails on the streetcar line are gone, but farm tractor roads run over it in some places, and the path is paved as it enters the unincorporated community of Derwent.

One of the most spectacular stretches of the route are vast wetlands on both sides just north of Derwent. The docent said they caused a lot of headaches for the many underground mines.

When the train, which crawls at about 15 miles an hour, stopped at Pleasant City and the locomotive began pushing the cars back to Byesville, the docent donned a miner's outfit.

He smeared black powder on his face, wore a hard hat with a carbide light, carried a pick, talked about the life of a miner and played a tune or two on an accordion.

History of the route

The railroad line was built in the early 1870s. South of Pleasant City to Marietta and north from Cambridge to Minerva, the line has been abandoned and the rails removed. The last time a train ran between Cambridge and Dover was 1976.

A hike and bike path is in the process of being built from Newcomerstown to Stone Creek. The latter is the site of a tunnel which a friend and I walked through a few times as teenagers.

One of the BSRW volunteers told me he's heard that tunnel has fallen apart in recent years. There's also a tunnel on at Kimbolton in northern Guernsey County.

The original BSRW route ran 3 1/2 miles, but just this year a one-mile extension from Derwent to Pleasant City was opened.

Line extension slated

BSRW volunteers are now working to clear brush and repair rails along an 8-mile stretch of the old B&O Eastern Ohio Branch from Pleasant City to Cumberland.

If completed, the excursion route would cover 12 1/2 miles. The B&O line was last used in 1993 and has grown up with brush and weeds. Floods have washed out some sections.

I drove down Route 146, which parallels the old B&O line in some places, and found it will take quite an effort to open the line. A volunteer told me it will be a three- to five-year process.

South of Cumberland is where the world's largest dragline -- the Big Muskie -- worked. In its dying days, the B&O line was used to ship ammonium nitrate from Cambridge to the mine.

BSRW volunteers are looking even further into the future, when the train could run south of Cumberland to the huge exotic animal preserve known as The Wilds.

Summary and the future

I'm sure most Northeast Ohioans would find a ride on the BSRW a pleasant experience. Combined with other places to visit in Guernsey County, it would make for a relaxing one- or two-day trip.

As 2008 winds down, I'm still looking forward to two more train excursions.

On Oct. 4, the Midwest Railroad Preservation Society will run a trip from Glenwillow to Kent on the Wheeling & Lake Erie line. On Oct. 11, the Orrville Railroad Heritage Society will offer its Medina Loop trip from Orrville, also on the W&LE.

E-mail:

klahmers@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155