Central Union Terminal

I'd be interested to know when Wabash moved out of this station.

Lol, that is the station in my town.  Not what it used to be unfortunately, but then what is?  I spent many evenings as a kid with my dad at the end of the platform looking at the F and E units leading the eastbound Lakeshore Limited during early Amtrak days (back when it came through at a reasonable time of day).  Got invited up into the cab on a couple of occasions.  Toured the Freedom Train on its stop here.  There used to be a 200 ton Big Hook parked at the other end of the station.  I should see if I can find some shots from the station in my dad's slides.

There's still lots of railroading in Toledo, but nothing like when I was growing up.  I miss it.

Jim

Tom,

There was an article on CUT in Model Railroader in 2003, authored by Andy Sperandeo.  There may be some historical context offered in that article.  There is apparently also an article in Trains from 1953.  I know the station opened in 1950, and Wikipedia suggests passenger service on the Wabash to Toledo ended in 1955.  So it doesn't sound like they would have used CUT for very long.  Frankly, the building of the station was probably ill-timed, as passenger service began to decline not long after it was opened.

Living in Toledo in the late '60s and early '70s, CUT still has great memories for me.  So, when passing through on the Capitol Limited I always try to be awake just to enjoy the experience.  Last year we were on the train on our way east to last fall's York.  I woke up in time to watch us pass through what was once the NYC yards and then slowed for the station.

But the train did not stop!  Nor did we go through the station!  I knew we had passed it by when we crossed the bridge over the Maumee River.  "What on earth was going on, I asked myself?"  Finally, after a few miles we stopped, then began to reverse, back over the river and finally into the station.  No way the crew could have forgotten to stop, I said to myself.

But, then we did the usual station stop and took off, reaching track speed shortly after crossing the Maumee River - again.

After getting up and dressed, seeing our Conductor, I asked what was going on.  He replied that a work train had been left parked overnight near the terminal and had fouled the switch leading to the terminal tracks.  So, we had to proceed east until the first crossover, take it and then back into the station!

Always an experience on Amtrak! 

Thanks for the information, Big Train.  I looked in my 1954 Official Guide, and found the Wabash passenger train, which departed at 7:30 PM, and arrived at 7:50 AM.  The fact of its being a night train is one reason I've never seen a photo of a Wabash train in Toledo, and never knew that they served that city.

Actually, I had the old Trains article -- which, if I recall, included a photo of one of B&O's beautifully streamlined steam engines on a Cincinnatian -- but can't recall seeing a photo of the Wabash train, which, in my mind, likely consisted of about 5 cars, pulled by a boiler geep, since it was merely a connection to the Detroit-St.Louis trains.

Here's an older Toledo Terminal map with loads of info on the Toledo rail infrastructure.  The Wabash and Nickel Plate came into town from the southwest, through Maumee, essentially paralleling the river.  They split in the vacinity of the current day Toledo Zoo, with the Wabash continuing into the area east of Union Station (where the yellow highlighter is).  The area indicated on the map as the Wabash yard was a small scale intermodal loading facility in the 70's and early 80's, when they still drove trailers up ramps and onto flatcars.  Now it's a storage lot for NS maintenance.  Essentially all that is left of the Wabash in Toledo now is the right of way from the Andersons grain elevator in Maumee to the Andersons grain elevator on the Maumee River directly adjacent to CUT and the NYC swing bridge.

Today, the entire west side of the Terminal is gone, with rails pulled up.  The Nickel Plate tracks into downtown are gone.  And the Pennsy yard is gone.  The NYC Airline Junction yard, one of our go-to spots back in the day, has been cleaned out on the west end with an intermodal yard at the east end now.  As near as I can tell now, most yards in the area are used for autorack staging, with relatively little classification taking place.  

HUH?  I always thought "CUT" stood for CLEVELAND Union Terminal.

As for Toledo,  I'm surprised they haven't torn it all down and put up a station on the main line like the one at Depew.

Kent do you know how busy that station is ?  Busiest station in Ohio.   I also never heard reference of "CUT" for Toledo. I thought it was for Cincinnati ?

Clem