Toledo and Ohio Central History

CHAPTER ONE – Connecting to a boom in 1830, Ohio looked much different than it does today. The population center was between Dayton and Cincinnati. Northwestern Ohio was mostly undeveloped. The Ohio Canal system was the only method of moving heavy goods when not hauled over blazed roads by oxen or horse. The Ohio Canal between the Ohio River and Lake Erie, and the Miami Canal between Cincinnati and moved 25,000 tons of goods per year. The Pennsylvania Canal moved nearly 16 times as much per year. Deep in the non-glacial southeastern Ohio hills mining was beginning of mining on a grand scale. In the area encompassing what was, and still is, known as “The Hocking Hills,” the history of the Hocking Valley mining towns was being written. Between 1830 and 1869 a new town sprung up everyplace a new mine was opened. Of these towns that became municipalities, a number still remain centered in the general area of New Lexington; Chauncey, Congo, Carbondale, Carbon Hill, Corning, Nelsonville, New Straitsville, Shawnee, Rendville, Glouster, Murray City, Shawnee, and Jacksonville, to name a few. There were many others. By the 1870’s the “mineral region” had begun to boom over an area from Logan, to Somerset, to Zanesville, to Hobson just above the Ohio River was about 90 miles in each direction. Although not largely written about, the Hocking Valley area experienced all of the facets of economic boom and bust. The Hocking River flows from Lancaster southeastward through Athens to the Ohio, a distance of eighty-seven miles. The Appalachian bituminous coal fields underlay the rugged hills, as well as salt, iron ore, and clay. The Ohio Canal, extending from Portsmouth to Cleveland was in operation by 1843 and the state chartered several “connecting lateral canals” (Little Cities of Black Diamonds by Ivan M. Tribe 1988). Moving goods by canal was slow and limited. Miners dug coal near the surface and sunk shafts sloping into hillsides, hauling the coal from the mine to the dock by wagons. Workers then moved the coal in wheel-barrows, dumping it into the canal boats. A couple of small railroads had sprung up to serve the mines. One was the Zanesville and Western, affectionately called the “Zig-Zag and Wobbly,” and later owned by the T&OC. Another was the Columbus and Hocking Valley RR. Both would, in years to come, ship coal through Bucyrus. Industry in the region grew and inaddition to coal, iron ore, and salt from the miners, farmers began shipping packed pork and bacon, wool and tobacco from the valley. (New Lexington, Tribune, Aug., 21, Sept. 24, and Nov. 30, 1882). The area was not untouched by the Civil War, as Morgan’s confederate Calvary entered Nelsonville July 19, 1863 and burned all of the boats, looted the stores and stole all of the horses.

CHAPTER TWO – “BUCYRUS BIDS TO PUT A RAILROAD THROUGH TO TOLEDO” Following the Civil War, a number of industrialists and local investors looked at running railroads from the “mineral region” to the Great Lakes. Among these was D. W. Swigart, from Bucyrus, who amassed $50,000 get the line to town. Even though $100,000 had been raised earlier to put the Ohio and Indian RR through Bucyrus east to west in 1850, this was another opportunity to put Bucyrus on the map. The Bucyrus offer was the best one in-hand and by 1856, one rail line neared completion, the Marietta and Cincinnati RR. By 1863, the marietta and Cincinnati had transported $11,611 in revenue, tripling to $32,000 in 18 months. An earlier financial collapse had found most of the stock in the hands of the B&O railroad. On August 17, 1869, a Columbus and Hocking Valley RR train transported the first trainload of coal from Nelsonville “The little city of Black Diamonds” to Columbus “with much ceremony.” The Atlantic and Lake Erie already had its beginning in 1867 with the formation of the Perry Mining and Railway Company. The New Lexington Herald said the company “is now the owner of several thousand acres of mineral lands, the coal deposits on which, it is safe to say, have no equal on the civilized portion Of the North American continent.” The company proposed a 10 mile extension to the Cincinnati and Zanesville line (C&Z nee Zig-zag and Wobbly) at New Lexington. The line, according to the newspaper would change dilapidated hamlets into flourishing towns “filled with an industrious, sober, intelligent population.” During the summer of 1869, the company launched subscription drives along the proposed route of the Atlantic and Lake Erie RR. One place the drive succeeded was Bucyrus, in northwestern Ohio, where investors pledged $70,000 by mid-July. A week later James Taylor and D. W. Swigart obtained subscriptions totaling $260,000 (Ohio Commissioner or Railroads 1869 Annual report). The Athens Messenger, newspaper, reported; “The Toledo, Crawford and Morrow County people are making a great effort to have the road go to Toledo instead of to Cleveland. We think our interests demand that the main trunk of the road be to Toledo.” By September, 10 percent of the five million in proposed stock had been subscribed. Of seven directors chosen, Swigart and Taylor were included. Charles Foster of Seneca County would be named a director and also become one of Ohio’s most prominent political figures. Construction of the Atlantic and Lake Erie RR began in New Lexington, Ohio on June 27, 1870 and occasioned “much celebration” in the little county seat. The 81-year old Thomas Ewing, who held the original dream was asked to speak, but sent a letter which included these words; “A great work which will make your present secluded valleys the richest and most populous above and below the surface on the face of the earth.” Swigart had been named President and also addressed the crowd. The beginning of the railroad initiated a town-site called Ferrara, which began a political and debating society but never came into being. A second town “Moxahala” (an Indian name) came into being as did Rendville below it, boyhood home of the last engineer on the T&OC, Ed Baldy. Construction of the new railroad south of New Lexington and the Moxahala tunnel proceeded slowly. Swigart hoped to see “100 miles of the T&OC between the coal-fields and Toledo in operation by by October 1872.” The report proved to be overly optimistic (Ohio Commissioner of RR’s 1871). By 1874, a nationwide depression had crippled railroad building, with only seven miles of track being laid. “Watering of the stock” raised some funds, but the directors felt that changing the name of the railroad to the Ohio Central would attract more investors. However, on July 9, 1877, the line went into receivership with only 99 miles of railroad graded, 27 miles of track laid but not ballasted, and only the original seven miles in operation. The Atlantic and Lake Erie had hauled only 15,423 tons of coal and a few passengers to the C&HVRR at New Lexington, all at a loss of $352.95. Local historian, Ephriam S. Colburn, later described the A&LE in the mid-70’s; “The company had one old wheezy engine and one car, which plied between new Lexington and Moxahala, to which latter place the road had been finished in 1874. -irregularly in the years 1875, 6 and 7, but at last gave it up altogether, and the old engine was thrown off the tracks near the tunnel, where it lay for a long time, a monument to the former impecuniousity and bad fortunes of the thoroughfare.” The first train to travel over the railroad's entire line from Columbus to Corning ran southward on November 10, 1879, with two coaches filled with dignitaries and guests. Considerable ballasting still needed to be done and the Moxahala tunnel needed more timbering before coal trains could be run over the line. Both tasks were completed by January 1880.

CHAPTER THREE – “THE T&OC GENERATED MORE RAILROAD AND MORE TOWNS” A railroad related corporation, The Ohio Central Coal Company, headed by Samuel Thomas and E.C. Lemert, became the major mining concern in the Corning area. By the fall of 1881, 15-20 coal trains of 20 or more cars left town daily. Later, as the lines of the Ohio Central moved southward, Corning would become a division terminal with trains running from Toledo to Bucyrus to Corning and later to Hobson and points across the Ohio River. The railroad continued to extend its tracks into new mining areas. By 1882 the Toledo Journal reported the Ohio Central Coal Co. as owning six of eight major mines, 300 houses, with 400 more under construction. In 1882, a change of company policy saw the OCCC sell its company stores in Corning and Rendville. There were embryo cities demanding hundreds more laborers and houses. Towns began and often changed names as post office names were not to be duplicated. Jacksonville, Glouster, Buckingham are examples of new towns all along the line. During early excavations at the Ohio Central shops in Bucyrus, a huge mastodon skeleton was found in a mill-race, one of the largest of its kind. The skeleton was finally burned in the fire of P. T.Barnum’s Museum in New York City. North and South ends of the T&OC had met at aptly named “Climax,” Ohio, just west of Iberia in Marion County. Bucyrus became a division point with a large yard and repair facility. By the 1890’s, the “Mineral region” had rail connections to the outside world. Three of the most direct routes had been built connecting to Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Milwaukee, Sandusky, Toledo. Bucyrus T&OC shops built and repaired locomotives and became the city’s largest employer helping to spawn , or ship for, 35 other industries. John Carroll had stepped down from the train on the “other railroad” and began an iron-molding foundry that would be very successful. Railroad parts, clay and brick machinery, road building equipment, locomotive cranes, plows, blowers and furnaces and more rolled out of Bucyrus factories and onto the rails. The T&OC passenger depot was built in 1892, it was seven years late in coming as the elite residents of Bucyrus, who had funded the railroad's earliest beginnings, wanted a railroad station worthy of the street on which it sat. It still stands, and is being renovated to its original regalia by the Bucyrus Preservation Society founded in 2001, almost 110 years later. The railroad was taken into the New York Central System in 1937, but NYC locomotives had been on the property long before that time. However, the railroad was always referred to as “The Tee n’ocee” The United States Army’s only Railroad Construction Battalion would take over the T&OC’s erecting shops during WWII, and Bucyrus’ county fairgrounds would become “Camp Millard” where soldiers were trained to repair railroad hardware. An annual reunion still celebrates the battalion’s existence. During its heyday, the T&OC would see “two heavy coal trains north every hour and one south” during the First World War and heavy traffic through the second. It was famous for its Lima, Ohio, built H-10b class locomotives, and for ushering in the first diesel locomotive to enter Bucyrus in the spring of 1949. It would also see the first big diesel train wreck in Corning later that year. The demise of the “steam” era was a sad sight to see, and with the coming of more diesel locomotives the trains grew longer and fewer through Bucyrus. Bucyrus still ran freights and coal trains with two daily express freights from Norfolk to Stanley Yard in Toledo. Just 100 years after the railroad was conceived, the newly merged Penn-Central Corporation quietly began discontinuing service on the line and began taking up track. A lone local still worked the line north of Bucyrus, but the "last“ train south ran Sept. 15, 1965. Julius “Julo” Kish and the remaining Bucyrus staff had , for the first time since their employment in the 20’s, had to “bump” into jobs in Fostoria, further up the line. Although the railroad was in the throes of death, it was, and still is the finest railroad roadbed location connecting the major rail centers of the mid-west to the East coast. Workmen marking off with militant attitudes toward work rules started the demise of the Eastern T&OC, even when operators openly admitted the “east” as a much better route than the “West side,” later chosen to carry the express freights and coal to Stanley Yard. By 1980 much of the T&OC was cut-off from its original routes. The railroad still operated as a division of Conrail down the West side from Toledo through Bowling Green, Findlay, and Kenton to Columbus. The eastern division was cut off a few miles south of Toledo near the town of Luckey, leaving only a fly-track into Stanley Yard. The last caboose traveled south through Sycamore and the Bethel Road -Brokensword Creek bridge was removed, leaving only the Spore Quarry industrial line into Bucyrus, where it was diverted over to the Fort Wayne Division Conrail line bridge at Mansfield Street.

News / Contact Us / Links / Site Map

700 East Rensselaer Street Bucyrus, OH