(The following story by Ken Lahmers appeared on the Aurora Advocate website on November 4.)
AURORA, Ohio — Advocate readers probably have figured out I’m a railroad aficionado. I’ve written several pieces about railroads and my rail trips this year, and one led to this piece.
After my story about riding with a Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad crew appeared in Record Publishing Co. Weekly Division’s “Happenings” section, a public relations rep from the American Shortline and Regional Railroad Association in Washington, D.C., contacted me.
She asked if I’d like to do a story about an area freight railroad. Because I’d had a lot of feedback on my previous RR pieces, I thought readers might enjoy such a story.
The rep put me in contact with Mark Demaline, assistant vice president for marketing/sales at Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway, headquartered in the village of Brewster in Stark County.
Demaline arranged for me to ride with a switching crew on the Solon branch and the mainline from Glenwillow to Streetsboro.
That line runs across Routes 91 and 82 in Twinsburg, Old Mill Road in Aurora, under I-480 and across Aurora-Hudson Road in Streetsboro, past an industrial park in Streetsboro, then through Kent, Mogadore, Hartville, Canton, Navarre and to Harmon, just east of Brewster.
Starting a 6-hour ride
At 8:30 a.m. Oct. 23, I met Demaline and Ron Smith, trainmaster for the Akron-Falls Junction (Glenwillow) area, and rode with Demaline to the industrial park on the Solon branch, where a two-man crew was switching cars.
Conductor Mike Bonnacci of North Olmsted greeted me on the ground, and I hopped into the cab of Engine 4000, an SD40 locomotive built in 1970 by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division.
Engineer Timothy John of East Canton was at the controls of 3,000 hp Engine 4000. Behind us was Engine 110, a 1965 EMD GP35 (or Geep) 2,500 hp locomotive, and behind it was a half-dozen empty cars which the crew was pushing onto sidings.
The crew had been on the job since 5 a.m., switching cars at a handful of companies in the industrial park. When I boarded, they were at the Home Depot Distribution Center (lumber products) and Great Lakes Cold Storage (food).
Among other businesses W&LE services in Solon are Distributor Service Inc. (lumber), International Paper (paper), Solon Specialty Wire (steel) and Schwebel Baking Co. (grain).
Among the customers in Streetsboro are Aurora Plastics, Precise Technologies and Step2 (all plastics), Inland Paperboard (paper) and Millard Refrigerated Service (food).
The crew came on duty at Glenwillow, taking over the locos and some cars which another crew brought up from Brewster the night before and early that morning, dropping off and picking up cars along the way.
For about 1 1/2 hours, we switched a handful of cars, never moving more than about 500 feet on the Solon branch. Empty cars were pulled one or two at a time from Home Depot and Great Lakes, and loaded cars were put in their place.
About the crew and job
John has been with W&LE for six years — five as an engineer — and was a brakeman and conductor before that. He said engineers usually start as conductors and learn to run a locomotive on the job.
The training includes 400 on-the-job hours under a certified engineer.
John noted engineers must be familiar with regulations on other railroads’ lines which W&LE have “trackage rights” to use, and they are tested each year on all the rules.
“Switching is not too hard of a job,” he said. “Being an engineer on a mainline train is a lot more difficult. There’s more to learn to become an engineer than many people think.”
Switching cars means a lot of inching forward, stopping and backing up at very slow speeds.
The conductor has a pretty tough job. He’s on the ground about 80 percent of the time in all types of weather.
He sometimes hangs onto ladders on the sides of cars as he talks with the engineer on his hand-held radio, and has to keep from sliding down steep slopes along the tracks and walk on jagged slag.
With his radio, he tells the engineer to back up or pull forward, and makes sure one car couples onto another properly.
“I don’t mind doing this on a day like today [it was sunny and 55 degrees],” said Bonnacci. “I don’t usually mind the cold, but being out in the rain is miserable.”
Bonnacci is starting his fourth year at W&LE. He is qualified as an engineer, too. In fact, John said about 95 percent of conductors are certified engineers.
“I grew up near a railroad line,” Bonnacci explained. “But I wasn’t really excited about trains. I submitted a resume to W&LE and got the job.”
John said he and Bonnacci generally work on the Solon local for 10-hour shifts from Mondays to Saturdays.
He said there was a time when engineers and conductors worked 80 to 100 hours a week. Now, a bill is being considered by legislators that would require crews — after working a 10-hour shift — to have at least six hours rest between jobs.
Finishing branch work
After switching cars at the two businesses, we moved further down the line, uncoupled 12 cars from the engines, ran the engines to the other end and started pushing the cars to Glenwillow.
When we pushed them past a wye — a track that joins two tracks by curving from one to the other — John and I abandoned Engine 4000 and climbed into Engine 110 since it was then in the lead.
Just south of the Glenwillow depot, we picked up 14 gondolas filled with scrap steel setting on a siding, but first “flip-flopped” the engines so 4000 was in the lead again — although running in reverse — because 110’s horn was malfunctioning.
Without further interruptions we were on our way south to deliver two cars filled with plastic pellets to Step2 in Streetsboro, and remove three empty cars.
Speed limits, hazards
John told me most of the way on the Cleveland Subdivision from Glenwillow to Mogadore has a limit of about 10 mph, thus we were moving pretty slow.
He said speed limits are determined by track quality, terrain, how many roads the tracks cross and nature of the area surrounding the tracks.
In urban areas, he said some tracks run very close to homes, and it’s “pretty scary” when children are playing near the tracks.
“You never know when they’re going to run out in front of you — to put coins on the tracks or whatever,” he said. “Sometimes they throw stones at the cab.”
John said the railroad occasionally has derailments, and locos sometimes hit cars at crossings.
“The cars never win when a train hits them,” he added. “I’ve talked to engineers who have hit cars, and they say they don’t even feel a bump.”
He said in the future, there’s a possibility engineers will no longer be needed in locos on mainline trains, which would be operated by remote control.
He explained W&LE’s yard in Brewster has some switcher locos which use remote control. The engineer stands on the ground and maneuvers the engine with a hand-held unit.
End of the journey
At about 2:30 p.m., we pulled the three empty cars from Step2 onto the main line and hooked them to the other cars, making a total of 26 (14 loaded and 12 empty.
We moved a few hundred feet south on the main line, stopping beside the Streetsboro wastewater treatment plant, from where the afternoon crew would take the train to Brewster.
A railroad courier was at our final destination to drive us back to Glenwillow. Then he picked up the other crew — the same one which had brought cars up from Brewster earlier and had laid over before taking our train back to Brewster.
It was quite a learning experience riding with John and Bonnacci for six hours, and they were great hosts. Demaline and other officials I dealt with at W&LE were very accommodating.
Along with my ride-a-long, I was treated to a tour of the Brewster headquarters, yard and loco/car shops courtesy of Stow-Munroe Falls High School graduate Jeff Sunderland, a marketing rep at the railroad.
You can read all about that tour in a future “Kaleidoscope” column.