(The following story by Mark J. Price appeared on the Akron Beacon Journal website on August 30.)
AKRON, Ohio — Some ideas go nowhere fast. Other ideas go somewhere… at moderate speed.
In 1949, an Akron company made national news by announcing a bold plan to build the world’s largest conveyor belt system, a 103-mile elevated line from Lorain to East Liverpool.
“The Railroad of Tomorrow,” also known in Akron as “The Rubber Railroad,” was designed to transport coal and iron ore on twin tracks between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. With connecting spur lines to Cleveland and Youngstown, the entire project would stretch 130 miles.
Business leaders hailed the concept as futuristic and fantastic, and predicted it would have an impact on Ohio’s landscape, industry and economy.
H.B. Stewart Jr., president of the Akron, Canton & Youngstown Railroad, was a businessman who dared to think outside the boxcar.
Troubled by surging freight rates in the rail industry, Stewart wondered if there might be a better, cheaper method to transport bulk materials. When he mentioned the situation to his wife, Catherine, the daughter of Goodyear co-founder C.W. Seiberling, she responded with an offbeat suggestion.
“If you want to do something, why don’t you try a conveyor belt?” she asked.
Tiny wheels began to roll in Stewart’s brain. The idea was outlandish, but it might work.
Stewart envisioned a belt line that would carry iron ore south from a Lake Erie terminal to Youngstown steel mills and Ohio River barges. Meanwhile, a northbound belt would transport coal from the river to Northeast Ohio cities and industrial plants.
The railroad executive took the idea to E.W. Stephens, Goodyear’s manager of belting sales, who conducted engineering studies and refined the concept for a year. They called their top-secret work “Project X.”
Finally satisfied that the system would work, Stewart incorporated Riverlake Belt Conveyor Lines Inc. in 1949 and unveiled his proposal to an unsuspecting public. There was a collective gasp in the media. Ohio newspapers, radio stations and TV stations adored the idea.
The Akron company’s illustrations looked like splash panels from a Flash Gordon comic strip. The drawings revealed a sleek, ultra-modern tube snaking its way across the Ohio countryside.
The two-track system would be elevated 22 feet off the ground on concrete foundations. Its 172 flights of belts would be enclosed in a giant steel gallery to guard against weather or trespassers.
The entire line would run on electric power and be monitored by engineers stationed at various control panels along the 130-mile route. An electric-eye system would sound an alert and halt the conveyor belts in the event that the cargo should jam.
Inside the tube, a maintenance walkway allowed Riverlake employees to inspect the machinery as the ore traveled south and the coal traveled north.
Stewart told reporters that the project would cost $210 million in private capital and take about three years to build.
It would use 151,000 tons of structural steel, 38,000 cubic yards of concrete, 400,000 metal rollers, 798,812 roller bearings, 14,000 tons of paint and 68,640 light bulbs.
Give or take.
Its Akron-made conveyor belts would be composed of 6 million pounds of fine steel cable and 6 million pounds of cotton. The belts would travel 7 miles per hour, completing the trip from the river to the lake in 15 hours, 14 minutes.
Stewart estimated that the line would save the state as much as $45,000 a year in freight rates, and he assured the public that the project, while immense, was mechanically sound.
“It is in no sense visionary or fantastic,” he said. “Its operational principles, its practicality and economy have been developed, tested and proved by more than a quarter century of conveyor experience.”
Now all he needed was land.
The Riverlake belt would require a 100-foot-wide right of way for the entire 130 miles of the line. Stewart wanted state legislators to classify the company as a public utility so that it could acquire property through eminent domain.
“All we are asking is a chance to compete,” Stewart said. “Pipelines, telephone and gas companies now have the right of eminent domain. We’re only asking for the same rights.”
Area businessmen and politicians lined up to endorse the Railroad of Tomorrow.
“The whole state should be interested in the project and should give its approval,” said state Sen. Carl D. Sheppard, R-Akron. “It may take some traffic away from the railroads but the chief aim is to develop and preserve manufacturing in this region.”
Frank Purnell, president of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., said the plan had a lot to offer. “We are for anything that will cut the staggering costs of transportation that are endangering the future of the Youngstown district,” he said.
E.G. Plowman, vice president of U.S. Steel Corp. in Pittsburgh, praised Riverlake and its leader. “I am happy to see there are still people in the country like Stewart with the courage and ability to plan projects of this magnitude,” he said.
But not everyone was happy. Large railroads and their unions felt threatened by the conveyor belt and opposed the idea.
A.F. Whitney, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, condemned the project as ridiculous.
“This is just another scheme of the big corporations to get more profit,” he said. “Big corporations are bleeding the people dry. You know this won’t bring the prices of steel down, nor the prices of coal down, either. They’ll just make a big cry and keep the profits.”
Stewart insisted that he had nothing against railroads. They were his life. His father, H.B. Stewart Sr., had incorporated AC&Y in 1907, and Stewart Jr. took over as president in 1944 after his father’s death.
“But I believe railroads must expand or die on the vines,” Stewart said.
Sheppard, the Akron Republican, and state Sen. Edwin F. Sawicki, D-Cleveland, co-sponsored legislation in 1949 to give Riverlake the right to eminent domain. The powerful railroad lobby intervened, though, and persuaded the Senate judiciary committee to dump the idea.
After the bill was reintroduced in 1951, the Senate Rules Committee tossed it. When a similar bill entered the House in 1953, the Commerce and Transportation Committee killed it after four weeks of hearings.
Stewart stuck to his guns. He gave speeches and presentations to civic groups, politicians and companies throughout Ohio.
“We are as sure of this project as the Wright brothers were certain they could fly,” he said in 1956. “This is no fly-by-night venture, no scheme, no trick but a project expertly thought out that is sound and feasible from an engineering and financial standpoint.”
A few modifications to the plan were made along the way, including moving the northern terminal from Lorain to Cleveland. The Stone and Webster Engineering Corp. of Boston joined the project and coordinated engineering work by General Electric, Westinghouse, Ohio Edison and other specialists.
“When you believe in a thing as we believe in this project, you never give up,” Stewart said.
Too much had changed, though, during Stewart’s 10-year campaign. By the late 1950s, Ohio wasn’t consuming as much coal and ore, and railroads had lowered their freight rates.
In 1961, Stewart faced up to reality. The belt line was a great idea whose time hadn’t come. He liquidated the Riverlake company, explaining the project no longer was feasible.
“Had conditions remained as they were in 1948, Riverlake could well have materialized into a profitable business venture,” he later explained.
“However, within a period of 10 years, its prospects were doomed by changing economic conditions and Riverlake died of traffic malnutrition in its development stages.”
In 1964, the Norfolk & Western Railroad acquired AC&Y. Stewart continued to serve as a vice president until his retirement in 1969. Harry Bartlett Stewart Jr. died in 1991 at the age of 87.
The conveyor belt line never came to pass. If given half a chance, it might have succeeded.
The Railroad of Tomorrow, a revolutionary idea in Ohio transportation, has been sidetracked for more than 40 years. It’s now the Railroad of Yesterday.